Dear Abby,

I am a mature, on the verge of over-ripening woman. I don’t have children, not that I didn’t want to; it just didn’t happen. I survived that but I am now finding it very difficult to cope and I need your advice.

All my friends, who hardly ever talked about their children, chat incessantly about their grandchildren. Their lives seem to orbit around these little beings to the point that they stop living and taking opportunities themselves. Get a group together and it is, for me,  simply boring as they compare and pass photographs. I’m excluded and I can’t join in. Abby, I can cope with this. I have a lifetime strategy of surviving boredom.

What I can’t take, is when they start a conversation about the children looking  after them in their twilight years and their plans to move near them.  A group together will chat about these kids, show photos, discuss how they won’t manage in old age unless they are near their children and at that point I  lose it. My brain snaps. Normally with anger whilst talking to the girl friends but, the tears come when I finally get home. My husband has promised that he will die after me so that I won’t have to worry about being alone. Sweet, but in all reality that probably won’t happen as he is much older than I. Abby, I would appreciate your advice on how I can go on into a future of having to suffer more doting grandparents and then my eventual loss of friends as one by one they leave to join their children.

Thanking you in anticipation                                                                                                 Excluded and Abandoned

Dear Excluded and Abandoned,

I hope that some of the following suggestions will help you cope and maybe improve your lot. Firstly, tell each of your friends how you feel before meeting them again and ask that they limit the time they talk about their grandchildren.

Secondly, prepare now for the future and fill your life with endless activities where you will meet people who think of things other than their family. Foster these new relationships and once flourishing you’ll have less time for the family oriented set. Alternatively, if  you can’t find un-obssessed people, still make new friends but make sure that their children live in the same area so that they don’t move, right at the time of your life, when it is very difficult to meet new people.

Thirdly, I could suggest a banana on the top of the stairs for your husband.  Then with new freedom, look for a new one that will share his children and grandchildren. You could  look at becoming an adopted granny if you are not happy to do the previous step. That way you get to see children at present giving time and they may like you enough to visit you when you’re old. Failing all of the above suggestions anti-depressants will at least make you not care about your situation.

All the best for the future                                                                                                          Abby

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