Codependency Support Group
Codependency is defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for another person's struggles. A codependent person may try to change, or feel shame about their most private thoughts and feelings if they conflict with the other person's struggles. If you are on a journey towards self-love, this support group is for you. Join us and find others...
Sometimes, I'm not sure what to think or feel about situations. I hope that I haven't outgrown my group of girlfriends so much that it's unsustainable. When we met many years ago, we had so much in common. We had a book club and a hiking group. The book club went on for five years, and the hiking group for ten. Both essentially ran their course. They were great when we did them. For years before that I just didn’t have friends. I tried hard to make them, it just never came together, so I was so happy when it worked out.
As people have gotten older, things have shifted. I am about ten years younger than some of the people in the group. This didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but some of the differences look more obvious now. For example, two of my friends have moved to a retirement community with family, another one will be moving back here to our city. It seems like their interests lie in participating in the activities in the retirement community-the pool, the shuffle board, whatever. The median age out there is 72. I'm more than 25 years younger than this, so I don't feel it's a fit. One of my friends is trying to get me to come down there to live too. I'm not age qualified, but even if I was I just don't want to.
I think that the plan is for everyone to retire together, and what really bothers me is the hate towards men. I think the general point is to disavow relationships with men and have some sort of woman community, which has been strongly hinted at. I've suspected for a while one of my friends may be a lesbian, and there is starting to be gossip about it.
Recently, one my birthday I told them that I was dating someone, the response was overwhelmingly negative. The response that I got was basically 'give up, it's over for you, all your crazy dating stories, why do you bother, you're too old, blah blah.' Ever since I heard that, the relationship has shifted seismically. I don’t feel like I can tell them about my life anymore. More and more I feel like I have to edit so much of what I say for fear of setting someone off.
It used to be that since the pandemic, our group text would go off constantly. Lately, I've felt much more depressed and stressed after hanging out with them. At a certain point the text chain was stressing me out a lot. My phone was blowing up constantly, at work, late at night. It seemed very clingy, endless cat pictures, IDK. And one of the people has been planning to move here from across the country to the retirement community with my friend. She's been texting about it for the last four years. I haven't responded much because she wants a place to crash. She will be crashing at my other friend's house.
What is weird is that now that she is actually moving here next month-and ironically the text chain has stopped almost completely. When her moving was just a concept, we heard about it all the time. The whole group has been currently extremely secretive about her move here. I find this odd. One of our friends is a stage-five clinger, so I can kinda see why this info might be on the down low. She deems that everything must pass her approval. Before, the plan was for all of us to fly out there, and then drive back with her with her stuff. This was way too much of an ask for me and I have no time off anyway.
Strangely, our group zoom meetings have stopped completely. We used to do them once a week during the pandemic, then once a quarter. There hasn't been one since last Christmas. Now that she is actually coming here, the zoom meetings have stopped completely as well as the text chain. It's strange. I was accused of being quiet and not responding, but I was just getting a little creeped out by the constant attention. Apparently she plans on quitting her remote job after moving here too. That should be interesting.
Our other friend has been saying for the past year that she's reevaluating all her relationships and determining who is going. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a foreshadowing or a hint. She was the one that made the nasty comment to me that I should give up dating.
I didn't plan on ending our friendships completely, but by being quiet I was basically maintaining boundaries-I don't want someone moving in my house. Years back one of their friends came to live with me and it was an utter disaster. I also don’t like having my every move monitored by a control freak either.
I'd like people to join me in activities that I like, such as taking dancing classes, going to concerts, and attending meetup parties. No one is interested in these things. I get tired of doing things alone. My invitations to do these things get turned down. The one or two times they joined me, they had a miserable time and complained so I didn’t ask again. If it's something they want to do then it's perfectly fine, they will join, but I have to bend my preferences.
I'm not sure what is happening here, but it feels weird. I'm not understanding all of the secrecy about this move. I think that the information sharing has slowed down as one of our friends is a bat-crap control freak. If she finds out you have any plans that didn't include her or weren't run by her first-she explodes. It's why I quit our hiking group. I think a large part of my avoidance is more exposure to her-the stage-five clinger. I fear more involvement with the group is more involvement with her. And she scares me with her rage and unpredictability. I found myself really losing my autonomy the more I hung out with her and people started to say she was a narcissist. I don’t want anything to do with that.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
It won't be easy, but it seems that best thing is to try to make new friends who are closer to your age. Easier said than done, I know. But you will have more in common with some new friends who are your age.
As we grow older, we go into different seasons of our life. Like you, I used to have a group, a sporting activity that I participated in, and I had literally 100 friends from this. Too many people, really. Then I had a serious physical accident, had to drop out of the sport, and very quickly these people went away. I was kind of shocked really. That maybe we were only friends due to the group?? This could be what is going on with your situation.
I would encourage you to go to some meetup groups, or ones on Facebook, alone. I know that will be hard at first, but it will get easier over time. And when you attend alone, you are free to leave any time you want. You don't have someone else there that you have to tend to.
Check Meetup, Facebook groups, etc. See what piques your interest. And just go to them. No pressure to stay the whole time. Just showing up would be a good first step.
You don't have to get rid of any of these old friends. Just going to make some new ones. Can never have enough friends, right?
Good luck. You can do this. You don't sound happy with this group of women, so nothing stopping you from meeting some new people.
I am friendly with a group of women who are anywhere from 3 years older to 30 years older. The best one is the one who is 30 years older! I am going through ambiguous loss with her because she is now almost 100 and she is slowing down, sliding down health wise. But still, this friendship made me realize some of us need older friends because we are more mature than our age group.
And this older friend of mine comes out of a friendship oriented social group that started before the pandemic, blossomed during the pandemic and really grew, and now has shrunk down to about half what it was.
I was the secretary of this social group for a couple of years, did it democracy style with group decisions, and the women drove me crazy with refusing to take ownership of group activities. Now the current secretary has decided she owns the group and is totally in charge. She forgets when someone volunteers to do things and so we have two people doing the same task and she talks over the other one who volunteered.
So recently, a member brought up how we need to make a decision about something relating to the group. The irony is the discussion happened when secretary/boss was out of the room and we had it figured out by the time she came back. And boy oh boy did secretary/boss get mad and said some rude things. She will tell us when a decision is made, she said. I spoke up and said we have this all figured out and we will make a group decision when the volunteers have done their homework with pieces to the decision.
First, it was politics with ugly mouthed and offensive comments about other people they hate. Only the other people they hate are sitting in the room not speaking about politics because they are polite and pleasant. Just crazy. So I almost quit then and that is one reason I wanted to pass on the secretary job.
I've realized many/most humans are sheep and don't want to do anything nor make decisions. This is how my social group is. I am finding myself more and more irritated with secretary/boss not wanting to let go of power (I guess). I'm thinking my time is about run out with this much beloved social group. And it makes me sad but things change. I've started looking around for something else.
So these women who all want to move to be with the "leader" don't surprise me. I think in my group, the members would all mostly be happy having someone else make all the decisions and do all the work. Most of the ones who would do the work are the ones who faded away or quit after the pandemic.
Lastly, then a few weeks ago, another friend and I had a heated discussion about a topic. She told me how her feelings were hurt and I did apologize and yet, she did not. I didn't ask her to be responsible to things she said so she did not apologize nor does she have any idea how upset I was inside. I could have said more but I realized it was spitting in the wind. It was simply weird. The topic was a mental health issue that has an active board on this website. And I kept thinking how the people on that board would skewer her for her ignorance which she was promoting as truth.
Sometimes we have to be accepting of other people and tolerant. And sometimes, we need to keep working our plan and moving forward in our lives. If the other followers want you to follow and you don't want to follow, then make that group less of a presence in your life. This is hard, I am going through this myself at this very moment in time.