Coping with solitude

Do you ask yourself why you want a relationship, exactly? If it's a desire for human intimacy and contact then I do understand, but if it's based on "everyone else is doing it, why can't I" insecurities then that's an attitude to reconsider, I think. As is any hint of "they will save me".

the vast majority of my single friends have started relationships in the last week. i would probably be a lot more frustrated and pressured if i weren't going to study abroad in russia in a couple of weeks. it's very comforting to tell yourself "fuck you all i'm going to siberia!" this is very bad universal advice, though.

(xpost)

i think the loneliness of having no social life sounds like as big a problem, or bigger

Well, yes, it is a problem too.

Jeff Tweedy/Uncle Tupelo to think about: "There's no use in lovin' anyone who hates themselves."

There's NO POINT WHATSOEVER in setting yourself targets, or pressurising yourself to get that amazing relationship/job/house within x number of years if all it's going to do is make you unhappy. Fuck that shit.

Anyway, my advice is to stop being defeatist. If you feel like your life's going nowhere then do something about it. Get a new job, doing whatever, it doesn't matter, enough to get by in a new city. Move, somewhere where you can actually meet people. And then do it, through whatever channels necessary. Yes, even the Internet (if you're in a new city where you don't know anyone there's less of a social stigma attached to this anyway).

And finally, ask some difficult questions of yourself. Why are you frightened of other people? Why don't you have a social life? Are you the sort of person people want to socialise with? Because although I've never met you I do wonder about this sometimes. If you aren't, ask yourself why. And then make a concerted effort to change it.

I'm being harsh here, but I've got a close friend who gets like this regularly. And although what she wants is to be told "you're great!", what she needs is for someone to take her and show it. Human relationships, romantic or otherwise, are something you have to work at, you can't expect to just be spoonfed them.

Um, yes. As I said above:

There *are* things I do outside work - at all of them, though, I am the youngest person there by 20 or 30 years.

Well, no, clearly I'm not. I don't know what (if anything) I could do to change that, though.

First and foremost, stop doing stuff like that.

* and seriously, speak to a doctor. Suicidal thoughts would indicate that you may well need professional help.

(xpost)

I can't afford to get a new job, for at least another 6 months or so.* I can't afford to move house either.

* golden handcuffs - if I leave before August, I have to pay back about 6 weeks' salary in "training costs".

I realise I've made quite a few assumptions here, but I have observed that this is a pretty common pattern for people with poor social skills.

Also, stop going "I can't, I can't" and focus on the things you can do. And if that doesn't get you everything you want all at once then focus on what you have got. Start small, and build up. That's how everyone's closest friendships begin.

As joe says, you come across as unsocialised and heavy heavy heavy. Maybe some people are into that, and you'll get lucky eventually finding a similarly intense soulmate online or whatever. But more likely, you'll stay single and odd. There's nothing wrong with being single and odd, if you're happy being one of life's eccentric outsiders. But if you'd rather join the world then you have to, as people say, lighten up, take things one step at a time, compromise, gradually engage in social situations you might find silly, smile at people. And maybe see a counsellor, GP or cognitive-behavioural therapist, yeah.

I do generally get depressed at this time of year, but I don't think it's necessarily Valentines-specific - it just tends to be generally in january or february.

crosspost

I've met you, I've spent some time in a pub with you on more than one occasion. You didn't strike me as someone I didn't ever want to spend time with again. However on this thread (and others) you come across as petulant, demanding and unrealistic.

I used to be an appalling person to be around, but I realised that it was one of the things that was making me unhappy. So I went to the doctors, took anti-depressants, went to counselling, brightened up my outlook, became a better person to be around, new friendships started and old ones returned. I don't look on it as compromising, I look on it as maturing, taking my life back. Perhaps you could try this attitude?

Did you just put the responsibility for keeping you alive and happy on the rest of the human race?

You can change your job and area without losing money in 6 months time. If you think that's something that might help then look forward to it.

Compromising and taking responsibility for keeping the negative and unpleasant parts of your personality in check are something all adults have to do. It strikes me that the number one thing making you unhappy is your mindset and it's affecting the way you interact with people. Try changing - change is great! It might actually, y'know, make you happier and all that.

Also, there are two people who used to post regularly here and had big problems relating to others. Both of them came back into circulation socially last summer - one of them realised that by actually building bridges and not putting insurmountable "no one likes me!" obstacles in place before even speaking to people, and everyone was very happy to speak to them and build bridges. The other one threw a big tantrum of the "why won't you be my friends?!" variety and was told in no uncertain terms to fuck off.

Also, the key word on this thread is PRACTICE. You have to work at developing social skills, so don't keep giving up at the first hurdle. Just try and relax about things rather than building everything into a big task and you'll find it a lot easier.

Although I can emphathize with your feelings that there are no youngish, single, interesting people where you live, based on what I read here, a new location isn't going to help. Ailsa Matt and others have given you good advice. Think about it and make some changes, esp. re: making yourself happy in other parts of your life.

f.p. - i often despair about relationship crap, but like others have said on this thread, i have some good friendships that make me happy. i figure - if it'll happen, it'll happen. i am used to being single, so it doesn't make me completely miserable to be so. i say you just concentrate on improving yourself--reaching goals, and not worrying so much about why people don't like you.

Especially when the advice most circles around: "the only way you'll be happy is when you change"

Sometimes all it is all about luck ...

small nice things are good to lift moods a bit, during those darker days.

Small nice things are good, yes. But there's a much deeper and more serious issue which isn't going to be solved by kittens in mittens. And something is going to have to give. A poster on this board has threatened suicide and people who have experience of the kind of things that are leading to this are saying "look, this CAN get better". I'd rather think I could take positive action to turn my life around than wait around on the off-chance that something positive will be around the corner.

Small things are a start and a way to make things feel less bleak and hopeless. (maybe we are on the same page here even, although my definition of small things is probably ... smaller)

The friends I have now are, by and large, people I have met through S*n*st*r and ILX. I have many acquaintances and a few good friends, and the difference between the two is evolving all the time. There isn't a point where I think I get the right to refer to someone as a friend. I just get along with people as I find them. It's taken me a LONG time to get to the stage where I'm comfortable with my relationships with people, though, and I was crushingly desperately lonely as recently as two years ago. But I picked myself up by the bootstraps and made things happen for myself. It hasn't happened overnight, and I don't think I have the perfect life. But things are changing for the better because I'm making it happen.

I've been going through something like this in the last six weeks or so - not in f.p.'s "find x in three months or jump off a bridge" way, just increasingly isolated and lonely and unhappy with the cul-de-sac that my life seems to be running down, and lack of a relationship is one of the factors. part of it probably is to do with all my closest friends being married or in long-term relationships; you want to do anything with them and you always end up feeling like the fifth wheel. and it's gotten to the point where I blew off going to a party that I had an open invite to earlier tonight because friends who I thought would be there weren't going. so yes, I've turned down an opportunity to meet new people - ridiculous, isn't it?

basically I am at the point where I HAVE to change things, otherwise it's just going to keep spiralling down and getting worse. I think I do know where my problems are stemming from - primarily I am sick of living so far away from my job, my friends and pretty much everything else that interests me, and everything else is feeding into that - so I have to get serious about finding a new place to live, rather than the "drink, listen to records and hope everything will sort itself out" gameplan that hasn't really produced much of a result.

There's a lot of excellent, thoughtful advice in this thread. But when it comes to a problem like this- a debilitating inability to deal with other people- there is not going to be any sort of advice wise enough and strong enough to magically turn you around, especially if you're not interested in hearing that you'll need to change yourself.
That said, I think finding out about personality disorders might help you out. Maybe Avoidant Personality Disorder rings a few bells? Everyone's different, and all this stuff needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but for me, I found that knowing more about social dysfunction in general helped a lot. Instead of seeing my social difficulty as the inevitable result of my general worthlessness, I can understand it as a concrete, understandable problem that I can actually attempt to overcome. (Just knowing that I'm not alone, as trite as that might be, goes a long way towards easing any despair I might feel too.) Anyway, it's a start.

In the meanwhile, best of luck to you.

Mabye it isn't meant this way, but it reads like this.

it's the same reason why I dislike Nick Hornby's books, they give out the same message.

(xpost over most of this thread)

Change is good in the sense of becoming more open and maybe having a better outlook, and maybe also in the sense of accepting certain things.

nice projection there

But if you'd rather join the world then you have to, as people say, lighten up, take things one step at a time, compromise, gradually engage in social situations you might find silly, smile at people. And maybe see a counsellor, GP or cognitive-behavioural therapist, yeah.

xpost it's not so much a case of 'fake it to make it' as trying to find headspace where you're a little less apt to read stuff into mundane social/work situations that others seem to negotiate with a detachment that you aspire to, or get caught up in the petty crap that renders this impossible. If you have felt - for whatever reasons in your background - either furtive or unappreciated, you don't necessarily have to drop everything and address it this second with professional help, but you can start the ball rolling on the admin side while you start giving yourself permission NOT to think of yourself like this. I've purposefully not used the stock phrases people trot out when asking others to cope with the quotidian in the hope this advice will not be dealt with reactively or defensively (I think people who've been the whipping boy on some level in their heads become defensive in a 'morally justified' way that can be difficult to unpick).

incidently, I like your advice, suzy, and Father Brian Eno's, because it is less in that vain, but of course I am looking on from the ouside, not being in the same situaion as FP at this point.

So basically the messenger is always right, and the the person taking the message wrong if they disagree?

See, what bothers me about this thread here is it many postings seemed to focus on and around negative personality aspects FP might have, even nicer things seemed to be followed with a "but ...".

And when you get to a situation where you feel so very unhappy, there are two choices: do nothing and wait for people to respond to you in the way you wish they would, or think about what YOU can change about the situation. Sometimes that might involve bringing different parts of yourself to the fore, parts that maybe don't come naturally, but that isn't necessarily a betrayal of yourself. It's a journey of discovery.

It's not at all easy. And maybe we SHOULDN'T have to 'work' to be liked and happy and fulfilled, but most people, unfortunately, do have to. You're not alone in ANY of your difficulties, as this thread shows.

ILX: Try X
FP: Nope
ILX: What about Y?
FP: Uhuh
ILX: Z?
FP: Tried it once, didn't work.

By rejecting things like therapy, changing his life *in any way whatsoever*, etc. it strikes me that Forest Pines is using this thread to somehow prove to himself that there is no solution to his problems.

My advice would involve compromise over socialising preferences, seeing a GP, and possibly working out a way to move house/jobs but there's no point spelling it out as it's all already been rejected.

Clo the messenger thing: one messenger is an observation, two a coincidence and three or more the makings of a plausible reading of the situation.

I understand what you mean, but, seriously, look at it from FP's point of view. I had the same feelings and would always nag about my solitude to my mum. She finally said, and I agreed, that I just needed to have patience but also go OUT and meet people. As much as my mum was right, there's also an amount of luck involved: you have to be lucky to meet a person that wants to be your partner. It's not easy.

I appreciate the inertia of depression is difficult to combat and that people telling you to get off your arse can irritate you, but sitting counting the days until Bridge Jumping Day is only going to lead to Bridge Jumping Day.

fp, being in a relationship is not gonna magically make everything else ok. it brings a shitload of good stuff but a shitload of hard work too, and there's no guarantee it'll last forever, sometimes it just breaks, and do you think you'd feel better than you do now if eg you had had a three-year relationship and it had all just ended horribly? otoh i am speaking not from direct personal experience, rather from experience of helping friends through the bad bits, as the longest relationship i ever had has lasted two months har har. and that's fine. it's not the be-all-and-end-all. for the longest time i was actively resistant to getting in any relationship - i had got myself a fantastically busy life and a posse of awesome friends, and i am very precious about having time and space to myself. recently i've got a bit more receptive and occasionally enthusiastic about the idea, but still most of the time i'm only interested in a relationship when there's someone specific i'm interested in. this is a flipside of your rather die than change thing, i'd far rather be "alone" (in "" because, really, being single != being alone, but that's a whole nother barrel of fish) than be with someone i'm not convinced about. eg luke person was really nice and everything but i realised after a couple of weeks i do not like him enough for the meat thing not to be an issue, and even maybe wouldn't like him enough anyway, so i ended it. and this is definitely better.

Do you assume that you *are* going to find someone, or have you learned to deal with the fact that you might stay single forever?

i did think for a while there were NO PEOPLE IN THE WORLD i was attracted to, wtf?? but it was more baffling than depressing. i've since discovered that to be wrong... i'm not assuming i'll find someone, i'm not assuming i'll be single forever either. i dunno, either way it's fine, there's more to life, fp! you're hanging an awful lot on this one thing, too much i think.

and also i suggest you do what other people suggested upthread and start looking around for a new place to live, it sounds like you have worn out all opportunities and alleys where you are now. go visit some other places, get excited about a change. but also do not move there then sit in your new flat thinking "well, i have done my bit, now my life will change" and be all sad when it doesn't immediately. you'll still need to go out and do stuff, but it sounds like you do that anyway. count up 6 months to when you can make a big change and create some new opportunities for yourself, rather than counting down 3 months to when if someone else has not appeared and salved all your difficulties you will jump off a bridge.

Alisa (in fact anyone I guess), sometimes I find myself feeling that I need to brighten up my outlook—I can be a bit gloomy sometimes, and end up hating myself for it, always too late, ergo downward spiral of, "I'm a horrible person"... but it never occurred to me that I could go to the doctors and pick up some pills just to make myself a bit easier to be around. How did you approach this with the doctor?

(In other words, I don't really feel depressed as such anymore, just gloomy and a bit antisocial sometimes, which leads me to feel bad because no one likes to be around a misery guts... however I had it in my head that visits to the doctor and anti-depressants were for treating TEH BAD depression, rather than simply taking the edge off the gloom. Or have I misinterpreted?)

meeting more people certainly helps. just hanging out people, even. a lot of the time it's not even who you are, but who you're with. if you're seen with lots of folks suddenly you become more like "ooh look at him wahey" with others too. living somewhere where everyone is 20-40 yrs older doesn't sound good and as someone else said in several months' time you can move so many look forward to that.

It's easy to agonise about being single, especially because it often seems as though everybody is in a relationship, but I also believe that you are far far more likely to find yourself in a relationship, the more successful other factors in your life are, such as jobs/hobbys/social life. I definitely only realised this after the fact though.

I mean I'm no expert or whatever, like most people here I just have my own experience, but I really strongly think the more you are involved with things often equals the more you have going for you, I dunno.

I think people kind of want to learn from relationships, friendships or otherwise, and so it's good to be able to offer them your stories or experiences in whatever it is you do in the 75 percent of the week you don't see them for. Again, this gives you a picture of yourself too, friends give you a frame through which to see yourself.

I don't know you well enough to say if the former is true, but the latter certainly isn't, if the one photo you've posted on the WDYLL thread is any indication. You're cute.

See, there's a bit more to it than that. I was spiralling into a pit of depression, and it was the realisation that I was projecting it onto other people in a pathetic desire for validation (and they made me realise that I was becoming unbearable to be around as a result) that made me realise I need to do something - if I could be a better person to be around, I would have people around who *liked* me, not people who didn't want to dislike me (which is SO different). So I went to the doctor, I said "help, I am unhappy, my life is wrong, I can't cope with stuff" {slight paraphrase} and she gave me anti-depressants and recommended counselling and things and, you know, it got better eventually. I felt better, I didn't feel that all I had to give to people was "please be my friend because I need you to be my friend" - I pulled myself around and became someone in my own right, a person with something to contribute other than misery and guilt. I didn't say "make me a better person" but I knew that I had to become one, and beating the thing that made me unbearable was the way to go.

I guess I sounded glib. I didn't mean to.

In other news, I'm going to just get a t-shirt with "Onimo OTM" on it, so that everyone knows my position on stuff.

Also have you tried herbal remedies (there's a thread about St Johns Wort somewhere, and probably other threads too).

In fact, after my last relationship - where I felt really deprived of time on my own - I took a sabbatical from relationships which I'm still continuing.

The ideal relationship for me would probably be living in separate properties - which some people think is a bit extreme.

I sought out solitude and serenity the last few months and it has been wonderful, but the detritus and nonsense doesnt fades slowly, I still hear the voices of others, the opinions of others, ex-colleagues, people whos houses i stayed at briefly, so many sounds, so many opinions - I am not yet free of them, but these days of not having to interact, not having to engage, ever so gradually I can feel my blood pressure dropping as the voices gradually soften. If i could go 6 months without conversation it would be a dream

I think i chose the wrong thread, but I'm not sure there is a solitude-positive thread

i agree.

solitude can be a necessity in this socially saturated world.

my friends get concerned if i turn down an invite for a social gathering eg. tonight.

but the fact is, there are times i kind of enjoy not having to interact with others.

not sure i could cope with 6 months though.

i am with you. i love people, and too much time along would probably kill me, but i also need several hours per day of solitude. it's a balance.

the OP makes me very sad. i've been single for like, a year and a half and in that time was hoping -- often desperately -- to find someone new. but now i've sort of calmed down and realized that being alone is great. i deleted my dating apps, and now i hope to remain single forever (or at least for another year or so).

just read the OP.

fuck.

yes, i hope ForestPines is OK.

re dating, i think i am against it. like, actively searching -- out of the hundreds of millions of people -- for someone to become this central person in your life seems deranged and quixotic. people pair up successfully because they force things, often, but then the people left behind often feel like they've failed at some central human task, when all they've really done is failed at the impossible. this is what leads to posts like ForestPlains'.

FP was still posting when I joined and that was like at least half a year later, also iirc had a thing going with 'the office goth' then, point stands though, poor soul

FP is still out there*

*footnoting in case you were wondering

Posts under the ForestPines user name stopped in 2007, so FP's ilx participation must be under a new name. good luck to FP, in any event