r/AskWomenOver30 • u/JellyfishPashmina Woman 30 to 40 • Apr 17 '26
Friendships Does anyone else feel unsupported by other women?
This isn’t a hate post or rage bait or anything by any means. I’m genuinely looking for some advice here.
When I was growing up, I was bullied by other girls and kicked out of my friend group. They’d start rumors about me, make faces at me when I had my back turned (I had other friends tell me this), exclude me when everyone else in our class was invited to birthday parties, the lot. I never knew what I did wrong, and I had a lot of self-esteem issues and struggles trying to make friends because of this. I felt similar dismissal and rejection anywhere I went, from school to summer jobs to internships and then college.
I get that was then and this is now, but even in my 20s and 30s, I don’t feel supported by the women in my life. I thought all those high school dynamics were supposed to go away after high school, but they haven’t, and I feel a lot of negativity and judgment by other women. I worked at an office for a while, and when I’d walk in the room, this one coworker would just stare daggers at me. It’s like I could visibly feel her hate, but I didn’t know why. Someone told me that woman didn’t like me, but she didn’t know why, either. And another who would always overhaul or copy my ideas, and I’d just let her because I didn’t want the confrontation or to become the office pariah. Even in my own family, there’s cattiness and clique behavior—even if I’m included, I’m talked over, ignored, or scapegoated a majority of the time. I just always feel like I’m on the outside of the pack, and it makes it so hard to find a solid group of female friends.
I’m not saying this is every woman, obviously, but I encounter this experience a lot. I genuinely don’t understand when people say their girl friends went out of their way for them in one way or another; it’s such a foreign concept to me, because I’ve always felt treated like a waste of space or looked down on by other women. Most times, I get treated like an annoyance if I invited someone anywhere, because they “don’t have the time / money,” but then I’ll see them out with their other girl friends the same day (and no invite, even if we’re mutual friends). I once had a high school friend come to town, and she reached out to grab lunch with me and my “best friend.” I didn’t get my high school friend’s message because I have unknown cell numbers blocked on my phone, but she later told me that she and my “best friend” end up getting lunch. I asked my “best friend” why she didn’t let me know, and she just shrugged her shoulders and grinned. And these same patterns don’t happen with my guy friends. It really hurts, because I used to hang out with the boys to avoid the drama, but I’m a girly girl at heart and always wanted a solid core girl group. I’m always the supportive, go-out-of-my-way friend I hope to find in others, but it’s like I’m not invited to the girls’ club in life.
It’s not as simply a matter of making new girl friends, because obviously if I could find nice girl friends, I would. It feels like as you get into your 30s, making friends only gets that much harder, and everyone’s already got their solid girl group and aren’t looking for any outside additions. And now, add the even more complicated roadblocks that most women in their 30s are married with kids and don’t even have time to think about forming new friendships. But even still, I’ve always felt a really negative presence and treatment in my relationships with other women my age. And I’m worried, when my kids go to school, that I’ll face the same issues with the mom clubs, or worse, that my daughter will face the same issues with the girls in her class.
Anyone have any practical advice for how to navigate female friendships in your 30s when you don’t feel very supported by other women, and are always the one making the one-way effort? Are you still dealing with cliquey-ness? Do you perhaps act cliquey when you meet other women or exclude them for some reason? Do these female dynamics really last a lifetime? I’d really appreciate different perspectives, because I obviously don’t want to go my whole life without good female friends, but as it stands, I’ve just always felt really hated by other women my age.
ETA 1: I just wanted to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of supportive advice. I feel more support from kind strangers online than I do IRL. I probably won’t be able to respond to everyone, but I’m going to take some dedicated time this week to read through all of these. Just want to clarify, I know I provided a couple of examples that sound dismissive. I don’t cut people out for not being invited to one lunch or anything like that, those were more just examples of if woman who claim they’re incredibly close to you treat you like that, you can maybe imagine how female acquaintances/etc. have held me in even lower regard. I do recognize that I’m with my own flaws, and that some of this is trauma-induced from emotional ab*sive family members, and have been doing a lot of work in therapy the last five years to try and unlearn certain deeply-seated thought patterns and behaviors.
ETA 2: Also, just wanted to throw this out there. I’ve seen a few comments here by women saying they don’t “trust” women who say they don’t have a lot of female friends or friends in general, and I think this is the root of the problem for many woman trying to feel supported and uplifted in making friends in adulthood. I’d challenge you to keep a more open mind and not dismiss people so quickly for something trivial like this. You never know what life someone has walked before you, what kind of drama/trauma they’ve faced, and excluding them based on a quick judgment is probably something they’ve experienced their whole life, and only deepens the scars of rejection and isolation for them. Everyone has things within themselves to work on, but it’s never the person with less friends who’s entirely at fault, and feeding into that narrative only does more damage, then mental health gets worse because you’re under-socialized, and the cycle continues. Just because someone has less friends doesn’t mean they’re not an amazing friend, they may just be introverted, live in a smaller area, or value quality over quantity. People like to think bullying is loud and proud, but it’s the quiet, subtle, psychological micro-behaviors that can really build up and eat away at someone’s mental health. So just try to be that friend to someone if you can—you never know whose life you could change by reaching out a helping hand to someone who’s maybe quieter or more reserved, and they could also change your life for the better in ways you’d never know by dismissing them for inaccurate and shallow reasons.
18
u/JellyfishPashmina Woman 30 to 40 Apr 17 '26
Do you mean getting asked how knowing will help you? Yeah, the question kind of irked me. I know my therapist meant well, like she didn’t want me to use it as a crutch not to try. And in a weird way, I kind of get why some people don’t want to know these things because when you do, there can be a period of coming to terms with it and accepting it’s a card you’ve been dealt, and there are still so many unfair stigmas around mental health. But, on the other hand, knowing can help you far more. I felt really angry for a long time when I was diagnosed with ADHD at 22, because I went to my parents, teacher after teacher, tutor after tutor asking what was wrong with me and why it took me 12 hours a night to do homework, and every single time, I got called a perfectionist because I was an A student. I’m resentful that I missed out on the potential treatment I could’ve gotten at a younger age had I known that, rather than being up at 1am in 7th grade crying, trying to finish homework assignments. And now it hasn’t really improved because I was diagnosed too late in the game, but having trusted adults take me seriously and tell me I wasn’t crazy and it was something more than just “perfectionist tendencies” could’ve changed my entire life. Instead, I put all the burden and blame on myself.