Friday 18 January 2013

On my lonesome

This post has nothing to do with dieting.  I’m keeping it separate so you don’t have to bother with it – it’s essentially cathartic for me to get this off my chest.
 
I’m feeling really lonely.  I am sure it’s the January Blues tingeing everything sad, but I just need to vent. 
 
I am a lucky girl; I love my husband and have a good time with him, he’s enormously fun.  But woman does not live by man alone (much as that will come as a surprise to them).  I have lovely friends but I rarely see them – some have busy lives (okay, all have busy lives) and some just live very far away.  And at work it’s worse really.  I’m the oldest person in a young industry.  I have had friends at work but they’ve all moved on and the girls that I chat with tend to arrange stuff to do without me.  Today is just the latest example of where I have been asked to ‘man the fort’ while they all go off for lunch together.  It makes me feel very sad and excluded.
 
I need to pull myself together but I need a plan.  How do you find friends at this age?  People my age are usually preoccupied with young families and socialise with similar people.  Where are the childfree women of my age?  Perhaps I am an endangered species.

4 comments:

Linz M said...

I'm a child free woman of your age, so I know where you are coming from.

I don't really know the answer to be honest. I find I mainly see my friends if I travel to them, I guess I'm just waiting for the kids to get a bit older...

I'm lucky at work in that although I'm the oldest, I instigate most of the social gatherings - can you not invite yourself along?

x

Seren said...

Ohhh, I could almost have written this post myself - I really sympathise. It's so difficult to make new friends once you get past a certain age - especially, as you say, if you don't have children.

Since moving to Leeds I've joined a website called Meetup which allows you to find groups of people in your area with common interests but have yet to work up the courage to go to anything. I've also considered the local WI which seems to have some fun sounding groups - but again, the idea of walking into something like that on my own, completely cold, I find really intimidating. Perhaps we should both make a late January resolution to do something proactive?

Chin up lovely.

Sx

Sarah said...

I don't feel like you right now, but I have done. I don't know how I got into feeling like that and how I got out of it. Friends with kids didn't help, although with many of them it started when they were just with man and not with kids. I am usually the one who makes all the effort and went through times of resenting that.

So how to make it better? That's hard too. Can you join something that has a social element to it? I've done a bit with Am Dram and music - choirs and the such like - theatre groups are usually sociable and you don't have to be the person on stage, there is lots of other stuff that needs doing from pulling together the programme to painting scenery to making the tea. I agree that the walking into the room bit is really scary but once you get over that, it can work well.

Good luck - and make a resolution, loneliness is not nice.


Sarah x

Lesley said...

Snap! We're clearly not lonely as there are a bunch of us, ncie, sociable, befriended women who all feel a similar "lack". I have got lazy and tended to socialise with Rich I've noticed. But it's partly because blokes are easier and more accessible. Women either have children or come in couples who are tricky to assimilate.

I did used to have lots of coupley pals but sadly mislaid several of them with D!!

More phone calls, more effort on my part I think to make sure that I meet up with my girl pals. But I really sympathasise and thank you for writing it down as I have been feeling the same way.

What about the 5 of us meeting up sometime???

Lesley xx