Im 18 yo male and i recently lost all the people i considered my friends, i want to know what you guys do to make friends irl and have an interesting conversation, i want to make friends in my own city. First i think i should start talking about the problems that brought me here: well i am really bad at talking to the point i can only say simple words with other people, second is the fact that i dont really know what a friendship is nor anything more than that, i know that i had “friends” but i never felt like they really knew me or they knew me too so i consider them acquaintances, i think that all i want is to know someone actually cares about me and is there to help me, also i trust men less than i trust women so think that i would communicate worse with them so i need help with that too, another thing is that i cant keep a “friendship” longer than a few weeks because of my communication issues, and finally i am very clueless about things so i hope anyone here could help me with that also if you know how i can work on myself both mentally and physically i would thank you for help on that too im trying to self improve too
2 comments
Well I’m kind of in the same boat, as another 18yo male. I think making sure you don’t fake your emotions is important, cause 1. People can notice inauthentic emotions easily and 2. It’s not a good thing to nullify how you feel about something/someone, even if you think it’s weird or no one else would feel that way.
Hey there, I’ve been on the same boat 6 months ago and I can relate with most of what you feel so hopefully this helps.
I don’t how you lost you group of people; personally it came to a moment of realisation that the bad apples of the tree weren’t going to fall anytime soon, so I cut my own branches before the tree went downhill (it did later). So first and foremost, is yours was a similar case, don’t beat yourself because of it. Sometimes is better to let go.
Simple words often are better. It really all depends on the person but believe me, listening to someone who uses simple words is 1000% times better than people who try to be pretentious for… reasons? Two-masked persons always use complicated words to justify whatever goes through their head, so simple words are just a demonstration that you don’t desperately need to impress anyone for selfish reasons.
Yeah, the definition of friendship really depends on what meaning one gives to it, but generally speaking a genuine friendship is when both persons have a similar opinion about the other and they feel comfortable and close within it. If you feel they were more like acquaintances there’s nothing wrong with it. Now, if you lost your acquaintances, it’s moment to first find more acquaintances and then begin an organic friendship.
I felt those feelings of distance too. In my case it was because I always lived with the mask of class-clown to hide the scars of who I really was. That stopped when I could open myself to the other and tell them my problems, fears and that nasty stuff. Don’t get high expectations tho, and don’t do this quickly, just let it be something natural and don’t pressure yourself to be always 100% an open book.
Uff the men and women communication difficulties are awful, but at the end of the day it depends on several things. First is trauma, and that solution is a therapist who can help you. If it’s a thing of just gender there will always be some thing that each gender tend to do more than the other, but the only solution I can think of is meeting lots of, men in you case, from different places. Men are men, but a football fan is way too different from an anime fan, for example. And this goes by hand with the problem of meeting new people: find people with same interests. Look for sports activities if you’re a person who likes doing that, join a discord server if you’re a gamer and join a tai-chi class in the park if you want to be friends with fit grandmas. Ngl, I haven’t been through this yet but that’s the only advice I’ve seen that makes sense.
For the rest it really depends on what you objectives are. As I said before, a therapist/psychologist is one of the best thing to do, but you can also go on your own. Look for what kind of body you want and research some healthy exercises, try new hobbies were you can vent if you feel like practicing before eventing to their people, that kind of stuff.
Hope this helps <3