Supporting Character

[Joe Spaulding]

Wow! I joined this forum over four years ago and totally forgot it.

I feel like I'm the supporting character in everybody else's movie. People like me at least in the abstract, but it's a distant kind of friendship limited to a facebook comment about what a great guy I am or a vague promise that we should get together again soon.

I do have some friends I get together with once every couple of weeks or so, but I spend a lot of time a lone and lonely. For being well-liked at worked, it's a rare occurrence that anybody asks me if I want to grab lunch (like twice in 7 years rare).

I don't feel like my life is miserable. I've got a good job and a nice second income writing ebooks, but I really long for more. At 46, romance for me has been limited to a handful of dates and a lot of unrequited longing. I've about given up on love now, especially because I've gotten quite overweight I also feel that it's hard to make friends when everybody else has children or at least a spouse.

I've spent a lot of my life pretending I wasn't lonely and putting on a front. Most of the time I do keep occupied, but other times, I feel like there must be so much more than this to life.

 

[constant stranger]

I'm glad you're here, Joe. You express your situation pretty clearly. I feel common cause with the age thing and one's peers having spouses and children when oneself doesn't.

 

[Joe Spaulding]

Thanks so much for responding. After not getting replies for several days, I thought I was going to be lonely even on the lonely life forum. That's kind of depressing to stand out as extra lonely on a place lonely people go. The holidays are especially annoying to not have a family of my own.

 

[LonesomeLoner]

I also sometimes feel like this. I also have a limited social life, so you are not the only one.

Think of the positives, you have some people to spend time with sometimes.

 

[Sci-Fi]

You still have time for romance if you want it, there are people in their seventies who find love. It's not impossible.

Your life is what you make of it and take of it. I feel like a background character sometimes, just here to fill in the scenery for the major players. I'm fine with that though, I'm too socially awkward or as my boss put it at the Christmas party, anti-social. I'm not, I just don't like large crowds where there are people I don't really know and I have to go alone when everyone else brings someone. More strangers. If you want to be a major character though that's up to you to become one. Instead of waiting for someone to take the initiative why not try taking it yourself instead. You said you've only been asked to lunch a couple of times in seven years but have you ever asked someone to lunch? If you want more you have to take more.

 

[Sometimes]

FWIW, My Dad remarried at 75, my Grandmother at 80. Or thereabouts. So age doesn't rule you out!

I sometimes get the energy to be a "major character", but I can't sustain it. I don't like being in the spotlight too much, so I only take a little initiative socially. I kinda like the supporting role, too.