Making Friends...And Friends-with-Family

[RiverRunning]

This is probably going to be a long post. Sorry, guys.

 

I'm pregnant with my first child. Just over a year ago, I ended the only friendship that I had. Marriage is great. Some family members are great, but generally aloof.

 

One of the hardest things that I'm discovering is that my primary friend options now are...other pregnant women and other mothers. In and of itself, this isn't really a problem. I don't know if I've just been isolated from dealing with other women or not, but many of the women in my social circle want to talk about different things, and in a different way than I do.

 

Case in point: it seems like we can't just talk in general about our pregnancies, our kids, etc. Invariably, I meet women who want to give unsolicited advice, who seem insecure and determined to prove themselves as good wives and mothers and so on. It always seems like women I meet are interested in establishing a hierarchy where they're on top, rather than each of us being equals who support one another.

 

It makes me uncomfortable bringing up anything about my life, because even innocuous questions like "Hey, what did you do in the baby's room this week?" seems like it's a prompting for criticism and advice.

 

I do think I'm afraid of putting myself out there because of my history of friends. In the past, I was much more of a doormat. I'd let friends treat me any way they wanted and talk to me and about me any way they wanted. The friendship that I cut off did a lot of damage, and I made a lot of excuses for him over the years...until I realized that aside from having somebody to talk to, I was getting nothing out of the friendship but discomfort.

 

Now, of course, I think I'm too quick to pull the plug on friendships where I see someone engaging in gossip, someone who seems very negative, or...the unsolicited advice givers, because all I can think is, "oh boy, someone else who's going to start putting me down and blabbing about how great they are all of the time."

 

I'm lucky to have a big family with many cousins I grew up with who are roughly my age (we lived together at various times). Several of them have since married. I actually went to high school with one of my cousin's wives, and we got along well enough then. We have hung out a few times by ourselves and really hit it off (I thought!), but she does have anxiety and depression and has a hard time getting out of the house.

 

If I don't initiate contact, we will go months without speaking or seeing each other (haven't seen her in a year!). Yet when she does contact me, it's always with, "We need to hang out soon, I miss you!" But, unless I say, "Ok, going to do blank this day at this time, I'll pick you up," nothing happens.

 

I've just taken that to mean, "I'm just being nice, I don't actually want to spend time with you," so I've largely stopped reaching out. She also does not attend the vast majority of other family functions, including a recent wedding, so maybe it is just depression/anxiety (or dislike of the family in general).

 

I used to throw parties and regularly invite family and friends over. But, when life got a little busy and I stopped throwing them, we stopped hearing from anybody. No invitations to go do anything, phone calls, anything. I've invited people out to dinner, only to be brushed off (even accounting for possible money issues, I've said: "Let's go out for your birthday, my treat." Nothing).

 

It hasn't helped my self-esteem much: it makes me feel like the close family that I grew up with either doesn't like me, or can't be bothered to reach out. Some of the others do keep in touch with one another and do hang out regularly, which is what makes this so confusing.

 

My brother has a child, and our kids will be about a year apart. He and I have largely grown apart over the years, but now he makes several references to getting to spend time together and our kids bonding. I have to admit I'm not holding my breath: we aren't really close now. I'm hopeful that we'll all get to spend more time together and that our kids can grow up being friends, just as we were great friends with our cousins.

 

But, I also feel like I'm looking into a future where my child and me are calling to arrange hangouts, only to be blown off or told "some other time."

 

Some of these relatives are misanthropes, some seem busy with other aspects of their lives, and the rest...who knows.

 

I guess I feel torn sometimes. On one hand, I want to meet people, I want to hang out and have fun together, support each other, and of course I want to be liked. It often feels like other people just want to get what they can out of a friendship, investing as little as possible in return (I've already distanced myself from a few people I've met who were clearly just interested in treating friends like ATMs: you give me what I want, good day, sir!).

 

I guess I'll sum up this post with a TL;DR...

 

 

So, TL;DR: How do you identify 'bad' friends from the start? Does my family just not like me, or are they just not thinking about the fact that they never hear from me unless I contact them first? I don't think I'm coming off as friend-desperate...friendly, sure. But I'm not crowding everybody by any means.

 

Other information: college graduate, so no classes for me, and I work from home, so...no co-workers.