I’ve been so incredibly lonely. I never made any real friendships in school. I don’t have anyone I can speak to or ask to hang out. I See people on Instagram, people I know through work, and I see their social lives and hanging out with people and family and I’m envious.
I’ve suffered with mental health issues for as long as I can remember. It’s not an excuse, but I feel like it pushes people away and makes me seem undesirable to have in anyone’s life.
I tried making friends through work but it never becomes anything genuine. Everyone makes plans to hang out but I’m never invited. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m not a mean person, I’m always kind and friendly to the people I meet, so I don’t know why.
I’ve been on dates from Tinder but they never amount to anything. I’ve tried joining Bumble to make friends and it’s goes well to begin with but they stop replying and it fizzled out once they find other friends on there.
I’ve tried being more social but again it doesn’t amount to anything. I feel like so many people already have their lives sorted out with enough friends that they don’t really need me. Christmas and new year is lonely. I go to bed and wake up and it’s another day.
I’m ashamed. Come Monday when I’m at work, the general chit chat of “how was your weekend” is embarras because I did nothing over the weekend. I stayed home and read a book or watched Netflix. I’ve lied about having friends because I am that embarrassed. Then when they talk about their fun weekends going out with friends i try my hardest to not feel sad, but afterwards I have to hide my face because I end up close to tears.
I don’t know what to do. I would be happy with one close friend who I could hang out with and watch movies and talk to. I feel in despair. I’m so incredibly lonely.
What can I do? How do I find genuine friends that last?
3 comments
You must change.
I’m not expert in this but I think that you have to start describing yourself and then who do you want to be. If you want to be more sociable write a goal of being more sociable and what do yo need to reach it, write it every day. It’s looks like you have alredy trying to reach this goal but I’m sure that there is something you can do better.
Sometimes people don’t click with us and there isn’t nothing we can do to get on well with them, and other times if you are woman hanging out with men maybe they only want sex. But if you think you’re doing something bad try to change.
Personally I recommend you to stop lies, in my country is a saying “you’ll catch a liar before you catch a lame”, and you are going to feel a lot more ashamed when they catch you lying. Will you write in self description “I want to be a liar”?
Join interest-based communities. Make a list of your interests, another of your potential interests, include also exercise and volunteering. Then go find groups related to this via [meetup.com](https://meetup.com), websearches, and asking in local groups (ie FB). Get really involved and stick with it. Stage 2 is to exchange contact info with people chat/get together with them off the calendar of events.
Also, sit down and brainstorm outings you can do on your own so you at least have something to talk about. It’s not essential, but it is slightly good for you anyway.
Rather than watching streaming at home, get into reading books, esp those you could talk about with others. Library will make it affordable. (Book club is an option too.) Choose a book with a conversation-starter title on the cover, and once a week (or whatever suits your schedule) go to your favorite coffee shop or something similar, sit there and read for an hour.
Don’t really have an answer. I think there should be a dating/friendship app for people like us. I’m guessing people with the same problems generally have a pretty similar view of things and likely would get along pretty well.