The Claw....a thread about loneliness

[HopelessWithNumbers]

Combating Loneliness At Weekends

I don’t know if this is 100% appropriate for ‘Relationships’ but a few of us on another thread have been discussing the horrible loneliness that can invade (not exclusively at weekends of course) when you are single or not single but feeling that the rest of the world is enjoying themselves with families, friends or partners.

Of course some people love their own company, but others struggle. My child is an adult so my time is pretty much my own (apart from work), but I have just come out of a relationship and am finding it difficult to keep the sadness and anxiety at bay.

Other people are in relationships but not getting what they need in some way, and so feeling sad and / or lonely.

Could we use this thread for supporting people in that position? Virtually and perhaps meeting in ‘real life’?

@newshoe I am the same with preferring normal life and exhaustion. I think the first stage is to be less busy and then we would have time to do other stuff. Scary though.

Pleased to see this thread is still going

I've not been feeling too bad the last few weeks. I have just rotated into a new team and am enjoying my job and getting on well with my new team. Last night, though, I had a little wobble. I was perusing Facebook and it just hit home how many of my friends were in relationships and settled down. Last week I went out with a group from work, and of the 6 of us there, I was the only single one. It's hard for me to shake the feeling that there's something wrong with me, and this is my lot in life...

Why does being single have to be a stigma? FGS it is not unusual to be single. We are all single at some point in our lives. We can all hold down jobs, have children, be successful. Yet being single, you always feel like something is wrong. That's my perception but maybe it isn't other people's. I suppose I'm not truly happily single (although I absolutely am half of the time). I know the misery of a very unhappy relationship so am not in a hurry to get into a new one.

@8Fensing, you're welcome :D I somehow manage to do this all the time. We moved 1.5h away, +4 years ago when I moved countries, so all my friends have either disappeared or just too far+busy. Here I've joined a knitting club (sounds old for a 27yo, eh?) and we meet once a month. It's already a close bunch of people and fitting in has been tricky, not to mention the age difference with most of them. Unfortunately we live in slightly different areas(bigger town) so we don't bump into each other randomly. And somehow I've gone from being a social butterfly to an anxious hermit.
It was a better day today though. I was chatting to people and was active and the sunshine kept me going.

@Newshoe, I'm so sorry your week felt so empty! I work these hours partly by choice and partly because we needed the income. This has helped to pay for fixing the house and it's been an amazing distraction. Whilst I get lonely at work as well, I don't feel it so hard - I meet people, go out with people ... And then at home I crash.

I realise that this thread is from a while ago however it’s still lonely in my world