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Having Friends?


OperationalWolf

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OperationalWolf

 

It's no denial that we've all had this connection with strangers that we have a conversation, to have fun with and label them as a friend or in some cases; Best Friends. People just do it because nobody wants to be in this ideal of loneliness that they have to face alone, friends are there to be with you & support you, etc.

 

However, I don't really give in the concept of just having friends because it puts me in some sort vulnerability; and I mean't in a way that I don't feel threatened but rather putting trust to people. So why though? Well, It started out in my childhood; I was out with some people I know and were in my school, we were out on the park and something happened to me. Honestly, I really don't vividly remember much -- but I remember getting up from the ground, touching my face and just noticed blood on it. Sadly, the people I know that were around me just looked terrified and they ran away from me.

 

It was at that moment that I felt .. abandoned -- and you this didn't end here. No. When I came back from school, the people I knew just blatantly ignored me and they just never spoke to me. I was just a kid back then and never understood it but I somehow knew they felt guilty about it. Socially, I never felt the same as I was as a happy kid and to this day in the Present. I just feel in differ as I was and don't really social with the other people in my High School. I just fake my personality and smiles because I never anything truly since that day.

 

You might ask ... Are you currently okay? To answer your question, I honestly don't even know. All I could say is that I'm just confused.

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J. van Deijck

some parts of this post are so weirdly relatable.

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I can oddly relate in some ways too. In high school, I acted bubbly and would talk about basic things, such as sports, food, weather, and events. I never really talked about anything on a personal level. The one time I did in my second semester senior year, my "friends" (which it's sad to say I called them friends) seemed jealous and probed at me. I said something, which then started a rumor that was 100% false. I'm a freshman in college currently and still wouldn't be accepted. So I still keep "the weather is great" or "did you hear about the traffic block" basic persona going.

Something I'd like to personally note: people seem to get offended if you introduce them as acquaintances, or even colleagues (if you work with them) to others rather then a "friend." So I still call people I converse with "friends." Even though the idea of a friend is different in my mind. In the end, I guess those who can't be trusted were never really friends to begin with. To me, trust is a privilege.

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J. van Deijck

I think in my case it was similar just in some parts.

I don't have any irl friends, except for one person who has enough patience to deal with me and he proves his love to me every day. I've never had that genuine irl friend before. maybe the reason is that I've never trusted anyone much enough to share my personal life with them. they all talked about basic things, too, and I was doing the same when needed, but at the same time I just couldn't relate to any of them at all. like, I've never had anything in common with them.

even now, when I think about the potential possibility of friendship with people who surround me, my brain is like "eww no, no way. you better run away from these people, you will never have anything in common with them".

I'm also not easy to call people 'friends'. I do have some friends here (they proved that they care), and that's it. it takes some time for me to develop bonds strong enough to be called 'friendship'. that's being said, I can forget/get rid of people from my life easily if they were just acquaintances. with friends, however, it's different. it's hard for me to get attached to someone, but once I do actually get attached, I'm lost. losing such person is almost equal to death for me.

I guess trust issues and low self-esteem are combined in me. I have had too many people who claimed to be my friends, but they never really were - they just wanted to hang out with me because I'm possibly beautiful and have an unique look, but once things were getting worse for me, I was suddenly being left alone. a real friendship doesn't look like that.

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drjohnhwatson

It's hard to put trust in others, especially if you've been burnt in the past--and at such a young age, like in your case, too.

 

I don't really trust a lot of people, either.  I've been told that I'm aloof and cold, which I think is odd because I don't feel that I am, but maybe they see me better than I see myself.  It was the same for me in that it started in childhood.  I was best friends with this girl, and we'd always sit together on the bus in elementary school because we lived near each other, we were best friends, etc.  Then a new girl came, and she sat with her some.  She legit worked out an as-equal-as-possible schedule where she'd sit with her half the week and me half the week.  Then she sat with her more and more and just stopped sitting with me and just stopped being my friend.  And I would go down to Florida every year round Thanksgiving to visit my grandparents who lived there for half the year, and one year I came back and my circle of friends had become friends with a new girl who had moved in whilst I was gone, and they froze me out!

This sort of thing happened all through my school years.  I'd make friends with people, and they'd find someone better to be friends with.  It got to the point where in high school, I'd be seated at this big round table that could hold six or eight people (can't remember now) and I'd be utterly alone at the table, or (possibly worse) people would sit on the opposite half of the table and pile up their stuff to ignore me.  Whenever I was a senior in high school, I decided to reach out to this girl who rode my bus and seemed...shy.  Nobody was really talking to her, and I noted she was in my math class and was equally ignored.  We struck up a fast friendship, and she ended up sitting with me on the bus-ride, before school, in math, at lunch--anywhere that we had free time.  It was kind of bittersweet because I knew our time was short--she was an exchange student from Vietnam and I graduated early--but it was better than both of us being alone.

 

Even now I have trouble making friends.  One particularly great time was at work where everyone called each other "family" and "BFFs", yet one day they were making plans directly in front of me for a girls' night of margaritas and movies and a sleepover.  They realised that I was not part of it, and one lamely offered "if you want..." but I knew they'd not want me there and they happily went back to the planning when I made up a story that I had plans already.  They'd been doing this every weekend!  All the adult women my age--save me!

 

Ah well.

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J. van Deijck
1 minute ago, drjohnhwatson said:

  I've been told that I'm aloof and cold

same, but mainly irl.

 

48 minutes ago, Only Afloat said:

To me, trust is a privilege.

definitely.

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drjohnhwatson
1 minute ago, [noize:injekktion] said:

same, but mainly irl.

 

definitely.

Yeah, same.  :huh:.  People online don't think I'm aloof or cold--generally.  I've heard I'm "hard to read" but...

 

I once had a co-worker ask me "have you cried?" and I was baffled like "do you mean...generally?  As in 'have I ever cried before'?" And she said yes and I was completely thrown.  I was like "Um...yes?" And she was like "OK.  Just wondering.  Because you come off as cold and heartless, but not in a bad way."

 

I was just the literal embodiment of "?!" over the entire conversation, HAHA.

 

:lol:.

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Man, people can be jerks/stupid. In terms of friendship, I've been confused about it too, but it seems that friendship means different things to different people. Some only want friends to hang out with, or "fair weather friends" but don't want the responsibility of being there when times are tough. Equally, people who mean well and will be there when times are tough, you have to be careful not to burden them too much, so they stay around. But they're the people who are real friends, the ones who will stay with you through the thick and thin. Hard to find, but I wish you all well in finding them. In the meantime, :cake:.

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After my experiences, I've lost all interest in forming friendships.

 

I was completely alone and bullied in highschool and no one ever seemed to care. It resulted in me feeling like I don't need anyone.

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2 minutes ago, drjohnhwatson said:

They realised that I was not part of it, and one lamely offered "if you want..." but I knew they'd not want me there and they happily went back to the planning when I made up a story that I had plans already.  They'd been doing this every weekend!  All the adult women my age--save me!

Wow, that's pretty bad.  :(  Their loss...I guess people that rude aren't worth befriending.  Still feels awful though.

 

My immediate, closest-in-age coworkers are married and male, so while they have become good buddies with each other outside of work, it's not something I can be part of.  Luckily we have a good office camaraderie, so I try to focus on that instead.

 

It's weird, but I've reached a point of life where even most of my online friends have grown distant....and, I don't mind (?!).  It's not that I don't want friends - I really want at least one close friend - but I've become ok with the way things are.  Maybe experience plays into that.  I think a lot of us grow up with the vision of a pure, long-lasting friendship, like a platonic Mr./Ms. Right.  I just think that's so rare, it's not fair to yourself to feel bad you haven't found it.  For me, I don't disparage that ideal, but I've come to attach less importance to it.

 

9 minutes ago, Demiheart said:

In the meantime, :cake:.

+1

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7 minutes ago, Demiheart said:

"fair weather friends" but don't want the responsibility of being there when times are tough. 

This was the majority at my high school.

 

Real friends who are there through thick and thin, and make time to talk are very rare to find in my opinion. Even more so if the friendship turns from year(s) to decade(s) One-sided friendships I notice also seem to be a common theme. Friendships also seem to be only "if" statements too, so I would personally never fully trust a friend nor feel the need to have friends.

 

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I had a 'friend' in elementary school who told me to become best friends I needed to do [insert activity]. It took me a sadly long time to learn that there would always be more [insert activity]s.  I never achieved best friend status.  With that person or anyone else.  After that incidence I always saw how people were trying to use me.  I kept trying to make friends but those friendships were all similarly one sided.  So I have no human friends.  However, I've found dogs are truly humans best friends :) So now I stick with four legged furry friends.

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Friends was something I never really tried to make, because of circumstances outside of my control. I ended up being content as a loner, and lived most of my life without people in my life. It wasn't until high school that I tried. Even then, I struggled to care about other people. I had my interests, and I stuck to them. 

 

When I was younger, I moved a lot. I was almost at a new school every year, and sometimes I moved in the middle of a year, or two to another state. 

1-2 grade was at 4 different schools.

3rd-6th was at a single school.

7th grade was in middle school, same town as the one above. 

8th grade started in the school above, but I was then kidnapped by my dad and ended up living with him 2 states away.

9th grade, I was taken back by my mother. Then went back to my old school. In the beginning of this grade, we were evicted from my home. We moved a state away. 

10th-12th was in the same high school. 

 

I was also bullied a lot for being poor, and I was hyper competitive with everyone. I knew I was really different than most people, but I also didn't care and was content with how I lived. As I got older though, I still don't have any real life friends. But I managed to make a lot of online ones. 

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I've had friends, but they are temporary fixtures in my life.  I don't get close to people.  I've always preferred my own company to that of other people.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had about this mindset for most of my life, stemming from traumatic childhood events, every jab at my trust pushed me further and further away from people. Every time anything happened I would hide more and more vulnerability until I decided that 'I would rather feel nothing at all, than pain' and slowly I got really bad mental fog, with severe depersonalizaiton. Earlier this year It had gotten so bad, that I literally tried to beat the fog out of my head, and soon after learned what DP was, over the next couple of weeks, constantly thinking and researching it, I had a single afternoon without DP. I literally cried of happiness for at least an hour, and spent the rest of the night just exploring how things felt. the next morning everything was back, which... well sucked. After a few more weeks I read a post that said meditation had cured it for them, and linked to a site that explained meditation without pseudo-science bullshit. I stared at a black dot on my ceiling and just listened to what my mind was saying, and basically understood that I had let my subconscious run my life, the rest of that day I was DP free. I had a week of mild off-and on again DP, before I had a self-therapy session, and it clicked that when I made the choice before to hide everything in fear of being hurt again was the reason for my DP. I said aloud to myself several times 'Id rather feel pain than nothing at all,' and, well, I haven't had any DP since then.

 

tldr:

 

Be careful not to fk yourself up with that mindset, it's not about avoiding pain, it's about learning to deal with it.

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  • 2 months later...

I can understand that, Most of the people who called themselves friends werent and frankly some did things I'd rather not write in a forum. These days I generally trust people as far as I can throw them unless they earn it and that takes a while and even then they may have trust but I'm not attached to them. They will be in a position of if they leave its fine It wont affect me because I wont let them get that close to me. 

Though in saying that I also do try and be my honest self with people and not have an act like I did during schooling when I was a teen. I just try and not get attached to people unless I know they are going to be staying in my life. I currently have I believe 3 of these people and theyve been in my life everyday for the past 4 years so they know everything and anything really. 

This mindset also makes making friends difficult because for me at least I want people i can be friends with and trust and get me and at the same time its nerving. 

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J. van Deijck
On 20/11/2017 at 1:14 AM, Wish Bear 🌠 said:

After my experiences, I've lost all interest in forming friendships.

same.

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I had friends / a friend, when I was younger.  No one really wants to know me.  I try to leave them alone because I don't want to seem like I think they want me around.  If I tried to befriend people, they'd probably think I'm a creep.

 

I was very shy when I started school.  At one point, I realised I didn't have much to say, so I couldn't talk to people, even if I wanted to.  I don't think there were any particular events that stopped me from making friends.  I felt unwanted / disgusting, through school, but I always thought it would change, some day.  Even a couple of years ago, I was optimistic.  There's no chance, now.  Nobody wants to know, and it's tiring, talking to people and sensing their contempt, or boredom, even.  For fuck sake, I'm bored too but I have the decency to pretend I'm not (I think I'm good at pretending to be sincere, anyway).  I am kind of getting the hang of talking to people but it's not much fun.

 

I sometimes try to be rude to people, so it looks like I have enough friends already and can afford to alienate people, but I'm not witty enough, and I'm puny so I'd probably lose the fight if someone stood up to me.  

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I don't think it's uncommon to realize that a lot of people never really fit into the "friend" category. Just as an acquaintance more often than not. Real friends tend to be a diamond in the rough. I was the happy weird kid in school. That changed pretty quickly considering I didn't fit the mold of countryside kids. That landed teasing and insults from both boys and girls and later on through highschool it turned into beatings from guys and behind-the-back gossip from the ladies.

 

I just stuck to myself and did my thing, but never retreated from people quite so much. I'm quick to cut them out of my life if need be, but I didn't let those past experiences imprison me now. I do what I please. People are people. As long as I know that I can't trust most of them for very far, and can accurately judge how far to place any notion of trust, I'm okay with that. I know things will likely always be a one way street for me. I'll be trying my damndest and the other person might not be. I think what's more discouraging to me is the fact that all of the singular friends I got close enough with to be considered friends are dead or gone now, and after the passing of the last one, I never again met anybody like any of them.

 

I haven't closed myself off despite having to go through with their losses. My door's always open but it seems like there's nobody around to go through it anymore. Or maybe I'm just too tired. I used to be much more active both on the internet and in life. But I don't quite seem to have the energy I did for making pals. Maybe it's caution too. Guess that's up to me to figure out.

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