There are two posts in the largest perimenopause community that belong side by side, because between them they hold the whole subject.
The first scored 1,124 upvotes. Its title is Perimenopause Made Me Unfollow My Frenemy in 30 Seconds Flat, and the heart of it is two lines:
Me in my 20s or 30s? Would've cried for days and written a looong message. Me in peri? Unfollowed her on everything within 30 seconds flat.
The second scored 884 and drew 475 comments, which is a lot of women putting their hands up. Its title is Any have like zero friends?
I'm lonely as hell yet cannot make any effort to remedy it. I feel socially constipated. Is that a thing?
One woman is pruning with total confidence. The other is watching the garden empty and cannot lift the watering can. Plenty of the women replying to both posts sound like each of them on different days. That is why "I don't like my friends anymore" is such a confusing sentence to say about yourself: it can be a liberation and a loss in the same week.
Why do I not like my friends anymore?
When women in the perimenopause communities say they no longer like their friends, they describe two separate things arriving at once. One is a drop in tolerance: the habits that used to cost nothing now cost a great deal. The other is a gain in clarity: seeing, sometimes for the first time, which friendships were one-sided all along. Both produce the same sentence, and they need to be told apart, because only one of them should be allowed to make decisions.
The 389-upvote top comment under the frenemy post does not argue with her. It reads, in full:
Sometimes it's better to close the door quietly. Good riddance.
And under it, at 142 upvotes, the clarity half of the story in plain words:
Neither had realized that when I say I'm not putting up with BS I meant it.
What is striking in these threads is how rarely women describe a friend changing. The friend who only calls to talk about herself was always that friend. What changed is the willingness to keep paying for it. The page on hating everyone deals with the tolerance side, and with the energy budget for managing it. This page is about the other side, the clarity, and what to do with it once you have it.
Am I seeing people clearly, or have I just lost my patience?
Clarity and a tolerance drop can be told apart with three questions, and the answers are usually obvious once you ask them in daylight. Clarity is specific, it was true before, and it survives a good night. A tolerance drop is general, it is new, and it keeps a schedule.
Is it about one person, or about everyone?
Clarity points at someone. She only ever rings when she needs something. She has never once asked how I am. That is a finding about a relationship.
A tolerance drop points at everybody. The friend chews loudly, the other friend says "hubby", the group chat pings, the neighbour waves. When the irritation is spread evenly across every person you know, including the ones you love, it is telling you about your reserves, not about them.
Was it true five years ago?
Go and check. Scroll back through the messages. Think about the last birthday, the last crisis, the last time you needed a lift. If the pattern you now cannot stand is visible in the record from years ago, you are not imagining it. You were absorbing it.
In a divorce community, at 24 points, a woman asks the same question about her marriage:
I guess I'm wondering if the way I'm feeling is due to Perimenopause in part of me seeing things more clearly now?
The honest answer is often both, in proportions only she can measure, and the next test is how she measures them.
Does it survive a good night?
This is the most useful test and the easiest to run. Write the complaint down, in one sentence, on the day it is loudest. Read it again a week later, after a night that went reasonably well, or in a different week of your cycle.
If it still reads as true, it is clarity. If you read it and wince, it was the tolerance talking, and you have saved a friendship by not sending anything.
What if I don't have any friends left?
Having no friends left in your forties is usually a story of drift rather than departure, and the zero friends thread is full of it. Nobody fell out. Everyone got tired at once, and nobody had the energy to ring first.
The comments we pulled from under that post score low, single figures, but the wording repeats. One, at 2 upvotes:
I used to have so many friends, but I honestly cannot be bothered to see anyone. It's just such an effort.
Another, also at 2, describes the version that turned out well:
I have let go of the "friendships "that weren't authentic (me making all the effort) and have learned to enjoy my own company.
Those are two different places, and the difference is whether being alone is a relief or a weight. If it is a relief, you are probably in the clarity camp with fewer people, and that may be exactly right. If it is a weight, and you are lonely and stuck, then the job is not sorting friends. It is reaching for one, which is what the practice below is built for.
How do I decide which friends to keep?
The way to decide which friends to keep is to stop deciding about everyone and name three people. Not a cull, not a purge, not a list of the condemned. Three names, and everyone else gets a rest with no verdict attached.
Write down three names
The question is not "who do I love". It is "who costs me nothing". The friend you can sit with for an hour and not perform. The one who does not need the long version. The one who, when you cancel, says "fine, next week" and means it.
The 94-upvote comment under the frenemy post had a phrase for these people:
I've got my ride or dies, but yeah, I trimmed the fat.
If you cannot get to three, write down one. If you cannot get to one, skip to the last section of this page before anything else.
Say the true sentence to one of them
Pick one of the three and tell her the truth, once, in one sentence. Not the full explanation of perimenopause. Not an apology for the last year. Just what is going on and where she stands in it.
Women in these threads describe the same fear: that saying it will sound dramatic, or like a diagnosis, or like a request for sympathy. It reads as none of those things when it is short. The friend has almost certainly noticed the change already, and is privately drawing conclusions about herself. One sentence replaces the guess with the truth.
Let the rest rest
Everyone not on the list gets nothing. Not an unfollowing ceremony, not a message, not a slow fade engineered to make a point. Simply no effort from you for a while. Some of those friendships will come back when you have more in the tank; some will turn out to have been held together only by your effort, and will stop on their own. Either way, you did not have to decide in a bad week.
The one exception is the frenemy: the person who has actually harmed you, not just annoyed you. There, the 389-upvote advice stands. Close the door quietly.
Change the format before you change the friend
Some friends are fine and the setting is the problem. The group dinner that runs to midnight, the phone call with no end, the hen weekend. Before you let a friend go, try her in a format with a natural ending: a walk, a coffee, a swim. Plenty of friendships that read as finished are simply in the wrong container.
When is losing friends more than perimenopause?
Losing friends is more than a tolerance problem when being alone has stopped being a relief, and the signs below mean act today rather than run the list.
- Loneliness that hurts and that you cannot do anything about, for weeks, with no one you feel able to reach.
- Low mood that does not lift, whoever is or is not in the room.
- Feeling worthless, hopeless, or that people would be better off without you.
- Any thought of not wanting to be here. Contact a crisis line or a clinician now, not after the next appointment.
- A partner who is the reason you no longer see anyone, who checks who you talk to or makes seeing friends cost too much. That is worth talking about, in confidence, with someone outside the house.
None of those is about liking or not liking your friends, and none of them is for a coach or a web page. Whether this is perimenopause, depression or both is a question for a clinician, and the distinction in the page on hating everyone is a useful thing to take with you.
Will I ever want more friends again?
Wanting more friends again is not really the point the women in these threads arrive at. What they describe wanting is fewer, truer ones, and the absence of the effort it took to keep the rest. The 771-upvote post I No Longer Like My Friends was tagged in our count as a success story as well as a withdrawal post, which is a fair summary of where a lot of these threads end up.
And then there is the post with just four words for a title, I see people clearly, at 687 upvotes and 163 comments. Not "I hate people". Not "I've lost my friends". I see them.
Some of what you are seeing is a bad week, and the list will tell you which. Some of it is true, and has been true for years, and the only thing that has changed is that you can no longer pretend not to see it. Sort the two in daylight. Keep the three. Say the sentence to one. Let the rest rest. It is the kind of thing coaching works on, mostly by being the one person in the conversation who is not on the list.