The friendship apocalypse
When your friends become mothers and you don't.
My mother didn’t have friends when I was growing up - partly because she lacked the skills after a brutal childhood, and having a violently controlling and jealous first husband didn’t improve things. It wasn’t until her sixties, when she and her later husband retired, that she gradually softened and began letting people in. At her funeral last year, I was moved to meet many who’d got close to her in those final years and, by their affectionate stories of her quirkiness, had really known her.
However, just as she wasn’t set up by her childhood with solid friendship skills, neither was I. By the time I entered young adulthood, I’d been let down or betrayed by all of my parental figures and, taking my cue from my mother, regarded relationships as transactional and disposable. I cherished my friends and boyfriends whilst they were around, but I had no illusions that they would stick around, or that they would miss me when I wasn’t. Having never been ‘missed’ by my own mother, and having never had trustworthiness modelled to me, I didn’t know what it was—but the kicker was that I didn’t know that I didn’t know that. I trusted too easily, not really understanding what I was doing, and I let people down too easily too, not appreciating that although I was used to being discarded, others weren’t. As the expression goes, ‘damaged people damage people’ and that was definitely my mother and, for a long time, me too. These days, having done the painful personal archaeology that is part of becoming a psychotherapist, I know it’s called ‘intergenerational trauma’ and I can choose not to repeat those patterns. But even so, friendship can still be a struggle for me, especially without the social glue of motherhood and grandmotherhood to bond over.
Many women first meet me through my public work as the founder of the childless advocacy and support organisation Gateway Women, and the version of me they meet, whom I call ‘Red Jacket Jody’, is energetic, amusing, empathic and pretty selfless. But she’s only a part of me—a genuine part, yes—but still only one of my personas. Away from the public eye, I’m both taller and quieter than people might expect, and I guard my time fiercely. I’m an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs scale these days, so I can easily be mistaken for an extrovert, but my social battery only really glows when I’m using my ‘meaning and purpose’ jetpack. The rest of the time, my favourite sound is silence and I’m often lost in deep thought, just as I was as a child—in fact, hearing stop daydreaming yelled at me is an easily recalled childhood memory. Adult me is energised by honest, vulnerable conversations and big compassionate ideas, but it’s rare to meet others with a similar appetite. Thank goodness for the internet, where like-minded souls can find each other, as here on Substack!
[Above] ‘Red Jacket Jody’ gives a TEDx talk, 2017
At my sixtieth birthday celebrations in July 2024, I chose to do most of the catering and organising because that way, I could dodge being the centre of attention by taking care of others; indeed, maybe unconsciously that was part of the appeal of motherhood? As a child, my birthday parties were pretty fraught affairs, if they happened at all and, as taking the focus away from my mother was never a safe plan, it’s still rare that I have a birthday celebration more than once a decade.
But this time, for my sixtieth birthday, and for the very first time, I had a wonderful time. Old friends (including the two pictured above) travelled from around the world and mingled with new local friends, neighbours and acquaintances from Ireland, and the weekend flowed with grace, good humour and love. At the end of it all, after the complete lack of drama or awkwardness, I had to face up to something that felt profoundly challenging to me: was this proof that I’d finally learned how to be a good enough friend? Was I really the genuinely likeable person that these good people seemed to think I was? (I also need to add that I’ve been sober since January, so there were no rose-wine-tinted glasses involved!)