Throw away account obviously but I’m sitting here, on a Friday night alone. I recently split off with my fiancee of 2 years, we were supposed to be wed in a few months. Shes off partying and living life up, and I’m happy for her. We still live together for the time being before our lease ends. This is exactly how my previous relationship ended. Ironic. She has a social circle to support her.
Well, throughout the course of 5 years, I have slowly burned many bridges of friends and over the course of 10 years, have destroyed many women’s perception of trust. The list goes on. My regret and guilt is an all time high.
On top of this, my family doesn’t really know the real me. I have such a hard time making connections with them and others at this point of my life.
I am seeking to rectify the entire situation by trying some therapeutic techniques. AMA.
How do you usually make friends?
I don’t know how to anymore. I am socially awkward and it’s difficult for me to unmask myself around others that I don’t fully trust. Once you get to know me, I’m fairly a huge chatterbox depending on the subject, otherwise, I just come off extremely aloof
I used to be the same There’s a dumb book but it really helped me with that problem. It’s called ‘how to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie. There free copies of it every and even audiobook on YouTube. It can’t hurt
I’ve read that book three times growing up at different ages. I still feel that I would have to essentially “mask” or fake my personality in order to truly be a “good” friend or be seen by most. I find that I automatically trend towards negativity and destruction in my life, but I realize I can change the trajectory of that at any given moment. That moment was a few days ago.
I used to feel the same fucking way. It still exhausts me and gives me anxiety to talk to people. Idk I still cancel on my friend’s more often than not and sometimes go over a year without talking to them. I think what’s important to understand is your not alone for feelings like this nor is it unatural. But the ‘mask’ makes it easier to be kind and friendly and people like that. The mask is a protection, it will come off with time, by then I’m sure most people would be excited to talk to your charterbox self.
Idk how burt your bridges are but your old friends certainly still think about you and wonder how you are. If they are good people and you showed them you’re trying to change, I hope some may be willing to welcome you back like the prodigal son.
That’s sort of how it started with my path. I was constantly being spammed with invites to outings, or messages about checking up on each other etc, just friendly things. I decided it was all too overwhelming and didn’t want to maintain those relationships due to being overwhelmed by it all at once. I am now paying the price. At least for the time being.
That’s reassuring, thank you stranger. It’s difficult for me to put into words how awful it feels to fake myself around others but I rather just be my authentic self and in doing so, I will attract the right crowd soon enough.
It’s funny you mention that, because I called all of them, and left a message on voicemail. It’s been a full day since that happened. No response. Not sure if I’m blocked but hey, I tried. I’m unsure if I should reach out again, but I respect myself too much and realize that the world is filled with other friends-to-be
Hypothetically, if I invited you to my social circle, would you accept the invitation?
Let me make a fake discord before going further. What would the benefits of the social circle be? Just curious about your perspective.
A place to resort to if you ever want to refresh yourself on what a group of people who aren’t against you for the sake of it feels like. I’m grateful to have an island of kind, reasonable, and understanding people to call my social circle.
Shit, that actually sounds nice but my initial response is “What do you have to gain?” In case it’s not obvious, I’m not a very open person in the way that would develop intimacy between myself and others. I try to keep things distant, unless you are a partner of mine, then I try to grow closer, but making friends is hard for me.
Why do you define your social circle with those specific words and what have they done for you? Or am I looking at it wrong?
For most of my life, me and a vast majority of the world have seemed to not see eye to eye. Not for any one reason; sometimes it boils down to peoples’ outlook on my past and their expectations of the mindset behind it, sometimes I can say it’s been based on prejudices (from my ethnic makeup to my medical condition to my spiritual traditions to my sexual orientation, I am not a great combo socially), and then there comes a point where I notice people dislike me simply because others do, so there’s also a self-fueling element I guess, where hate literally breeds hate. I also get flak for how I handle this kind of thing no matter what I do, such as bringing up that people in charge typically don’t see issue with me (tends to be a trigger when populists are in the equation), or ironically trying to make lemonade out of the lemons life gives me (for example, someone once accused me and another disliked person of being the same anonymous author, so one of us thought “well if we’re seen as the same person, people won’t mind if we make apologies on each others’ behalf for things”, only to be told after the first apology that “we don’t consider it genuine unless it’s done by the culprit”).
As a result of this, there’s a very specific state of mind my presence seems to appeal to (again, ironically including people who are actually in charge except when a punishment towards me cannot affect my whole experience in a setting, which has kept me from being gaslighted into losing my ethical agency by people who, in response, erupt into more anger at the idea I’m “appealing to authority” by using this to dismiss claims about my state of mind while they do so to the masses). I have, over time, slowly accumulated people who would be the opposite of this, and looking back, I couldn’t feel more tranquil at the crowd of people who I’ve come to know as my own, with a hospitality and mindfulness that makes even the nicest nations look slightly apathetic. As a result, if I find someone who fits, I am more than happy to invite them. The crowd gets a new member, and the new member gets a crowd. If you are afraid, I understand, but the offer is there.
How strange, I see myself in the same type of way. It’s a me vs the world mentality but then I learned that it’s really me vs me. This world isn’t so friendly, it truly isnt. It’s so cruel and it will try it’s hardest to make sure you don’t succeed but its your mentality that will let you get farther than most in this life.
You have a very unique look on life. What is your background and age if you don’t mind sharing.
I mean yeah, one’s mindset may help, but you’re still in a world that dislikes things about you that you can’t change and which has no problem expressing that by radical means. I certainly wouldn’t say that if anyone were to go through even certain parts of what I’ve gone through, that it’s their duty to shrug it off. Sanity and insanity exist. At a certain point, I have taken up the habit of going full Marcus Aurelius and jotting down what many might call my evolving thought processes in response to each new development and evolving my approach, but, reminding many of us what kind of people I’m dealing with, they often say I’m being “too pragmatic” when I do so, as in I’m not worshipping the forms of intuition that serve them (and based on that conclude I must be wrong). And it should be noted that I’ve never been implying I mentally separate people between “me” and “them” when I describe my experiences, I’ve only ever been putting forth what the experiences themselves are like, with the actual chain reactions and thought processes that lead up to different parts of them being anything but simple, except in the case of the fact authorities typically side with me (even though they sometimes have to fake otherwise).
Not sure what you mean when you ask about background, but I’m a mixed race (part Scottish and part Pacific Islander) dual faith woman whose family has Kiwi origins that show up in our voices but also roots in Vermont, who has been known to attend an outsourced New-York-based grade school, and who is just old enough that she could finish her Human Services courses if she wanted to while getting a remotely sufficient diploma to leave with.