Making friends...

[Sugarbear]

I don't make friends very well.

Actually, I don't currently have any friends, other than my husband. I have one friend I've known since high school but we only chat through emails, and I rarely see her as we live far apart.

I had aquantances during school and work, but never anyone I connected with or liked enough to try and get to know better. It is actually a miracle that I even met and fell in love with my husband, since he is almost the same way... but he has people he works with that he does things with every once in a while.

I've tried going to classes and taking up hobbies to meet people, but I never do.

Most of it is my fault. I am very negative, and dislike most of the people I meet because I judge them too shallow, annoying, unintelligent, etc... I don't know if I got this harsh judgemental quality from my mom (an N who is also a hermit). I always feel awkward in social situations, and am scared of doing something or saying something that will "blow my cover" and then everyone will realize... I don't know what.... I feel like I am faking a nicey-nice personality so that no one really ever gets to know the "real" me.

I can't honestly tell why I am this way.

Strangely, I am not uncomfortable or hide things from my husband - he knows and loves the "real" me.

I feel like I am missing something sometimes. I think it would be nice to have a friend to call up or go shopping with or meet for lunch.

Up until recently, that "girlfriend" was my mother. She would probably have been very upset if I actually had friends, because she felt that we were all each other needed. One of the things that started to open my eyes to how disfunctional she (and our relationship) was, was when I met, dated and married my husband.

Most of the time I don't want the effort of keeping up a friendship. I enjoy being solitary- I read, do artwork, or watch tv or garden.

Is this inability/indifference to maintaining a friendship an offshoot of being in an engulfing relationship with a N mother, or something deeper?

Anybody else in the same boat or have insights?

[movinon]

Sugarbear -

Actually, I used to dislike women altogether...didn't trust them at all.  That came form my mom and dad's "stuff" around women.  Dada was a HUGE chauvanist and had affairs and would be very vocal to everyone what he wanted to do w/ a good-looking women when he saw her.  Mom HATED any woman that was not fat and ugly.

I was taught very well that women were not to be trusted.  I learned also that men were not to be trusted.  See where that left me?  Screwed!!!!!!!!!!!

Two years ago I did some intensive work on learning how to create intimacy w/ women and THANK GOD.  I was missing out on so much!!!!

Where do you think your inability (lack of desire?) about making and keeping friends comes from?

Movinon

[Sugarbear]

Where do you think your inability (lack of desire?) about making and keeping friends comes from?

That's just it... I don't know for sure.

I could point to the fact that my whole family has no social skills and never went "out" with friends, or the fact that as a child from the age of 7-15, my mother (who I lived with) moved frequently, so I was in around 6-7 different schools and always the "new kid" and grew afraid of making friends because of that. Or the fact that I gained a large amount of weight when puberty hit and I felt huge and awkward and withdrew because of that... along with the fact that as an adult, I had a mother that wanted to take up most if not all of my free time...

Gee, there's lots of possibles there if I really stopped to think about it...

[movinon]

Keep thinking about it.  Awareness is the first step.  Do you see a counselor?  Is this something you want to change?

Movinon

[Hopalong]

Hey Bear,
My childhood hurt that wasn't from my brother (and NMom, just indirectly through her personality)...came from my female peers. I was hounded, tormented, loathed throughout school. In college I first found that women actually liked me.

But a good even deeper connection with women happened when I went to a general-themed women's support group, they called it "Women in Change." (Who isn't?) So I met a lot of different women with very different stories, and because it was led and structured to teach us to give each other deep listening, I found myself moved.

Once moved, I could care. Once I could care, I could befriend.

That's how it worked for me.

Hope you find a way out of your isolation. Some women can be shallow, petty, and competive. Women friends can be the most amazing support, challenge, inspiration and comfort. My best friends have come from groups like that, where we came intentionally to get to deeper understandings, and where we learned that we each mattered, equally. It was way better than "social" to get me past my leftover fears of women. But over time, it also led to some lifetime friends with whom I can do the simple, fun things too.

That help?
You deserve friends. I bet MovinOn's group thingie would be amazing for you.

Hops

[pennyplant]

Have been lurking here for a couple of weeks.  This topic is very relevant for me lately.  Have thought about it a lot for a long time.

People who make friends easily are very lucky.  I think there are hundreds of things that go into making real friends and keeping them.  In my family I think one major stumbling block, in each generation, has been emotional illness of at least one family member.  It is a burden and a distraction the way moving a lot or having a physical ailment is.  My grandmother suffered from depression, my sister from I don't know what, maybe narcissism, my father believed he had Asperger's, I have had depression, my son has chronic anxiety disorder and panic attacks.  Most of us have or have had issues with making and keeping friends.

This issue of friendship is critical to me right now.  I have had good friends in my life but it seems like it just happened.  I was unaware of actually doing something to make friends.  Through circumstances, like moving a lot, illnesses, working odd hours, and this lack of knowing "how", I don't really have anyone anymore to just call up and do things with.  It's lonely.  It makes me feel "less than".

Where I work it is almost like a social laboratory and I pay attention to how people get along or bond with certain people.  These are things that maybe people with less obstacles growing up just learned as they went along.  I guess I didn't learn these things very well.  Always under stress at home having to cater to a demanding and unreasonable sister, parents who were young and immature and selfish (and that Asperger's thing was probably there all along) made it pretty hard for me to feel it was okay to just be myself and learn about and enjoy easy friendships.  So many things were working against me all the time.  It is amazing that I have actually had several close friends every so often over the years.

Anyway, where I work there are about 35 people with all kinds of outlooks and problems and alliances.  It is like a laboratory to me.  Without the pressures of making my way through grade school and the playground.  It's just work.  If I'm not "popular" there it doesn't really matter in the end.  My husband thinks I'm great and so do my sons.  So, I'm taking my time and really trying to learn some things.

In fact, today I felt confident enough to call an old friend to see if we can have lunch.  Naturally she wasn't home and is on her way to Florida for a week!  But I was pleased that I did it.  Maybe we'll really get together for that lunch.

Really I could write a book about what goes into being able to have and keep friends.

Pennyplant

[Hopalong]

Pennyplant, what a neat name. (I'm so lazy you'll become PP in no time flat, not to be confused with other outstanding P's around here...)

Just want to say please write that book, I'll buy it!

And warm welcome.

Hopalong

[pennyplant]

Thank you, this is a very helpful place.

PP

[movinon]

Hops - I did the same kind of work - you put it so eloquently.

Not until I got into the same space with other women and heard their stories and witnessed their pain did I understand that we were so alike.  I began to understand and connect with my whole gender.

Like Mum said, I consider my self a warrior for women now.

Movinon

[jordanspeeps]

hey sugarbear,

a little developmental psycho-babble i picked up in a nursing class:

by toddler-hood children have developed three basic personality types when it comes to social interaction:

avoidant, ambivalent, and attached.

the attached toddler:  when it's time for mommy to leave him in a room alone with other toddlers, the attached baby shows signs of great distress and has to be pried, practically from the hands of his mother in order for her to leave the room.  once mom is gone, he is still under great stress and when she returns he becomes calm again.

the avoidant toddler:  when it's time for mommy to leave the room, this toddler allows her to go without obvious distress.  once she is gone, he shows distress (he misses her) but avoids the group as well.  upon her return, he ignores/avoid her presence in defiance for her leaving.

the ambivalent toddler: when it's time for mommy to leave, he experiences some distress, but once she is gone, he takes to the group and interacts with the others.  when mom returns, he is responsive to her.

i'm not sure if we are hard-wired for this or if we learn this from our parents, (probably some of both). and i don't think this toddlerhood pattern is consistently true for the child throughout his life.

Personally, I was an ambivalent personality until I met my husband.  I figured out that my parents were "off" when I was in jr. high school.  So, in order to avoid them, I became engulfed in social/ extra-curricular activities at school.  Anything to stay away from them, I attended a plethora of summer enrichment programs.  Despite living an extremely sheltered life up until high school, I had become quite the social butterfly by 10th grade.  I was class president twice, nominated for Most Popular and was the prom queen.  In college, more of the same.  I worked really hard at maintaining my friendships and learned many of the caveats of keeping people happy.  I didn't just have one group of friends, or a major clique.  I was a floating member of many, many cliques from the athletes to the pretty girls to the nerds.  I pledged a sorority and tacked on about 100,000 more "friends."  

Then I met my husband.  And my friends, when I run into them now, all say, "Gosh, we thought you fell of the face of the earth!"  I have one best friend, we met when we were five years, and she witnessed the entirety of my family's abuse. We don't speak/see each other often, but I know I can call her anytime and she will listen, encourage, and love me.   But other than her, my husband, and my daughter, I don't feel I "need" to maintain other friendships, anymore. It's a lot of work and there's so many opportunities for something to "come between" you and your loved ones.  

Besides, sugarbear, you sound as though your life is fulfilling for you, you are creative, you garden.  You sound like a peaceful, reflective soul.  Your life sounds like the one I'm striving for.  Best of luck to you.

Tiffany

[pennyplant]

Bean, two things you've said struck me.  All my life I've had the problem of severed friendships.  Someone gets mad and then it is all over with.  I'm not sure yet but it seems like my emotions get out of control and if my emotions could settle down quicker then it might be easier to approach the person and calmly try to get on with the friendship again.

I mentioned somewhere else that where I work is like a social laboratory and I'm seeing ways to be that I never saw before and am just starting to get a handle on.  For example, a couple of co-workers will argue or out and out fight, yelling at each other and saying insults.  By the end of the day they can be laughing together and joking and it seems to have been let go of already.  How do people do that?!?!?  It seems like it might be the emotions are somehow not as overwhelming to them as they are to me.  It was just a fight, just venting, not (as I usually comclude) a judgment of one person against another, not a turning point after which nothing can ever be the same again.  That for me was a real eye-opening idea.

The other thing is working with people a generation or two older.  I have good friends who are in their 70s.  I'm in my 40s.  They have seen a lot, understand a lot about hardships and how to get along with people in a wise way.  They appreciate that I like them and are always happy to see me.  They will talk about more meaningful things and are less caught up in the rat race and shopping, etc.  Probably these are people I have a lot in common with anyway, but it does seem to me that the perspective their age gives them, appeals to me as someone who needs to cut through to what is crucial in friendships, the give and take, and mutual appreciation.  Some of the people I know who are my age are kind of self-centered, but they need to be, they have the same issues I have in many ways, still working through what their lives mean to them, still all tangled up in work and free-time issues, and children and parents.  People in their 70s are free of a lot of the complications in life.  They have other complications, but still, it seems like life is more genuine for them and that is a good thing in a friend.

PP

[marydunne]

You know, the older I get (I'm 38), the more I think that only really GOOD friends are worth the effort.

I had more friends in my younger days but to be honest, most of them weren't such great people.  They were immature, selfish, users, negative, critical, controlling and so on.  And when they weren't being those things, they weren't much fun either.  Looking back, they really did not have much to offer.

These days, I am very selective about how I spend my time and who I spend it with.  I could have more friends and be more socially active, but at the expense of pursuing my real interests and focusing on my true priorities.  Often I am just as satisfied with the incidental social interaction that occurs in my yoga class, or at the organic food store I go to every week, and that sort of thing.

The trouble is, our culture (I live in North America) is stuck on the idea that everyone should have stacks of fabulous friends they see all the time.  Pretty much every TV commercial shows a dinner party or a group of friends going camping or skiing or whatever.  Every sitcom is based in a workplace where all the workers talk about their personal lives all day, or in an apartment where friends and neighbours walk in and out every two minutes.  I think this gives us a very distorted idea of how social interaction does or should occur.

Me, I'm more interested in forming authentic connections with people, rather than numerous connections.  It's challenging though, and tough not to think "Shouldn't I be at a dinner party tonight?"