What pushes you from liking someone to actively getting them into your life?

[ToGoBoldly]

Hi,

What the thread title says, really.

I'm really struggling with feeling isolated and lonely. I've felt like this all my life, but it's been really intense recently so I have been feeling even more low than I ususally do.

I have a handfull of friends but no one really close, and they are all kind of fairweather friends. They've all kind of retreated away from me into their own lives, which is fine, I accept people grow apart, but it feels like everyone in the world has a network of friends and a partner, and I am being left on my own. I try really hard to get out and meet new people and stuff, but I feel like I am constantly rejected and it is really, really difficult to bear.

I have been doing some work on my feelings around this with my therapist and have been asked to drill down on why I believe I don't form close bonds with people. I can only think that people don't like me enough - they don't dislike me, but they don't like me enough to actively want me in their lives. It's as simple as that. She's tried to suggest I might be familiar with the feeling of rejection so kind of invite it, but I really don't think that's true. I try really hard to go out of my comfort zone with people - I am shy but friendly, I invite people to things, I make the first move, I volunteer myself for things, I am generous, I'm laid back and not pushy... but none of this seems to count. It feels like plenty of people think I am nice enough but they don't want or need me as a close friend. I don't blame other people for this - no one is obliged to be friends with everyone - but I just feel like everyone chooses people to be in their lives, but no one chooses me. And I've really hit a wall in trying to work this out.

This post sounds really needy and whiny, I promise I am not like this when I am trying to make friends or boyfriends! Like I said I am having counselling (for various things) but we've kind of reached an impasse on this one.

I've felt like this forever. I felt it at primary school, at secondary school, at university, at work, and in my love life. The only way I could explain clearly to my counsellor was how I felt it at primary school, so their behaviour is clear, not because they are horrible children but because they don't try to hide their feelings. But you can see more clearly with kids how people naturally gravitate towards those they want to be friends with, and that often is the really pretty girl, or the boy who is really good at football or whatever. I don't think things change a lot as an adult, it's just more subtle. And I don't think anything bad about people who have those who gravitate towards them and want to be their friend, but I just feel really sad because it feels like no one naturally gravitates towards me. It makes me feel really unloved and depressed.

I try to be proactive, no matter how many knockbacks I get I try to carry on with life and try new things, but it's really overwhelming. I asked my counsellor what she thinks I could do differently, but she is either stumped, or wants me to work the answer out myself. But I really can't think of anything beyond "people don't like me enough", which is their prerogative, but really hurtful when it feels like I'm not good enough for anyone I've met in my whole life.

So I guess I'm trying to bash out these thoughts a bit more. Am I just hideously unlucky that I never seem to meet people at the right time for them to want to pursue a friendship or relationship with me? Or what is the magic ingredient that makes people want to move things forward? I feel like there is a locked door and people will smlile and wave at me through a window and think "there's that woman, she's nice", but they won't ever invite me in, if that makes sense.

I am sorry if this sounds quite immature and self indulgent

my brother is a bit of a bully, a massive sulker, aggressive, has given up working various jobs because he "couldn't be bothered". But he has a fiance who loves him, loads of friends, my mum finds him hliarious and he's clearly the favourite child... are you going to tell me these people don't truly like him? People want to be his friend because they fear him? My mum is in tears of laughter at his antics because she is dominated by him? I don't buy that/

I don't believe it because I don't believe that when I am standing in a room at a party people avoid me because they can intuitively sense that I have too much baggage. That would be like believing Mystic Meg.

• at a party/at a work event/ in a night club/etc any scenario where one might meet people

I'd believe it if I were getting somewhere and then things were failing, but people don't even get to know me to let their intuition do its work.

No I am not going to tell you anything about your brother as I know nothing about him - but I have observed from the content and tone of your posts that you have a lot in common.

thanks

I did what everyone said to do, open up about my past in counselling. then I walk home in tears wishing a bus would hit me and then I come across as an aggressive, sulky bully just like my brother. This is probably why people don't like me.

mulranna, I'm not getting that at all from the op's posts. She's feeling low and playing "Yes, but..."

That doesn't make her an aggressive, sulky bully! Look how hard she works at making friends and being a good friend.

It just sounds as though you're annoyed because she's not taking your advice.

ToGoBoldly, sometimes it feels as though a therapy session has just opened up a can of worms and left them there wriggling about as they please and you can't put the lid back on again. But the messiness and the tears can be part of healing even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.

I don't think mulranna was doing that. But I do think we all need to tread carefully here.

Hope you're feeling more human this morning ToGo . Agree that this awful pain can very much be part of the healing, as harsh and out of control it can feel at the time

ToGo

I would try to think about your problem with other people as a symptom of a deeper problem that needs to be addressed and your desperately trying to avoid. You don't need to fix the people bit straight away, so how about you put those thoughts and feelings on the back burner for now?

Whilst your childhood can't be changed, the emotional construct of your childhood that sits in your brain CAN change. When your therapist tries to get you to talk about your very early years, I think she is trying to invoke an emotional examination of that construct. You don't know what it was like when you were an infant, but you can imagine what it may have been like. You can't make the bad stuff not have happened, but you can imagine a response to the things that shouldn't have happened.

imho this really isn't about picking over the actual past and trying to retrospectively change who you actually were as a child. Like you say, that time has passed. It's about recognizing and accepting the imprint the past has left upon you. To do that, you need to validate your feelings about what happened to you. My gut instinct tells me all you have learned to do is become functional, and in that way your past therapy has allowed you to survive, but not to move on properly. As you can't actually go back in time and give the child version of you a hug, you have to produce a simulation of that child and give them a hug instead.

Springydaffs

Floaty, yes. The floaty people have now cornered the market on spirituality. No-one gets to define our feelings, though, only help us try to understand them and I think generally society does not help people in that regard at all. I think British society is quite controlling, in its way, with strict rules about how feelings should work. Will contemplate further.