Do you confide in your close female friends?

Do you confide in your close female friends?

Well, I suppose the first thing to think about is whether you have any close female friends before you can answer the question.

I used to have real friends at school and at college. After that, I went into jobs where colleagues were a lot older than me and tended just to socialise with whoever I was lodging with at the time and their friends. Once you get into a living together scenario with a bloke, it seems that many of us let friends go neglected and then suddenly realise, the close bonds are gone and perhaps not able to be recovered.

I have probably had two close female friends since leaving university if I am being totally honest. One is a party animal so once I moved away from her home-town, we lost touch beyond postcards, Christmas cards, Facebook etc. She is so different from me (glampuss, not interested in work, ex-junkie - that's her, not me in case you were in any doubt), that our friendship was perhaps destined to be short-term.

The next person hurt me as I put so much into boosting her confidence and helping her try new things. She dropped me as soon as I moved out of the area (and the negative side of me would say stopped being useful to her).

I have tried to make friends in my new town and found making new female friends a disenchanting experience on the whole. I found myself feeling I had to apologise for being me and not being a clone of every baby-obsessed mummy in town. I found there was bitchiness with some women turning on me and using things I had confided in them against me. One woman I spoke to lots about my bereavement (at her offer) appears to have dropped me but does not tell me why. Others said when I was drummed out of a Netmums group, told me that they wanted to stay in touch with me but only managed it for a week or so. Younger than me perhaps but sharing the parenting journey if nothing else.

There are exceptions and I hope that K and C (and the Sunshine Band) might prove true friends over time and experience. They have been great so far but meet-ups are difficult to manage for a variety of reasons.

I did meet a woman who I felt a real bond with immediately. We met at soft play centres and went to the theatre. I was so excited but it seems non-attendance at her son's birthday party (when I was going through shit) has been enough to put paid to that. She does not reply to my emails.

My oldest friend from school last saw me almost two years ago. I have mentioned the idea of a weekend away together but it does not happen. She was only a few miles away recently but again no contact.

Must be a terrible person, mustn't I?

Then there is the miracle that is Louise who contacts me after 30 years apart really. She is willing to share the best and the worst of her which is how I think friends should be so I do the same. We have had one meeting so far which went well and I hope that we might be bosom friends again just like when we were little.

So when I need to confide in someone and there is nobody there, I am all to likely to get drunk and put negative postings (and often unrealistic ones too) on Facebook and Twitter. That is not a healthy way to behave but is I guess an expression of just how lonely life is without female friends.

Contact with an old college peer who wasn't even a friend of mine fills the gap a bit as it feels safe to confide with someone who isn't "real" and who seems nice enough not to want to kick you in the teeth even when you are being daft, negative or whatever.

Of course, I battle on and reach out to Mums in my new area (moving in less than 3 weeks) in the hope of new friendships. If that does not work, in view of what I am going to do next, maybe I will just have to talk to the animals .....

This is a reflective post. I am not sad. Things are actually amazingly on the up but I did want to look at why I do those negative FB posts and what it might suggest about what is missing in my life just now.