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Tealeaf

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Just something I've been mulling over, not necessarily something that needs a response... although I'd appreciate any insight or similar experiences. It's been a long time, like a really long time, since I was in a relationship, and now that there's some established mutual interest I've had to sit down and think long and hard on whether or not I want to proceed at all, and it's shed some light on how I approach closeness with others these days.

Funny, isn't it? We complain about being lonely and then we find reasons to second-guess letting people in.

In my case, this is someone I game with who runs in my circle of online friends. He knows the people I consider my friends and has for several years, and they know him--they're all great people I wish I could have met locally so we could actually hang out. I've come out of my shell and mellowed out a lot in part due to their influence and friendship. Things have just naturally progressed to the point where we questioned if there was any more-than-friends interest on either side, and that's as far as it's gone.

In my case, I made it all the way through my mid-20's without getting married or having kids. I feel like I missed the boat for doing that at the usual age and am now on some alternative path where I need to seriously reconsider who I am and what I'm doing regardless of whether or not I have friends, am close to my family, or have anyone to call my significant other. What I've done up until now hasn't been working and I don't know how someone else is supposed to fit into this, outside of my friends who I care about but am largely separate from. They do their stuff, I do mine, we meet in the middle sometimes to help each other out.

This is a great person, by all means. We're comfortable around each other and actually share a lot at a glance. The amount of time we spent alone growing up, the things we took comfort in, how we tried to learn about ourselves, the kind of people that we want to be. I enjoy the connection we have. I just feel uncomfortable diverting my attention from my own life, or making promises about things like being able to maintain or close a long-distance relationship when I don't even know what job I'm going to have a few months from now when I'm certified in my field. I don't even know what to do with me.

I considered denying that I care about him that way when asked, but didn't. I feel like I've been in my shell somewhat again and I didn't want to make excuses for not being honest about my feelings and my friendship. It's so easy to say, "Oh, that would never work, that's a bad idea!" and stick your head in the sand without considering that it may be possible. That's the problem with quite a few people who are lonely, anxious, or depressed, though, we lock ourselves up and shoot down anyone or anything that tries to approach and hunker down even deeper in our own space. Then we wonder why we have so little and the rest of the world is passing us by, bruises and scrapes and all.

I've largely covered up my loneliness and nihilism the past year by acting like I don't care, or with humor, or just by trying to help other people so that I don't have to think about how disconnected I feel from the world around me. It gives me a fleeting sense of everything being normal, or of being a "good person", or of having contributed something meaningful so that I'm actually part of the goings-on. A lot of my confidence really comes from the fact that nobody's very close, everyone's at arm's length where they don't get to see that much and I'm not really affected if they come or go, anyway.

This was just easier when I wasn't so conscious of it. I know that the only thing to do really is to keep seeing where this goes, talking it out as things come up, and being honest, but I think the closest term I can think of for what I'm feeling is "growing pains", ironically enough.
 
Well i think online medium its good for develp knowledge read a lot etc it can be good for meeting new people but i think you should leave onlin world if you want real friends .Take out of yur confort zone take the risks to change your life if its neede move to another city ,change job etc until you find what its make you happy
 

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