Dear sunflower,

It sounds to me that your cousin was standing up for you for good. You have done nothing wrong. If Jane’s jokes were benign and she were your true friend, would she get so defensive instead of just explaining it was a joke?

Younger age friendships are most often based on going out and having fun, and too often include putting up with jokes in order to be included. We don’t know better at first because it’s all we’ve known so far. It’s understandable that you need to feel like you belong to a group – friends are our second family.

I empathize your situation, feeling lonely and depressed, but it sounds that your friends were only good for that – the jokes, and not stick up for you when you really need them – lack of job, moving places. And your cousin, being the one with the problems, were the one to know better in this case.

Why would you have to put up with Jane’s obvious intent to cut you loose from the group? It is a hard lesson to learn sometimes that people “divide and conquer” in social circles more often than we would like to know and it looks to me that this is what she has done.
As for the rest of the group, in time things change and they may or may not turn around. People too often go with the herd instead of using their own heads to take decisions because it is easier. This is how you tell valuable relationships from unreliable ones.

Your’re “not that fun anymore” because there are actual things you have to worry about. You can’t switch your party mood on and off like a button. But no matter how hard it might be to meet new people and not hang out with the ones you are used to, you will meet other people eventually. And maybe not necessarily by drinking and partying if you are not in the mood for this. When so many people were pressuring me once why I don’t drink or stay late anymore I just found new friends in groups organizing mountain hikes. I didn’t know anyone on the events yet I wanted to do things no one would accompany me for, so I just went.

IN the mean time, you have important things to focus on your life – like finding a job.