A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:Hi everyoneI am currently re-evaluating the meaning of friendship and feel lost and would love to hear about your opinions, experiences and suggestions. I’d describe myself as rather introverted, a bit socially awkward but quite a loner. I’ve lived in 3 different countries in the past 10 years and I always manage to make a few good friends in each (even if it usually takes me a long time). I see friends on 1 to 1 for drinks/meals and talk about fun or personal subjects. However I am one of those people who can’t stand always being around people (I find it draining my energy after a while) and need my personal space (e.g. I can’t go on trips with other people for several days in a row) – The only person who’s company I can enjoy 24/7 is my boyfriend.As an example, I spent 3 days with a close friend from university. As we now live in different countries, we hadn’t seen each other in over a year. At first, I was happy and excited but gradually on those three days, I was getting more and more annoyed of her behavior (she’s my total opposite: loud, attention-seeking and can be a know it all) and so I was relieved when I left. We’re still in touch though but I don’t feel like we are as close as before. She is asking to meet up for another weekend, but I don’t want to because I know that I will end up annoyed/drained with her. I will probably try to delay as long as possible seeing her but I don’t know what to say because I don’t think she will understand. In fact, I feel more and more distant from people I used to qualify as close friends. As we are in different countries, and rarely see each other (maybe once a year if we are lucky) we experience so many different things that I think just changes the person you are from when we used to know each other. Example, I can contact them to confide if I have a problem and exchange some news but yet again I cannot count on them to help me if I do have a problem as we are in different countries. This makes me feel sad as we are growing apart. Another thing is that in general, I feel more and more bitter towards people and friendship. I feel like usually people take what they can from you and don’t return anything. I’ve never been ripped off per say but I feel that in the majority of cases people call you their friend, when it suits them. Example, I did a small/tiny favor to this guy from my social circle, and never once did I get a “thank you”, or I have this other person who is always insisting on meeting me and ends up cancelling at the last moment. Or there’s always a few friends who want to meet when they are feeling down but when they are happy I almost don’t hear from them. I know that humans are not perfect (counting me first of course!) but I feel like I am more and more distancing myself from people, expecting less and becoming more guarded and feeling that real friendship doesn’t exist. I just have enough friends (but I don’t consider them as “besties”) to have some kind of social life but not enough to have close friends like I used to. Basically I wanted to know what’s the experience of friendship, your point of view, or how you get by when you have to deal with people, if maybe this is a general feeling, and that maybe that gets enhanced when growing up or if this can change. Thanks for reading everything!
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