Hi Susan, your story sounds so familiar, exactly the same thing has happened to me, so I feel your pain.  I am very happily married to a lovely man who loves me to bits and we have 3 great kids.  However,  I have been dropped/ghosted by friends in the past and have absolutely no idea why.  This has really hurt and it seems to happen to all my friendships eventually.  I think I must be really boring or something!  As a result, I definitely put walls up around me to protect myself from further hurt and don’t take any risks like initiating a friendships.  Now I just sit back and wait for people to approach me, but this doesn’t happen. I find that most people my age (late 50’s) already have their friendship groups and don’t actually want or need to make new friends – well that’s what I tell myself!  I am friendly and consider myself to me a kind person and I have never had cross words with any of my friends or acquaintances.   I have 2-3 women friends/acquaintances but no one close.  My self esteem is battered and I feel resigned to not having deep friendships with anyone (Other than my husband).  I have felt my whole life that I am lacking in some way and that “people don’t like me”.

A suggestion I heard recently was that I just need to find my tribe and they are out there!  so I am going to stop trying to make friends and start working on myself and do things that I enjoy and take up some new hobbies.  Hopefully there will be some like minded people out there and maybe a new friendship or two.