Topic : Difficulty Forming Friendships

I understand how you feel, I have a huge fear of rejection and it makes it hard for me to make friends. Since I struggle with the same thing you do, I don't know how I can help. The good thing is that your going to meetings and groups that does things that you like. So you have the oppertunity to meet new people. Other than church I don't go anywhere else to meet new people. I know I should, but it scares me. I've been told its not a good idea to make friends on the internet, its better to make friends you can talk to face-to-face. I wish I could help you with this, but I can't. I need to do a lot of work on myself as well.

Hi I know exactly how you are feeling I am 21 and have kids and Im having problems like that too.

It seems as though everyone my age is too busy having fun and would prefer to go to parties then spend time with me and my kids.

And then if I make friends with older people it seems as though they still view me a a child.

Its becoming more and more frustrating to find friends and although my kids keep me busy and i love spending time with them and my fiance, I feel lonely and wish i could meet some friends.

 

True, meeting ppl offline dont seem to make good friends. everybody has a myspace account and i cant understand how ppl made great friends off of myspace and i didnt. i met my fiance off of myspace which was very successful. try using a site called meetup.com to find ppl with similar interests thats what i use but where i live, the hobbies i like are way 2 far from me.

Hi all, I felt I had to add my two sense in to this. I have not had a true friend in a really long time. It seems as though people are only out for what they can get out of you and once you have nothing to give then you never see them again. I am a very generous and giving person and it seems as though I am always getting taking advantage of to the point that I have totally isolated myself from the outside world. Which solves nothing because I like to have people around. My husband says that I expect people to be perfect. I am not expecting perfection as no one is perfect. All I ask is for honesty and respect. Is that too much to ask?

Hi,

 

I completely understand how you feel. It would always appear that  people would often be so ungrateful and  you would often ask yourself "why bother?" What this says to me, is that it is a trust issue. This sounds like you haven't really trust yourself enough to know for sure that they're people that  will fall in your life that will make mistakes wether is forgivable ot unforgivable. Also, each bad experience you had with a person,  try to learn from it so that you would never bump into those types again or not as much. but if you have questions? don't hesitate to ask

I just got through watchin Sistehood of the Traveling Pants.  It's a really cute fictional story for kids about a group of girlfriends who buy a pair of pants that magically seems to fit all of them and bring them good luck (or something like that, haha).  I love movies like this, Now and Then, and Babysitters Club.   I probably enjoy them so much because I was never a part of such a close group of friends when I was a kid.  I was always a tomboy; I'm not lesbian or anything, but I just never liked Barbie dolls and makeup...I preferred getting dirty and playing with my brothers skateboard and video games.  Because of that, in preschool and early elementry school, I hung out with the boys, so the girls kind of cast me out.  I had a few guy friends that I played with at school, but even the guys flourished away from me in middleschool and stayed away pretty much all the way through high school.  I went on dates, and had a person to talk to at school, but I never had big sleepover, or parties, or shopping days at the mall.  Any girlfriend I made ended up only being temporary: their families moved away, and/or on a few occasions, they were older and moved to the next campus up (i.e. the transition from middle school -> highschool).  On those latter occasions, I didn't see them for a year or two, and by the time I moved over to the next campus, they were too cool to hang out with me or had just forgotten about me.

Even so, I still enjoy the movies; They're great to watch, and I love to watch them, but they also make me sad at times. The movies are usually "perfect" and have their "happy endings", and I know having that perfection would rarely have actually happened in real life, but they always make me think about what I may have missed out on. They make me think about those real groups of friends I remember from highschool that really may have come so close to the perfect "girlfriends" that these movies show. Why couldn't have I had that?

Have any of you readers ever actually had a group of friends through elementry, middle, highschool and college...can you remember adventures, secrets, stories, etc? How often did you guys have sleepovers? Do these movies and books seem too "perfect' and/or stereotypical to you? Or do they seem to fit your childhood memories?

Consider me a transplant from the depression  forums.  I said i would stop posting there for very depressing reasons and very irrelevant to what i'm doing.  Been a long time since i left the dr.phil depression boards, I kept a private diary on this site for a while but as always is the case with diaries and me, I become incredibly bored with them when i know (or suspect in this case) that they are not being read.  Catharsis ends where redundence sets in.

ANYWAYS

All a lead up to what I am here to ask about.  I came here in particular as a guess as to the best fit for my dilema.  Nothing fit right, but this was the best one to categorize me right now.  That is because I have difficulty making friends.  To be more specific, woman friends, and even more specific, because I have a talent for becoming obsessed with them very easily.  I'm a little bit worried about it because I know the rest of me.  Meaning that between a talent for obsession, a big jealousy button, and pent up frustration to the point of sadistic and homicidal anger, I am a crazy ex boyfriend waiting to happen.  I've never done anything sadistic or homicidal, that was just to give you an understanding of the scale frustration can build to anger.  And when it's about girls whom I like to think that I sincerly care for, I really try to stop doing it.  Yes I have hobbies, yes i'm in school and am looking for a job and other means by which to socialize but understand this.  It takes no more than an instant away from giving my full attention to something that those sorts of obsessive thoughts can start up.  If I stop reading long enough to cough and re-find my place, that's all it takes.  Stop reading long enough to turn to the next page:BOOM! It's there on you and you spend another 30 seconds pushing it back, quieting them down before you can get back to reading.  If this sounds time-consuming and tiring that's because it is.  It leads to a lot of time being mad at myself, trying to stop myself from constantly thinking about them and letting every little small thing you see somehow bring you back to them.  And you try and try and try and fail and you're so tired and you can't sleep because you can't find peace.  Then about 5 in the morning sheer exhaustion makes you sleep for 2 hours before you get up and do it again.  Sad, isn't it?

As early as just last night, I confessed all this to a girl I am infatuated with in Georgia.  Yes, including my obsession of HER.  Since we have been talking for years she wasn't about to just up and leave me once learning this.  I'm tremendously thankful for that.  It also helps that she is geographicly immune from any undue wrath.  And somehow, telling her about it, especially the part about her being a subject made me feel a lot better about it and makes it abit easier to talk about it.  Please save the 'I told you so's until you've actually helped me.  No, she's not the only victim of this and no, she's not even the only victim right now.  My head gets very very loud with a few of those girls, of which the one in Georgia I am most infatuated with, my protesting and yelling against them, and last but not least my real Responsibilites from a practical life. 

And while I have been trying to stop these obsessive ways for the longest time.  Confessing to a victim, or maybe just to her, had motivated me to hit harder at it.  I now want to go look for things that I don't know about that might help me stop it.  I spent this particular sleepless night searching the internet for help but finding nothing.  I think I'm bad at using search engiens in general but that is a self deprecation that must wait!  Oddly enough the bulk of what I've found thusfar has been about women obsessed with, if not one man, the idea of a boyfriend as well as romance novel publishers.  That's like the exact oppisite of what I'm looking for.

If anyone knows something concrete to help me, I'm begging you to share it.  Trust me, I'm not above getting down on my knees and crying, imploring you for assisstance.  So you can imagine that if it helps.  But I've had it with vague suggestions about things to try to get my mind off of it.  That simply isn't enough for me anymore. 

I, too, hate when people put walls of text like this up on boards giving some epic poem of their adventures in self pity and failure .  But I just get my writer up when I'm on DrPhil.com. 

(((((*******IF YOU DON"T WANT TO READ THE WALL OF TEXT ABOVE, HERE"S THE SUMMATION******))))))

-I obsess constantly over women I admire. 

-I want to stop because I am exhausted and they deserve more.

-I've tried and become sick of all etheral suggestions on getting my mind off of it because NONE OF THEM WORK and it's not enough for me anymore

-I'm a little desparate because I'm exhausted and now I'm REALLY PI$$ED!

-And if anyone thinks they know something about this infatuation of mine or so much as think that I am some kind of gentleman, they should spend 3 minutes in hell for lying.(Nothing personal)