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July 31, 2018 at 10:23 pm #219793
FriendlyParticipantI’ve been mulling over my friendships lately.
First it was an evaluation of the people I choose as friends-people who are kind and good people, but who I don’t really feel a true kinship with.
Then it was realizing how I took my friendships for granted, assuming connections were meaningless when I: 1. Deleted all high school contacts from FB about 10 years ago because I didn’t want to know what was going on in my hometown, and 2. Deleted FB for good about 5 years ago, therefore losing constant contact with my true friends (good close group of friends from college remained in touch with each other on FB).
And now it’s a combination of things that have made me realize that I no longer have anyone that I feel like is really a friend. For some reason everyone I’ve been in touch with via text (texting daily,weekly or occasionally) has stopped responding. Even my good college friends don’t bother to reply (with the exception of one). What really kills me is that one will usually send a group text, and others will reply right away, but if I reply, nothing.
About a year ago, I decided to try and be better with keeping in touch with these old college friends. I sent birthday and Christmas packages and often texted. From a couple of them, I wouldn’t even get acknowledgement that they had gotten anything. And I never asked about it because I thought that would seem tacky. Now in the context of it all, I’m wondering what’s going on and if I still belong with this group. We see each other annually and they’ve always been that group that I felt I could rely on. Not so much anymore.
Weve been friends for 24 years. Is this what happens in your early 40’s? Only one in the group has kids, so I don’t think family is an issue.
Ive been feeling down about this for months and thought that I need to fight my usual response of just saying screw em and thinking it’s just a phase. But now I’m thinking that maybe this is just the way it is. I’m just not supposed to have friends.
Ironically, I’m very social and love being with others. I’m also very independent, but I know that I would suffer without friends as I age. I think of lonely single people who talk the ears off of any stranger within arms reach because they have no one and I imagine that’ll be me someday.
I don’t know if this is my karma or what and if I should just accept it as it is, or if friendships are just like this. (I don’t know a single soul on the planet who has this issue).
July 31, 2018 at 11:52 pm #219809
PrashParticipantDear Friendly,
You mentioned about your contacts on social media. How about the people you interact with on a daily basis? How is your interaction with them?
August 1, 2018 at 4:03 am #219833
AnonymousGuestDear Friendly:
You wrote, “I don’t know if… friendships are just like this”- did you experience a friendship that was not like this before, a close, intimate two way communication about feelings, motivations, dreams that didn’t come true, hurts, hopes and such?
anita
August 1, 2018 at 10:36 am #219893FriendlyParticipantHi Prash,
I’d consider myself a friendly person who can get along with everyone. In college I was a social-butterfly and have probably become less so in the past couple decades, but still like people. I happen to live in a very family oriented community where people usually only socialize with their kids and other people who have kids, so I don’t really have a social life, given that I don’t have kids.
I have moved every few years and always seem to have to socialize with people much younger than I, who also don’t have kids. But those relationships haven’t been able to endure long-distance.
Maybe I just feel like I’m in the same social mindset that I was when I was younger and everyone else has moved on to other things?
My main concern is my friendship with my core college friends, which seems to be non-existent these days. We are all meeting up next month and I’m wondering if I should even bother to go.
August 1, 2018 at 10:43 am #219895FriendlyParticipantDear Anita,
I’d have to say, yes, that I have shared that with all my friends. I tend to have more good close friends than acquaintances. One on one I’d consider myself a great supportive friend and I had a good number of friends who I believed I could count on if I needed something. I think I always relied on my core group of college friends (3 others) to always be there for me.
We are all supposed to meet up in the town one of my friends lives in next month. I know that I’m still friends with them, but I guess I feel like I could just not show and no one would really care – well, I’m better friends with one and I know she would care. I’ve come to that conclusion based on my thoughts that I would reply to text messages from one of them if I hadn’t been in contact via social media to stay caught up. Yet they don’t, so either their priorities on friends is just different than mine, or I’m no longer of concern to them. I battle between these thoughts and trying not to take things personally.
August 1, 2018 at 10:57 am #219905AnonymousGuestDear Friendly:
I need to be away from the computer for the next fifteen hours or so, will read and reply to your recent post when I am back.
anita
August 1, 2018 at 2:07 pm #219925FriendlyParticipantDear Amita,
Oh my goodness, you are too kind. Thank you for your compassion and thoughtfulness and your willingness to help and share perspective.
August 1, 2018 at 8:29 pm #219933PrashParticipantDear Friendly,
I can relate to some aspects of what you are going through.
You mentioned about being a social butterfly, then some thing seems to have changed as you mentioned about taking friendships as granted, about connections being meaningless and not wanting to know what is going on in your hometown.
Looking at what has changed may help you in gaining perspective about the seeming lack of responsiveness. Maybe your friends don’t seem you in the same way they used to see you before.
Your friends may also look at what seems to them as inconsistencies in your actions – out of touch for a period and then a period of texting and sending gifts.
Hope to read from you.
August 2, 2018 at 12:52 am #219977FriendlyParticipantDear Prash,
Thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts.
What you wrote does make sense. I can definitely see the inconsistencies. I guess I can understand how that could create a change in how friends view me. I’ve never been great at keeping in touch – at least not with calls and letters or email. But I’m great with text :). I also think my good friends would understand that I’m now more available to communicate now that I’m living in the same country and no longer killing myself doing doctorate program. I’ve even gone to visit all of them individually. I think the biggest change has been this past year. And that’s a change in my self-having trouble moving ahead into my profession and subsequently feeling a lack in self confidence. (I often wonder how my self-esteem has been on downward spiral since high school!). I think maybe this could tie in with everything I’m experiencing in friendships. I need their validation now more than ever, but due to timing or whatever, it’s just not as important to them in their lives?
I apologize that I keep adding in additional thoughts rambling through my head.
I’m wondering if things have changed and I’m no longer important to them, if I actually try to hold on to the friendships or just let them go.
August 2, 2018 at 2:07 am #219979PrashParticipantDear Friendly,
Thank you for your thoughts.
Have you communicated any of these to them? About your troubles in your profession.
Continue to be available to them. Let go of expectations, however. Keep the focus on your self, on what you need to build your self esteem. How they perceive you and what is on their mind is, I feel, not totally in your hands. Look for other friendships, even if you feel depth is not possible
When you are in this phase with a lack in self confidence, I also feel that letting them go is not advisable as any negativity can affect our perception.
Take care.
August 2, 2018 at 5:50 am #219993AnonymousGuestDear Friendly:
You are welcome. I am re-writing some of your share (it helps me process information when I do that): you attended college more than twenty years ago, graduated in your twenties. You proceeded to do graduate school and a doctorate program, in a different country from where you grew up in and attended college. You worked very hard at your doctorate program.
In your thirties (living in a different country, doing your doctorate?), you deleted all your high school contacts from FB because you didn’t want to know what was going on in your hometown. In your late thirties you deleted FB for good, losing contact with friend except for three from college, for the most part communicating with them occasionally via texting.
You are now in your early forties, with a PhD, living again in the country where you grew up and attended college. You are having “trouble moving ahead into (your) profession”.
My understanding is that in the last year you’ve been feeling unhappy, not seeing the fruits of your hard work at school, particularly the hard work you did in your doctorate program. You live in a family oriented place (your hometown?) where parents socialize with other parents and you are single, therefore lacking socialization. You are afraid of getting old-and-lonely, being one of those “lonely single people who talk the ears off of any stranger within arms reach because they have no one”.
In your loneliness you reached out to the three college friends, after a couple of decades of relative distance in frequency and quality of communication. Two of them haven’t responded but one did.
You wrote, “I need their validation now more than ever… it’s just not as important to them in their lives?”
My input: one side issue is what to do regarding the group of three friends from college, one of whom is still your friend, two are acquaintances. My suggestion is to see the two as just that, acquaintances, not more than that, and one as a friend.
The main issue is your lack of satisfaction with your life overall, professionally and otherwise. I think you are wondering about your importance, or significance, if it is not in your profession where you are not getting ahead, and it is not in a unit of family (husband, children) and not in friends from high school, or college, then where is your significance, where do you matter, to whom do you matter.
Am I understanding correctly?
anita
August 6, 2018 at 5:17 pm #220529FriendlyParticipantDear Prash,
You brought up many good points; thank you again for your help and supportive discussion.
I would not feel comfortable bringing it up – I don’t think I could ever be this vulnerable with friends I don’t get to see often. And unless we’re together at our annual meeting, they don’t really check in with me. At least they haven’t lately. As I was thinking about this, I realized that it’s really just one friend who’s been giving me the cold shoulder. Her father died earlier this year and I know she’s had some emotional burden. Although I do feel that may have something to do with it, it’s hard for me because she has obviously not ignored our other friends. I decided to suck it up and text her again today, despite her non-response the past couple of texts. She responded very technically, answering my question, but not inquiring about my plans. When I replied with what I was thinking she didn’t respond. I’m absolutely sure now that something has changed in our friendship and that she doesn’t value mine. I do remember one of our mutual friends saying the same thing a couple years ago jokingly and in passing, that she thought this friend didn’t like her anymore. Maybe she’s just got her own issues?
I will take all your great advice to heart and practice it. Look for new friendships and do more to build myself up without others and not write off friends I don’t feel are friends at this vulnerable time.
I’ve been thinking about neuroplasticity and whether I could work – via meditation, self-care, journaling to provide myself with the emotional comforts that social connections provide. Whether that same area of the brain could be activated via self-compassion. I guess aside from my feelings of sadness about losing friends/acquaintances is a fear that the brain changes that rejection creates will change me in a negative way. I don’t want to become bitter and closed-off, the way I responded to rejection as a teenager….
Thank you again for listening! 🙂
August 6, 2018 at 5:20 pm #220531FriendlyParticipantHi Anita,
Yes, I think you boiled it all down very succinctly. Thank you for re-writing and processing that. I helps me, as well to see it processed that way.
So yes, I guess deep down, I wonder what is my significance? And why do I feel like the only one in the world who has this problem?
August 6, 2018 at 6:40 pm #220539PrashParticipantDear Friendly,
Nice to read from you again. Feels good to note the optimism in your words.
Regarding the fear about brain changes that rejection creates, changing the meaning of what a rejection means can possibly direct the changes in the brain. I believe you have already started doing that. Despite the rejection that you faced from your friend, you communicated with her. And the rejection was seen as something about your friend and not about you.
Journalling, self care, mindfulness and meditation will all give you the tools in making the changes that you desire not only preventing you from becoming better and closed off but helping you blossom back in to the social butterfly that you were.
Take care.
August 7, 2018 at 8:05 am #220591AnonymousGuestDear Friendly:
You are welcome. Of course you are not “the only one in the world who has this problem” whether by “this problem” you mean wondering about your significance or feeling “Apparently Friendless”.
The two are connected. As the social animals that we are, humans, we do find our significance in the connection with others. We are lonely without adequate connections, at least one satisfying relationship with another human being.
anita
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