Friends....Whats Your Set Up?

Flipo's Mum

Flipo's Mum

Heavy owner of a Heavy
Aug 17, 2009
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Perthshire, Scotland
Just wondering if you have a best friend, or a small group of good friends, or have a bunch of folk scattered to the wind that you keep in touch with. Do you have someone you always confide in, other than your OH?
It's my Friday question, just curious as you get older, has things changed in the friend department. And have you ever had a to leave a friendship and why.
 
Isn't it Thursday today???

I have lots of small groups of friends. There is a group of friends from my current yard, group from my old yard, my village 'mummy' friends, my old pre-baby friends, old school/uni friends etc. There is usually some king of social activity happening with one group every week, but I find it hard to keep up with them all - they are all very separate and sometimes I feel like I lead 5 different lives. I have a couple of close friends who I speak/text almost everyday, but apart from that my husband is my best friend and the one I share everything with.
 
Please tell me it's only Thursday or I am in the wrong office?!!

I have my old school friends, we can go months without seeing each other and when we do meet up it's like it's not been five minutes since we last saw each other - I would probably phone up one of them if i needed to chat about something other than with the OH. I also have a group of uni friends and we are close but not sure i would confide in them in the same way.. I also have a bunch of people nearby that probably know far too much about me without me telling them anything else! They are mostly OH friends I have inherited or horsey folk..
 
OH has been my best friend since we were 16. When we split temporarily it hurt very much because I missed our friendship and my girl friends at that time just didn't "get" a lot of things in my life - and I had nobody to share jokes with etc. It might sound silly - but even tho we are opposite sexes we do "get" most things and laugh at the same stuff.
I keep intouch with two other girls - one I have known since 1995 and the other a lot longer - but I don't have oodles of friends. OH and I share a male friend also who goes back a long way. Its harder as you get older to make and keep friends - I think you can become intolerant without realising it!!!
 
I have a small group of friends scattered all over the country. My best friend, I've known since primary school we email or text everyday. Call each other up every so often and see each other once or twice a year. When we do meet up it's like we've never been apart and I love her to bits. I'm lucky and get to see her for the third time this year when she gets married next month!

My other friends are people I met at college and we keep in touch sporadically, but again when we do finally get to meet up it's like we've never been apart.

I don't really have any friends around me locally which does get a little lonely if I want to go for a night out, but I try to make the effort to visit friends as much as I can.

My Mum is also one of my best friends, we go shopping most weekends and have a good giggle.
 
I have lots of acquaintances I could pass the time and chat to and I'm seen as friendly and sociable, but in reality I have very few people I'd actually class as good friends.

My world revolves around my family.
 
I have a best friend from Cambridge. We text every day and speak 3 or 4 times a week. She lives in Suffolk, but we try to meet up several times a year at least for a day.

Other friends come and go according to what I'm doing - my life is prone to change! - but Liz endures.
 
My best friend is my Aussie ex-flatmate Liz. She doesn't live too far away and comes and stays often for girlie weekends and she's 'Auntie Liz' to my kids. I've got another couple of really close girl friends too that I see when I can, and lots of FB mates, and I'm also close to my brother and sister.
I'm still good mates with my best friend from school although she's just moved back to Devon - might see her more now though as she's not far from my parents and her folks and mine are friends. I'm still 'stalked' by the bloke who's had a crush on me since we were at sixth form college together!
We've only been here (Wycombe) a few months but have got some local mates already - through riding (me) and mountain biking (husband) - so that's great. We're pretty sociable really. I've always had a large circle of friends, I am not brilliant in my own company for any length of time. Looks like both my children take after me in that respect, the oldest HATES being on his own!

Oh yes, sadly some friendships I've had in the past haven't worked out. Most I am vaguely in touch with still but there's a couple that ended on bad terms. C'est la vie.
 
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I am still sort of in touch with a couple of school friends, via the internet. Not really close but nice to occasionally catch up with them.

I am very fortunate in that my very best friend from my childhood just happened to marry one of my brothers, so our friendship is now very close as we are also members of the same family. If things really go pear shaped she is always the one I turn to, and her to me. Plus she is also horsey so that is a bonus.:biggrin:

I do have friends here, but non that I would describe as close, apart from one or two. I always tend to turn to my family more than friends in times of extreme good fortune or extreme bad luck!:frown:

I do find that the older I get the more cynical I become about people's motives. I had one friend who I just knew was using me to get some free grazing......when I got entirely fed up with watering and checking her horses everyday, and refused the following spring.......surprise, surprise she quietly but rapidly disappeared from my life!

Another very good friend who was like a family member......I gave almost everything horsey I had left that I had acquired over the years, including a very cheap horse and a free loan of another let me down very badly the one and only time I asked something of her. In that moment I realised that she was most definitely NOT a good friend, but a spoilt user and grabber, nothing more. :poop:

So I guess I can sum it up by saying, family is probably the only thing that has any real value to me anymore. Friends come and go as quickly as people's motives change. Cynical perhaps but safer to keep your barriers up IMO.
 
I think friendships change as we grow older too - I had a friend whom I thought would be a friend forever but when she had her first child she shut me out and opted for other mothers - which I kinda understand as they would have lots in common - but whilst she was pregnant she just cut me off and started socialising with a woman who had grown up kids. Maybe she saw her as a mentor? Maybe I was just too different - at 23 the last thing I wanted was babies! lol. I did make an effort to stay in touch but she didn't seem to want to join in with any of my life style things - she wasn't interested in my new business venture despite me trying hard to be interested in her new set up.
 
I have a a couple of close friends over the years but moving around kills most friends as life and horses get in the way.

I realised who my friends are since I broke my ankle and I have to say they are amazing.
 
Trewsers said:
I think friendships change as we grow older too - I had a friend whom I thought would be a friend forever but when she had her first child she shut me out and opted for other mothers - which I kinda understand as they would have lots in common - but whilst she was pregnant she just cut me off and started socialising with a woman who had grown up kids. Maybe she saw her as a mentor? Maybe I was just too different - at 23 the last thing I wanted was babies! lol. I did make an effort to stay in touch but she didn't seem to want to join in with any of my life style things - she wasn't interested in my new business venture despite me trying hard to be interested in her new set up.
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Yeah, I've had this too - one close friend almost completely vanished from my life when she met her now-husband. I was with my own now-husband throughout our friendship (which was quite short really, only a couple of years, but intense) and she was single and looking for love. Once she found it I guess she didn't need me any more! I sort of don't mind that she sort of 'used' me, because I think some friendships do have a shelf life anyway.

I have a new BFF who is a horsey 22 year old! I am 38 but immature (ha!) and she is 22 and old for her years so I barely notice the age difference! She's house-sitting for me when I am on hols week-after-next, and we're both moving our horses to a new yard together!
 
I guess my boyfriend is my best friend.

And I have one friend I am fairly close to but she is working in Africa at the moment.

That's it :frown:
 
I have 3 close friends since Uni days. We all live in the West/South West, so manage to catch up about 4-5 times a year in the flesh. But are always there for each other when needed. Plus I have 1 very long term horsey friend who I see every week & another who lives in the Emirates & I see in her hols. My OH is my other half - put together we make a whole, even though we are 2 very independent people!

Writing this has just made me realise how very lucky I am with my close friends. Thanks very much FM for this thread (even if it is Thursday!).
 
I've got two friends from High School that I still keep in touch with, those friendships I can pick up and put down as/when needed. We all feel like that and those type of friendships are the ones that last the best with me. I don't do high maintenance friends, that need constant attention :eek:

Plenty of acquaintances here as well but only a handful of good friends who I'd put myself out for.

Like Cortrasna has said, I have become cynical about people as I get older and want to know their motives, especially new very overly friendly liveries :ninja:
 
Life has been kind to me in this department have loads all over the these Islands from Donegal to London who i visit and they visit. However, my best friend in the world is my wife we have been happy for 30 years plus some vat. Have had some bloody good arguments all the same and yes usually caused by me especially when i was still playing rugby and forgot to come home or phoned to be picked up from the club and 2 in the morning. It always seemed like the right thing to do at that time of the morning, couldnt understand what the fuss was about.
 
I have a best friend from school who now lives near my mum again so I have seen her soooo much over the last 6 months! Every month we go down so we meet up with her and her husband. We text every few days usually too. I keep in touch with a couple of other school friends but only see them for occasions as such. My best friend from primary school lives in Scotland (moved up 15 yrs ago). We really only speak a few times a year and usually visit each other once or twice a yr, but its always like we have never been apart!

I have a group of horsey friends, one I pretty much text everyday. I've been on a couple of yards up here and have kept in touch with a few from each and have catch up chats every so often.

My newest friends are from baby groups. I see them once a week and a couple of them I have met up with outside of the group. This I'm surprisingly enjoying!

Ultimately I don't have a best friend up here though, it's mainly just me and OH.
 
I left the UK seven years ago now, so although I'm in touch with people from home via Facebook etc, they are "old friends" / acquaintances these days and I'm not close to any of them. The exceptions being my two best friends from school/college, these two I can see as little as once a year but when we do meet up we can easily pick up right where we left off. Most of my friends are people I've met through work - and I've moved countries 4 times in these 7 years, so I don't get to see them any more and they are spread around a lot.

My boss is my closest friend here, she's my age and we get on really well. We think very highly of each other in terms of our work relationship - I think she's a great boss and she thinks I'm a great groom - we really value each other in that respect. But we're rather different personality-wise and also have extremely different backgrounds, we don't have much in common apart from a passion for horses, and to be honest I don't think we would have become good friends if we'd met in social circles. I'm also friends with liveries and other clients and people we know from the shows, but again that is mostly just a work thing. I don't socialise outside of things related to my job, so there's not really much chance to expand my social horizons so to speak.

I don't really have anybody I confide in or go to for advice / support etc - I prefer to keep things to myself and deal with them on my own - I've always found it hard to make friends, so I think I just learned very quickly how to deal with life without needing to turn to other people. I've been let down a lot too, in the past I've considered people to be "good friends" and then realised somewhere down the line that I liked them a lot more than they liked me! I'm more cautious now, and tend to think of new people as "passing acquaintances" rather than potential friends - if we do become friends that's great but I don't expect it to happen. I like meeting new people but I think I'm the sort of person people tend to forget.
 
joosie said:
I don't really have anybody I confide in or go to for advice / support etc - I prefer to keep things to myself and deal with them on my own - I've always found it hard to make friends, so I think I just learned very quickly how to deal with life without needing to turn to other people. I've been let down a lot too, in the past I've considered people to be "good friends" and then realised somewhere down the line that I liked them a lot more than they liked me! I'm more cautious now, and tend to think of new people as "passing acquaintances" rather than potential friends - if we do become friends that's great but I don't expect it to happen. I like meeting new people but I think I'm the sort of person people tend to forget.
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I can really relate to this
 
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