I want friends...but I don't.

[beans]

I don't know if this will offend you or not but you kind of come off as hating everyone.

Well I certainly don't, I've just been through a lot of bad stuff over the last decade, and run into a lot of bad people who did me a lot of evil. I'm quite aware not everyone is like them, and there are people around me I care very much for.

Have you been raped? Framed up and then spent 20 years in prison? I'm just curious what you mean by evil.

Whatever it is, I think your way of thinking towards human beings is quite normal and natural.

The only difference between you and some other regular person is that they choose to put their past experiences behind them and start afresh with anyone new. I think you are losing out when you base your future on your past (with all your bad stuff that befell you).

I try not to assume anything of anyone until I am proven wrong so I always try to give people a chance to prove that they are nice or that they are just people with faults.


When you say others are bad and that you don't trust them (and I'm not trying to say they are not) but all you're saying is that you are super nice and perfect. I think if you can choose to accept other people's faults and not let it PREVENT you from trusting other people, you would have more friends.

Having more friends is not difficult, but maintaining the friendship is. Because having more friends is just taking an interest in people and not assuming the worst of them.

You can have dogs and isolate all you want, because at the end of the day, you know what makes you happy.

A lot of people want the cake without the icing. They want to be less lonely, they want to experience the joy of intimacy but they don't want to take risks or learn to trust. In some ways, we are all being a kid. We want stuff but we want it without consequences and risks - which is not what life is about at all.

The longer you live, you'll know that everything is a risk and you will risk your heart being broken with friends or with the opposite sex but to fully receive love, you'll need to go through hurts - sometimes more than once, usually, many times.


If you get tired after a while, then perhaps love and friendship and companionship was never really important to you at all and perhaps you'd have to settle for something less like what some people do on here which is just being alone with their books, games, hobbies, Internet, dogs, etc.

Nothing wrong with that. But to what extent that they are happy, I don't know, but I guess with some, it doesn't matter.

 

[LeaningIntoTheMuse]

I definitely have been used before. It's not a nice feeling.

In fact, I'm thinking about telling someone I don't want to talk to them anymore, since they only call when they need something from me. That is not what friendship should be about!

 

[haiwutzup]

real friends require history, you cant find them

i have a bare handful, and theyre as much family to me as anyone else is

for that 20%, i guess teh question is what are you doing in that 20%? are you pining for someone to go play tennis with or some other kind of activity partner? or are you up late at night wanting someone to share your personal thoughts with who will understand you?

the former is easily found by just about anyone with either a hobby or the balls to go out and try something and not give up right away if they are not an instant master. but the latter......heh....... i guess thats why a lot of us are on here

 

[TrailerTrish]

Have you been raped? Framed up and then spent 20 years in prison? I'm just curious what you mean by evil.
[/quote='beans]

You are engaging the the dishonest debating tactic of reductio ad absurdum, which is to inflate the other person's position to absurd proportions in order to turn it around on them.

The only reason I've not been raped was that I had a gun and drew it on two occasions backing off the would be assailant.

The fact is I was burglarized and ripped off for everything I'd worked over 20 years for, and the cops did nothing, even though they knew who did it, because he was a confidential informant giving them information about his meth ring.

After that I put the house on the market and moved in with a couple I thought were my friends, and they also ripped me off for most of what I had left, then resorted to some very treacherous tactics to try and cost me all they had not been able to steal.

It would be a very long post if I were to detail all that's been done to me over the last 8 years, especially when I lived in Alabama, where my monster landlord pressured me to be a hooker and pay the rent that way knowing I was making too little to live on, and the local animals were sexually harassing me both at work and at home.

I never said anything of the sort and you well know it. Here again you are being dishonest are reading into what I said that which I never said, and putting words in my mouth.

As for the rest of what you said I don't just assume the worst about everyone from the start, but I have learned to be alert to how they behave toward me, and not to be a naiive sucker when they start maneuvering for an advantage over me and seeking to manipulate me in sneaky ways to get something from me.

In the past I have taken the risks you talk about, trusting others without question, and that's what got me ripped off, used, and betrayed so many times over the years. I've learned some very expensive lessons from all that, and I'm not going to be so stupid again. After all I've been through I've developed very good instincts about who I can really trust, and who to watch out for.

You go on to say that having more friends is not difficult, but you know nothing of my situation, you are just being judgmental. Where I live there are very few opportunities to meet and mix with others, unless you go to bars. I choose not to go to bars for very good reasons.

I work very long hours, 12 hour shifts doing very hard work, and I don't have a lot of time for seeking out social contact in the first place, or the strength to do so after a grueling work week. Moreover people are really very insular here, and tend to have an icy wall up around themselves in public. They have their reasons for this, and I well know what they are, having been aggressively approached by several scammers and users since arriving here.

 

[Factotum]

I'm wondering if anyone can relate to this. I like my online contacts/friends and long distance friends but every time I make a friend IRL I find myself wishing that I had never courted the real life friendship to begin with. Real life friends are so time/energy consuming and I really like being alone and free to do as I please when I go out. 80% of the time I'm cool with not having friends but 20% of the time I wish I had a few. I don't know what to do because obviously friends don't hang around if you only feel like talking to them 20% of the time. I'm a very solitary person by nature but I still get lonely once in a while.

I feel the same way. Having a social life is so much work that sometimes I don't care to have one at all. So many of my hobbies are things that I can and prefer to do alone. Reading, writing, painting, etc. Hell, I even like going to the movies by myself. I suppose I wouldn't mind hanging out with people so much if I could find people who actually shared my interests, taste in movies, etc. Too often, I feel like spending time with others means one of two things:

1) I will force them to do something I like to do, but that they don't like (makes me feel like an *******)
2) They will force me to do something with them that they like to do, but that I don't like (makes me feel taken advantage of and my time wasted)

And that's pretty much it. Very rarely do I find people who share my interests AND want to spend time with me doing said shared interest. The last time I invited somebody out for a night, was to go see Bill Maher do standup. I felt okay asking him because I knew that he liked Bill Maher as much as I do, but I would have still gone by myself he had said he didn't want to go.

People: I could take them or leave them. Doesn't matter much to me anymore.

wow, you really nailed it.

 

[beautifulsorrow]

try to find friends that re like you, who treasure being alone, I guess they would'nt bother if you didn't call them for a long time and stuff like that. These are not as uncommon as it might seem, also those people usually turn out to be people as well, I find people like that are generally more original, smart, thoughtful and understading.

 

[ajdass1]

I can definitely relate. I like to think I'm a good friend, but the truth is that I just don't want to spend the time with people that it would require in order to become really close to them. I just don't want to. I don't want to go out at night drinking or socialising.

But I feel guilty about it. So when someone asks me to go out and do something I'll freeze up and say yes, because - I don't know, that's what they expect? It's so hard to say no. I feel like they wouldn't understand. And then I'll end up making some excuse and not going. It makes me feel like a villain, when really I think I'm just different.

A few months ago a friend was having her birthday party. I think she's a great person and I enjoy spending some time with her - not too much because she's a lot to handle - but I didn't want to go. Why? Because the party would inevitably involve lots of loud noise, and drinking, and there would be lots of drunk people there, and it would go on way too late, and if I went I would only want to stay a short while but then I'd feel guilty about leaving and probably stay longer than I'd like, and then I'd get all depressed and people would think I'm a party pooper. Either that or I would end up getting drunk, and I don't like myself when I'm drunk.

So I didn't go and ever since she's been giving me a hard time about it. Whenever she does I just turn off and don't really respond. It's wrong of me to not share this, but on the other hand I feel like she's kind of a self-centred person who might not understand.

One of the reasons I looked for a forum like this is because I don't seem to know anybody who's like me in this regard (for good reason, they're all at home lurking on loneliness forums). Well, I do, but he's on the other side of the world.

As for loneliness? I don't really want more friends. All I really want is a girlfriend and a few good friends who I sometimes spend time with. I don't think the quality of a friendship is necessarily linked to the amount of time you spend with a person. And I historically have never been able to get a girlfriend so that's where a lot of the loneliness comes from. That's a whole other topic.

 

[Dragonfriend]

I actually have no trouble making friends. I know how to talk, I know how to walk, and I know how to act. My friends range from both sides of the spectrum (good to neutral to bad in terms of influence). My only problem is that I quickly tire of them and I am sometimes filled by an intense hatred. I literary drop off the social map and have nothing to do with them anymore.

I do have my special friends though. Friends that are close to my heart. Those I do them the kindness of sparing them from my hate.

And yes, perhaps these emotions stem from past events. My childhood was the perfect recipe for misanthropy.

 

[warewolf95]

It may sound kind of selfish to some, but I feel the same - like, I love my friends IRL but its like I use them for when I dont feel like being lonely, if that makes any sense. Last summer, for instance, I didnt see a single friend of mine the entire summer entirely our of choice because I didnt feel like putting up with the hassle

 

[sentiententity]

It's as hard to find a compatible friend as it is a compatible woman.