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Comment by p0d | Hacker News Reader

My wife and kids. I'm 50 and re-evaluating friendships outside the home. I have realised that most of my friendships are not mutual. I stopped contacting most of my friends over 9 months ago and have not heard back from most for 6 months to never.

My own family experience wasn't great. I now realise to have a wife who actively cares for you, looks out for you, is probably the most meaningful thing that can happen to you in your life. I am going to invest a bit more effort in my own family and a little less on fringe friendships.

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> I stopped contacting most of my friends over 9 months ago and have not heard back from most for 6 months to never

Isn't it possible some of them are thinking the same in reverse, avoiding contact with you because you haven't contacted them in 9 months? Friendships often come out of being stuck together in some way, either work or school or sport or locality or social routine, and they can be hard to maintain when those things disintegrate. I know that I'm guilty of not working hard enough to maintain some relationships in the last year, and I want to do better.

Depends. Sometimes you realize that you’ve always been the one initializing the interactions and when you stop nothing happens anymore. That might be a sign it’s a lopsided relationship.

Or it's just one of you is "an organizer" and the other isn't.

In my own friendships, in my current setup, I rarely the one who initiates. That was different decades ago but it's how it is at the moment.

My friends do all the inviting and I just show up (show up online this last year).

Further, some people just act as the magnet everyone follows. No idea why but they are. So for example another group, out of ~12 people it's only 1 or 2 of them that organizes most meetups. Same with another group.

To me this is a skill thing. Some people are skilled at cooking, some people are skilled at programming, some people are skilled at reaching out to others.

Some people, like me, never initiate interactions with anyone unless they have to. This isn't because I don't value their friendship. It's because of the high mental load and the many other things that take priority when allocating that capacity. For me, the choice to contact someone is not competing with no-ops like watching TV etc, it's competing with work like keeping my finances in order, fixing stuff in the house and long-term planning. To be friends with me you have to be OK with that. But if you expect me to "pay my way" by initiating things myself, or if you're also like me, then we'll probably never be friends. That's fine, though. We can't be friends with everyone.

I gotta say, that's a selfish mentality, and you're definitely losing out on good friends because you've decided your work comes first. Realize that everyone else has their own work and their own problems they need to spend mental energy on, just like you. What kind of friend are you that is ok with putting that mental burden on someone else but aren't willing to reciprocate? You'll eventually lose those friends and will regret it later in life.

It is also possible the other party is just down... I can think of 3 or 4 people I feel closest to in the world but I haven't replied to an SMS message from a couple months ago

I think the pandemic has weakened friendships, because people are eg consumed with looking after their elderly parents, or just coping with day to day childcare. So I would give your friends a free pass until we get back to normality. It may just be a consequence of the situation.

This sounds like depression and distance more than all your friends being bad. Consider an alternative view that may not be filled with suspicion. Wouldnt you want your friends to offer you the same courtesy if you stopped reaching out. The pandemic has been hard on peoples social rythyms and cues and there are way less events to talka bout or meet up at.

I did something similar a few years ago.

Not because I wanted to test my friendships, I was just too depressed to interact with other human beings.

I now have a grand total of 2 close friends outside of my family, even though I enjoy social remote events with people I kind of know.

I have friends that I consider to be good friends who I don't talk to often. If you moved around a lot as a kid, especially pre Facebook and cell phones, you tend to lose contact with people.

It's sort of like that scene from That 70's Show where the mom says that that the dad doesn't have friend's or talk to them. He replies by saying the one guy is his best friend and saved his life, but that they said all they needed to on the boat home from Korea. Some friendships withstand time even in the absence of interaction.

made me cry a lil bit

I understand your POV, but there is a risk with severing your friends and relying on your wife for social engagement: if you're ever divorced, you will have nobody but yourself.

Men should always be on their purpose and improving their life, including cultivating your own friends and family.

Note that during any divorce, your ex-wife will actively and immediately poison mutual friends and family as part of her playbook to make it look like it's all your fault (female shaming tactics) and that she's virtuous. Many men lose their own side of their family as a result, much to their surprise.

I had to vouch for this comment.

I get that this looks misogynistic, but what parent describes is exactly my experience. It literally describes my post break-up relationship with my wife. the meddling of her led to poisoning of my relationship with the kids. she was the one who was hitting me any time there was an argument, threw plates and glass, or became physical in other ways that I had no choice than call the police because I was scared of further escalation. When the police came to the house they said it was protocol to remove the male from the home for a night so that the woman can look after the kids. Once, when my son was playing with my daughter in their room and we were in the kitchen (I made coffee standing ~4m away from her) she started screaming hysterically my son's name and saying "quick please come your father is hitting me" (despite me never once raising my hand to her). My son until this day thinks I hit her. At other times (when I was severely depressed for months and couldn't get out of bed) my daughter asked why I wasn't at the dinner table with them she said to them "he is just lazy". Once I got sick and fainted so she left me lying unconscious in the bathroom for a whole night without calling 911 ... I have hundreds of memories like this, and later realized a lot of it was an attempt to implant memories on our kids that didn't happen. Once I was brave enough to talk about it to others I noticed there are many men like myself who refuse to engage in physical violence towards women and are actually at the receiving end of it.

I never spoke up because I was too embarrassed and nobody among my family or friends would have understood (and I knew that I wasn't able to give up my kids because this would have been the result of a break-up so I rather went to work with a bruised face claiming I fell of the bike or the snowboard - again!)

My problem was that she might actually be bi-polar or suffer from some kind of undiagnosed mental condition (at least to me this was the only explanation for such level of "evil"). In the end it doesn't matter what's the cause what counts is that I got out of it. Oddly having the responsibility of children was the reason I put up with this for so long. When I asked myself if this is the template I want to pass on to them I walked because I hope that if they ever find themselves in such a place they should walk regardless of how many kids they have.

I feel like there's a lot a brainwashing and manipulation even when spouses aren't physically abusive.

My wife tells me stuff that just doesn't make sense. When I sold my nice car and quit doing track days when we got married with plans to have kids, she kept telling me that I could've kept it and that the only reason I had it must have been to get girls. That simply wasn't true. And keep it? Using what money! I pay all the bills (and benefits, and retirement saving) except for her phone and car, while she spends as much or more every month on her hobby as I do on the mortgage. Or if I tell her that we should cut back on our toddler's screen time that day, she'll say it was only .5 hour, eventhough I witnessed 1.5 hours of TV time and .5 hour of phone/youtube time.

On top of this, she occaionally tells me that I'm mean to her. This is usually in response to me giving her instructions on how to properly perform some task. For example, she said I get the whites very clean looking when I wash them. I told her you have to pre soak them with bleach or oxiclean when they look dirty. Apparently this is mean to say? Or I mention that our toddler with a heart condition shouldn't be drinking iced tea with caffeine in it. Apparently this makes me controlling. I thought this would be common sense (drinking caffeine is the opposite of taking a medication to slow heart rate, which could lead to a bad outcome).

Many people have terrible social skills, and introspection.

There’s also the issue that many people choose mates because they want to have sex with them, or because they were young, or gave them attention, or were just around (or some combination of all these things).

People are awful at choosing long term mates and the discussion around this and the selection criteria is really bad.

If your partner has core value differences or just isn’t at some threshold of general intelligence the relationship will be filled with this kind of anxiety inducing misery.

This goes both ways too - I’ve known brilliant women who dated oafish/dumber, but very good-looking/fit men that were filled with similar insecurities. People should select more on core value alignment and intelligence than they do.

The brainwashing isn’t some secret truth of spousal relationships, except perhaps that people are bad at long term mate selection and select for the wrong things.

The values are mostly the same. The two big issued in this case are that she's never lived alone, so never learned many basic life skills. It's not terrible, but can get annoying when you're the one in a fulltime job and watches the kid on most nights and weekends, doing all the shopping, cooking, financial, legal, medical, mechanical, and property upkeep work.

The second thing is that she stated before marriage that she likes the country and wants to own a small horse farm. I, incorrectly, assumed that ment moving to a cheaper area. Who has $1M+ dollars for 10-20 acres in this area? Not to mention land in that amount is pretty rare as the county's population density metrics list it as urbanized.

Oh well.

Good on you for getting out and showing your kids that it is ok to leave a bad relationship (even if they don't realize that is what you are doing at the time).

My father married a woman (my stepmother) who was abusive and manipulative and it took him awhile to be decisive and leave.

I didn't appreciate how hard it was for him to leave at the time and blamed him for part of it.

Now (a couple decades later) I am just grateful we got out at all.

Your kids might not realize everything that is going on right away. From my experience, there is a good chance they will see all you did for them one day.

I’m so sorry, this sounds truly awful.

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