To make friends you need to be ready to display your vulnerabilities, says Mariella Frostrup
The dilemma I’m 40 and a full-time working mother of two teenagers. I have zero friends and few acquaintances. Spending time with my husband and children used to quell any feelings of loneliness, but that’s no longer enough. My lack of friendships is making me feel inadequate. I want a group of girlfriends I can confide in and connect with – even a single friend would mean so much. I get tearful when I see groups of friends out and about. I had a lot of good friends in school, but I let them fall by the wayside as I felt I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t have good self-esteem and for the most part, still don’t. My husband always comments on my lack of friendships, which makes me feel worse. I’m terrified of being ‘outed’ to my colleagues and relatives as friendless – and I don’t keep any social media accounts because of this fear. Please help me before I’m too old to go out and make friends.
Mariella replies First, congratulations are in order. You’ve negotiated your way through some of the trickiest stages of adult life without back up. To have maintained your marriage all these years without friends to offload your frustrations on; to have raised teenagers without mates to empathise, sympathise and offer counselling, and to be a full-time worker without pals to moan to over a bottle of wine means you should be feeling very proud. My instinct is that “zero friends and few acquaintances” could be more of a skewed perception of your situation than the harsh reality. It may be that the terrain you’re occupying isn’t quite as bleak as you imagine it to be, but let’s come to that a little later.