I don't feel like I matter to anyone.

[SilentScreamingIntoTheAbyss]

Just that really. I don't feel like I matter to anyone.

I've always struggled a bit with friendships. Always been on the periphery and I'm not really sure why.

There are people I refer to as 'friends' but it would be more accurate to describe them as people I know. There are maybe 3 or 4 people who I know well enough to suggest meeting for lunch or coffee with who will come but won't if I suggest doing anything else. But it ends up being an information exchange of things we have done, how our children are doing, funny anecdotes from life. We always have a nice time, it's always positive but then nothing until and unless I make contact and invite them for coffee. If I suggest doing anything else, they're never free and so the information exchange is all it ever is. And only ever when I suggest it. They don't ever make the first contact and invite me for coffee etc. I've concluded that it's because I just dont really matter to them.

Eg

I have a friend from university. We meet to catch up every summer. This year, I had a lot on in my personal life and didn't get in touch. And so we didn't meet. There was no, "Hey, how are you? I haven't heard from you," message. Nothing.

And that's how it is. A friend of 10 years who I was really close to at one point dwindled down to this and then I left it to see if I'd hear from her first. Nothing. I haven't seen her for 2 years now.

A friend I occasionally meet for coffee but I'm not a priority and she will often cancel. Ive tried suggesting doing things i knownsje likes. I've invited her and her husband to things with my partner and me because I know they like him. But no. So I've left it now. So we no longer meet.

Thats how it is with everyone. I'm not a horrible person I'm not negative, I'm not needy. Whenever I meet up with someone, we have a lovely time. I remember things they've told me, we have common ground, I ask questions of them, I share things of myself. Just what everyone seems to do. I know I'm being negative in this thread but thats not how I usually am.

And so it continues.

I have a partner of 5 years. I have never really opened up to him about how I feel about this. It's embarrassing to have no friends. I feel ashamed. I don't let him know that I only meet these people when I suggest it and have always just said, "Oh I'm going out for lunch with X on Thursday," or "I spoke with Y today. We're going out next Tuesday," etc.

But no one ever thinks, oh, I haven't heard from X for a while. I wonder how she is? Or sees something and thinks of me. I've not fallen out with these people. Not had a cross word. I just don't matter to them. So, unless its me making the contact or the arrangements, they just dont think of me.

So, my partner and I were just chatting this evening and the conversation went this way and I found myself opening up to him. I relayed some objectively bad experiences but just told him how I feel generally and said specifically that I don't feel like I matter to anyone.

He listened to me and said nothing. I paused and hebsaid nothing. So I continued - just getting it off my chest really. And I realised he just had nothing to say. So I stopped talking. He just stood up and started washing up - we were listening to music and talking at the kitchen table. He finished and asked if I wanted a cup of tea. I said I didn't. He asked if I were sure. I said i was. He said he was making one and taking it to bed. I said ok.

And so he did.

I've just been up to get something from the bedroom and he is siting in bed with his cup of tea scrolling through Facebook.

I'm now sitting in the garden silently screaming into the abyss because I really, really don't matter to anyone.

And I spend a lot of time outside and in nature, being active and doing stuff but i do it all on my own (or with my partner).

No one is ever interested in doing it with me even if its something i know they also enjoy.

Try that last friend mentioned OP. She obviously wants to see more of you. I’m unsure why she thinks she can’t suggest it though, that’s the bit you need to work out? If that’s how she sees it next time you meet up find out something she’d love to do and plan the date there and then.

all the things you mention like volunteering are you organising things. Ne. Time you try something take a back seat so someone else is doing that part of it and see how that goes. It’s possible they think you are too busy to see them so that’s why they never reach out.

i am no expert obviously as currently I have no friends but I’m good at working people out to know if I need to avoid them or not.

This is a wonderful post. Good advice and wisdom. Thank you.

It’s really not. There’s so much wrong with it.

Happy people can be lonely so that’s BS. We need to stop pathologising the need for people to want a few connections they can be close to. People who enjoy spending time with them and reach out to them if they haven’t heard from them for a while. A person who can’t wait to chat to then in the evenings about their day, about politics, about aliens or whatever!

They don’t have to be depressed or sad or lacking in self esteem to want this. It is normal and healthy.

Sigh The bar is so low here for men. This is her partner not her milkman, she should be able to pour out her heart to him, and if she can’t whats the point? Life can often get harder. There will be more challenges. If he doesn’t even want to chat with her most of the time this will be adding to her loneliness. There’s a reason why some people say they are lonely in a marriage than being single. Being physically close to someone who lacks curiosity towards you and limits how close you are is heartbreaking.

OP wants to feel seen and feel truly known, IMO she won’t do that living with a man who’s happy to be a relative stranger to her.

OP the only difference between a friend and a partner shouldn’t just be that you have sex with the latter. It should also be that your partner - as opposed to your friend- is your person you feel most comfortable to cry on, to lean on, to depend on in an emergency. Of course other relationships are important too and in some exceptions he might not be the person to go to, but if as a general rule you can’t go to your partner with the deep stuff your relationship is shit.

Accept his cup of tea and go up to bed with him. I don't think he can fix this for you but he might be able to give you a cuddle while you work it out yourself @Bigtrapeze

Come on!! Why didn’t he hug her? Why is the burden on her to ask when she’s just been deliberately vulnerable and poured out her heart? I’m telling you my 6 year old godson would hug or comfort anyone in his family who sat there saying they felt like they didn’t matter to anyone. Are you really suggesting a grown man didn’t know how to do that. You shouldn’t need to ask for a hug in that situation!

And why are you suggesting it’s hormones when she’s given clear examples of why she feels like this? She’s not imagining that no one is reaching out to her when she stops texting first or that her partner lacks interest in connecting deeply with her or even casually connecting to her!. Yes hornones can make you be more sensitive but it doesn’t mean there’s no issue.

peptobiz thank you! 🧡

I hope my post came across as sympathetically as I intended it, @SilentScreamingIntoTheAbyss — I experienced CSA, and it left me a hypervigilant, very guarded adult who is reliant on some unhealthy forms of self-regulation, added to which I was brought up by a mother who taught me and my sisters to be shy, compliant and never express an opinion. I absolutely get that it’s hard to unpick deeply ensconced scripts. But it can be done. The first step is centring yourself, in all aspects, the whole and the wounded, the angry and the sad and the vulnerable and all the rest.

You say you only present a partial version of yourself to others because you’d worry what they thought. Yet that more palatable, partial version of you isn’t making nourishing friendships — so what is there to lose? See what a less partial, more authentic version of yourself, if put out there, might do. Yes, you will absolutely at some point show something private and valuable to the wrong person, but we’ve all done it at some point. There will be people who gel with a less defended, less ‘polite’ version of you, warts and all. And you will feel less like a bystander in your own life.

Awww, OP! I wish I could give you a hug.

I think your partner sounds absolutely crap. Your partner is also supposed to be your good friend, and you wouldn’t stay friends with someone who totally ignored you when you opened up about something upsetting you, would you? To just completely ignore you and be like “Well, I’m going to bed with a cup of tea!” is totally unacceptable. Also could count as emotionally abusive, considering that you told him you feel as if you don’t matter to anyone, and his response was…..to treat you as if you don’t matter. He doesn’t deserve you.

Was there someone in your childhood who treated you like you don’t matter? Just that you seem to be close to a number of people who treat you that way, and it may not be an accident, subconsciously. We often re-create such situations in our adult lives in a subconscious and doomed attempt to “win” this time.

Or, it could just be that people are crap. MANY people are crap. They make crap friends and crap partners.

Now, take me. I don’t matter to many people, not in any significant sense. My parents are dead, I’m single since my husband left me, I have no kids and my sister makes sure I know that I’m low on her totem pole. I’ve also had MORE than enough crap friends. But so what if I don’t matter to people? As if THEIR judgement is the be-all and end-all! I matter to me. My self-respect is what counts. If other people don’t value me, that’s their loss. I really wouldn’t set much store by what others do.

My most recent crap-friend episode was after my dad died a couple of years ago. A so-called friend never bothered with me again. She would respond, but I never heard from her at all. I got SO FED UP with being the only one to reach out that I just stopped, and that was about eight months ago. I haven’t heard from her. I just dropped the rope. The good thing is that it also stopped me thinking about her.

You need to find yourself some better friends. They are out there!

Sigh, I want to give you a hug too, OP. Like your partner should've. I just re-read my reply and felt it came over a bit cold, I'm sorry.

I really don't like the word "victim", it comes from the Karpman drama triangle model that therapists often use to illustrate how we fall into repetitive modes of relating to others: oppressor, victim and rescuer. I bet you've heard of it. In therapy, I railed against the suggestion that I might be a victim. What, me? No, I'm fighting my "oppressors", I'm not just lying down defeated, a victim. But after a while, I came to see that, however upsetting the idea, however much I rejected the suggestion I was passive, I was nonetheless making a choice simply by staying stuck where I was. Fighting, railing, yes. But still there, still leaving marks on a brick wall with my head. Still taking refuge in the idea that what I was doing could somehow change other people who had hardly any connection to me. I WAS stuck, and I did have to accept I was fulfilling the victim role in a battle with people (at work) who didn't give a damn and were never going to change. And that's the choice we all have to make - to change what WE do, to get past an impasse.

In your place I would be talking to your partner seriously about his attitude. It's not good enough for him to just absent himself from you at a time when you were despairing. Gah, men are so often so inadequate when it comes to dealing with emotion, both their own & other people's. We're so often brought up explicitly to ignore & bury our emotions, especially if we're of an older generation. But I learned, with lots of help from girlfriends and DW, so your partner can too. He's afraid, I'd bet money on that. Afraid that talking about your emotions will open up his own. He has to learn that that is exactly what's needed.

I wish you well, OP, and send you all my sympathy. I'm in this position with friends too; it's a massive societal issue so the last thing we should do is take it personally. People are afraid of genuine connection. And at the end of the day, all we can do is change our own behaviour. Change how you relate to friends, including dropping those who seem incapable of responding; above all change what you ask of your partner. He's worth your effort. Don't stay stuck in victim mode.

Apologies for any offence caused to OP, or you, peptobiz. My post was very early in this thread before any of the further information was supplied. Sorry if I called it wrong.