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Don’t know what to do to improve my social outlook
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[Deleted User]
Posts: 516 Forum Member
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Before I start and sound like a right whinging cow, (because this is a long post and I'm sorry, I just really want help!) I want to tell you some of the positives I appreciate in my life, just so it doesn’t sound like I don’t recognise them:
• I live a new city (Cardiff) that I love, in the first home that feels like mine.
• I’m planning a wedding to the most lovely man I’ve ever met
• I have made new friends here.
• I’m hoping to go back to studying this year (if I don’t get in, certainly next year) and am really looking forward to it – I hope to go to university at long last afterwards
• I am lucky enough to have a job I have always enjoyed (even if it doesn’t fulfil me as much as it once did, hence why I want to go back to studying)
• I am learning to drive – and am not bad!
• My disability is being managed well by my physio and I’m in the best shape I’ve been since the management has been my sole responsibility.
But my personal relationships feel as if they are lacking. This is absolutely my fault as I am a socially anxious person. I just didn’t think it would have gotten this bad, that I would have allowed the situation to get like this, even being the way I am.
I’ve never really had many friends. Due to my disability, my mother never let me socialise by playing outside with others and I was rarely allowed around friends’ houses and they never came to us. I struggled to make friends at secondary school because I just didn’t know how to interact.
I moved in to a primary school friend’s tutor group and joined her circle of friends, it was fab but the school’s handling of my disability meant I left soon after and went to a school 20 miles away, meaning not only did I not socialise with my old friends, I couldn’t consider the idea at my new school either. I didn’t really have a set of friends til I was 15, but still never socialised with them outside of school and when we left, I didn’t speak to them at all because I just assumed they’d forget about me.
When I was 15, a girl from my primary turned up at my new secondary and we’d travel together. She was the first person I was allowed to socialise with like normal teenagers and we’re still close friends now. My best friend from secondary came back into my life sporadically as soon as I felt “worthy” of getting in touch at 18 and we are the sort that are 100% there for one another, even if it so happens we don’t speak for months. So I know I have two good ‘uns there.
I’ve never socialised with anyone I’ve worked with because I just don’t know how to make the transition from talking about work to talking about the person and I wish I wasn’t so separate about it.
I made a good group of friends with a girl online who became my best friend in real life. Those were some of my favourite years, just feeling confident and free and being able to do what everybody did.
I moved to Birmingham when I met my OH and genuinely didn’t know how to go out and meet another soul for about 18 months. I didn’t see any of my old friends either unless I made the effort because they couldn’t afford it. I got so lonely that I joined City Socialising and Meet Up but couldn’t ever bring myself to put myself up in front of a group of strangers, in case I wasn’t worthy or interesting.
I made one good friend in Birmingham (who I knew for about a year) and we set up a group ourselves so that we wouldn’t have to walk into the room. I could fake confidence then but it drained me and I always ran away to hide at home where I felt safe, then kicking myself for not trying. (It makes me sad that now we’ve moved I don’t really have more to say to her as more than an acquaintance... what is there to say because I wish there was something!)
We moved to Cardiff after 2.5 years and I love it here. It’s smaller, everything’s closer, including friends and family. But it’s still me that has to make the effort, so I thought I’d concentrate on making new friends.
I have met a good number of lovely people that seem to enjoy my company, but I genuinely freak out in numbers of say, more than six, I clam up and find excuses to leg it. I really don’t know why I do this. There are a great many more local people that I’ve added to Facebook and don’t know how to approach the idea that I’d like to meet up in real life in case they judge me or don’t like me.
I want to be brave and confident and meet as many new people as possible to do new things with, but I keep running away and then hating myself for it when I’m lonely and bored.
I live a lot closer to my home-town now, but have had a massive falling out with my parents some six months ago and don’t know how to approach that (or if I want to) so have just avoided the place altogether, which means I’m missing out on the lives of my sisters and their children. I know it doesn’t have to mean that and I could just go to see them, which I have done and they’ve all been supportive, but I hate the idea that we have nothing else to talk about besides the state of my relationship with my mum. It also means I’m seeing nothing of the few old friends I have in my hometown and this makes me angry at myself too.
My relationship isn’t really going right either. He’s a lovely supportive man who works himself into the floor for our life together but I feel a bit abandoned because then when he is here, he just wants to be settled in front of the TV. I get bored with his lack of spontaneity and now am actually fearful of sex because it’s not about passion or wanting or anything and I (wrongly) assume that everything he does is because he wants sex, so I shy away more and more when he tries to touch me and build it up into an even bigger problem in my head. I want to love him again, but I don’t even know how to start.
I also hate that I no longer seem to know how to act around my own friends. The group living closest to me (online/real life best’s lot) I met up with for the first time in six months and half of us didn’t know what to say to the other and that makes me so sad when we used to be so close and enjoy being together.
I know that times and people change, but I don’t want to give up on anyone, so how do you even start to repair bridges?
I’ve known OH’s closest group of friends the whole 3 and a half years we’ve been together. Most of them were at a 30th we went to last weekend and yet I still couldn’t say a word to anyone until it was just a small group I was familiar with playing drinking games. It’s not that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new, I just don’t know how to deal with it, literally can’t speak and still now, even when it is just OH’s friends, they’ve all lived so different to me (in Wales, before going to uni) that I just don’t have anything to add and I’m so sick of seeming bored and disinterested because that’s not the person I want to be.
Basically, how the hell do I make myself become the sort of person that can face anyone with a smile and a level of interest? How do I approach old friends so that we’re a comfortable part of one another’s lives and how does a relative stranger become a friend? I thought I was doing well, but I just feel so alone and I want to snap out of it and be able to approach my life differently – positively so that I have and keep all the friends I have or might be lucky enough to meet.
Please help me not become a hermit in front of a TV!
• I live a new city (Cardiff) that I love, in the first home that feels like mine.
• I’m planning a wedding to the most lovely man I’ve ever met
• I have made new friends here.
• I’m hoping to go back to studying this year (if I don’t get in, certainly next year) and am really looking forward to it – I hope to go to university at long last afterwards
• I am lucky enough to have a job I have always enjoyed (even if it doesn’t fulfil me as much as it once did, hence why I want to go back to studying)
• I am learning to drive – and am not bad!
• My disability is being managed well by my physio and I’m in the best shape I’ve been since the management has been my sole responsibility.
But my personal relationships feel as if they are lacking. This is absolutely my fault as I am a socially anxious person. I just didn’t think it would have gotten this bad, that I would have allowed the situation to get like this, even being the way I am.
I’ve never really had many friends. Due to my disability, my mother never let me socialise by playing outside with others and I was rarely allowed around friends’ houses and they never came to us. I struggled to make friends at secondary school because I just didn’t know how to interact.
I moved in to a primary school friend’s tutor group and joined her circle of friends, it was fab but the school’s handling of my disability meant I left soon after and went to a school 20 miles away, meaning not only did I not socialise with my old friends, I couldn’t consider the idea at my new school either. I didn’t really have a set of friends til I was 15, but still never socialised with them outside of school and when we left, I didn’t speak to them at all because I just assumed they’d forget about me.
When I was 15, a girl from my primary turned up at my new secondary and we’d travel together. She was the first person I was allowed to socialise with like normal teenagers and we’re still close friends now. My best friend from secondary came back into my life sporadically as soon as I felt “worthy” of getting in touch at 18 and we are the sort that are 100% there for one another, even if it so happens we don’t speak for months. So I know I have two good ‘uns there.
I’ve never socialised with anyone I’ve worked with because I just don’t know how to make the transition from talking about work to talking about the person and I wish I wasn’t so separate about it.
I made a good group of friends with a girl online who became my best friend in real life. Those were some of my favourite years, just feeling confident and free and being able to do what everybody did.
I moved to Birmingham when I met my OH and genuinely didn’t know how to go out and meet another soul for about 18 months. I didn’t see any of my old friends either unless I made the effort because they couldn’t afford it. I got so lonely that I joined City Socialising and Meet Up but couldn’t ever bring myself to put myself up in front of a group of strangers, in case I wasn’t worthy or interesting.
I made one good friend in Birmingham (who I knew for about a year) and we set up a group ourselves so that we wouldn’t have to walk into the room. I could fake confidence then but it drained me and I always ran away to hide at home where I felt safe, then kicking myself for not trying. (It makes me sad that now we’ve moved I don’t really have more to say to her as more than an acquaintance... what is there to say because I wish there was something!)
We moved to Cardiff after 2.5 years and I love it here. It’s smaller, everything’s closer, including friends and family. But it’s still me that has to make the effort, so I thought I’d concentrate on making new friends.
I have met a good number of lovely people that seem to enjoy my company, but I genuinely freak out in numbers of say, more than six, I clam up and find excuses to leg it. I really don’t know why I do this. There are a great many more local people that I’ve added to Facebook and don’t know how to approach the idea that I’d like to meet up in real life in case they judge me or don’t like me.
I want to be brave and confident and meet as many new people as possible to do new things with, but I keep running away and then hating myself for it when I’m lonely and bored.
I live a lot closer to my home-town now, but have had a massive falling out with my parents some six months ago and don’t know how to approach that (or if I want to) so have just avoided the place altogether, which means I’m missing out on the lives of my sisters and their children. I know it doesn’t have to mean that and I could just go to see them, which I have done and they’ve all been supportive, but I hate the idea that we have nothing else to talk about besides the state of my relationship with my mum. It also means I’m seeing nothing of the few old friends I have in my hometown and this makes me angry at myself too.
My relationship isn’t really going right either. He’s a lovely supportive man who works himself into the floor for our life together but I feel a bit abandoned because then when he is here, he just wants to be settled in front of the TV. I get bored with his lack of spontaneity and now am actually fearful of sex because it’s not about passion or wanting or anything and I (wrongly) assume that everything he does is because he wants sex, so I shy away more and more when he tries to touch me and build it up into an even bigger problem in my head. I want to love him again, but I don’t even know how to start.
I also hate that I no longer seem to know how to act around my own friends. The group living closest to me (online/real life best’s lot) I met up with for the first time in six months and half of us didn’t know what to say to the other and that makes me so sad when we used to be so close and enjoy being together.
I know that times and people change, but I don’t want to give up on anyone, so how do you even start to repair bridges?
I’ve known OH’s closest group of friends the whole 3 and a half years we’ve been together. Most of them were at a 30th we went to last weekend and yet I still couldn’t say a word to anyone until it was just a small group I was familiar with playing drinking games. It’s not that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new, I just don’t know how to deal with it, literally can’t speak and still now, even when it is just OH’s friends, they’ve all lived so different to me (in Wales, before going to uni) that I just don’t have anything to add and I’m so sick of seeming bored and disinterested because that’s not the person I want to be.
Basically, how the hell do I make myself become the sort of person that can face anyone with a smile and a level of interest? How do I approach old friends so that we’re a comfortable part of one another’s lives and how does a relative stranger become a friend? I thought I was doing well, but I just feel so alone and I want to snap out of it and be able to approach my life differently – positively so that I have and keep all the friends I have or might be lucky enough to meet.
Please help me not become a hermit in front of a TV!
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Comments
You work, so what about people there? Since I started my job I've made a few new friends, you don't need loads.
When you start uni your social circle will widen muchly, even though from experience a lot of them tend to be just drinking buddies! There are so many groups at uni to join (I forget what they're called but there is a name for the type of group!), at the one I went to there was a group for cerebral palsy sufferers (sorry if that's not PC
Chat to your distant friends online, text them, call them, Skype them. My two best friends live in London and Bristol and I can go months without seeing them, but sometimes just chatting to them in between is enough.
You say you're planning a wedding but need to "learn to love him again" - maybe putting the wedding off for a few years would be a good idea, as that's not the basis for a good marriage.
Have you tried chatting about it with your fiancé? If he wants to veg out in front of the TV then that's up to him, it is something you can both do! Just a cuddle and a chat/film/bottle of wine on the sofa is something easily doable, and don't shy away from sex!
Next time you're with your OHs friends, try and be more sociable. Maybe a drink would help? I know it's easier said than done but if you're planning on marrying the guy then getting on with his friends is a must IMO.
Personally I'd work on sorting out your relationship woes. I think if you can't be happy in your own home then you can't be truly happy. You don't need many friends to be happy, just one or 2 has suited me fine
I do hope you manage to widen your social circle, from your previous posts it seems this may solve many of your problems.
I'd suggest looking at all the good things that have been accomplished above - those are positive life achievements. Is it worth trying to stand back a bit and trying not to be too self-critical and just see if there are any specific issues that need to be addressed? If there still are, then I'd initially suggest looking through here to see if there's any relevant self help material. Good luck!
You need to decide whether he's the one before you go any further with wedding plans.
What you describe with your friends is very typical as you grow up - your social circle and opportunities to meet people grow narrower and you have to make a real effort to make new friends.
University would be a fantastic opportunity to create new opportunities for long term friendships.
Your social anxiety is rooted in concentrating too hard on yourself and not enough on the other person. Stop trying to be interesting - instead, try to take an interest in the other person. Ask them about themselves, what they are interested in, about their jobs, where they've travelled to, lived, what makes them tick. This is far more likely to lead to friendship - people just love talking about themselves.
It's ok not to like big groups - I'm much happier with a small group or even with just one other friend. You don't need a huge circle of friends to be happy - just one or two people you love and trust is enough.
I think your concerns are related to your relationship with your boyfriend - in fact I think you are looking towards your other friendships as a diversionary tactic, a denial of what's not fulfilling you with your boyfriend. Focus there and you may find other things start to slot into place.
You sound as if you've achieved a lot, and you should be proud of yourself.
With workmates, ask about their families/holidays/hopes and dreams/what they thought of last night's Eastenders...people generally like talking about themselves and you don't have to work hard to make conversation.
Your partner is another matter and only you know whether he's right for you, and if you're planning marriage, visualize the two of you in 40 years. Will you be happy, strolling along, hand in hand?