Don't feel capable of forming new friendships because of desperation

I realized yesterday that I have (yet another) problem. My original problem is that most of the time I feel very, very lonely. In short, I have some classmates I talk to at college but right now I'm done with my courses and just doing my graduation project, and I never really met with them outside school. They, and pretty much almost everyone else in this country only seems to be interested in partying and football. The very few nerds around are only into RPGs and anime, not really my things. There are no groups or communities involving my interests on my city, at least none that shows their existence online.

I'm 24 years old, and in 19 years I haven't had a female friend, so even less a girlfriend. The core of my SA is to socialize with women, in an engineering faculty there aren't really any scenarios that encourage this. Trust me when I tell you that my only chance is to approach absolute strangers, as likely as that could be to work, or wait to be ridiculously lucky, which never happens to me. I am working with therapy to eventually build relationships (not only romantic ones) in person, but in my current situation I don't see that happening any time soon, if anything not until as a minimum a year and a half where I might study abroad in the US (I have a tiny and with my depression fading hope of being more likely to meet like-minded people there).

But then in the meantime, as you know in way way or another, loneliness sucks big time. The problem I realized about yesterday is that, as the title says, I don't feel capable of forming new friendships because of desperation. You'll see, the thing is that in the scenario I've described, my only option left for the moment it's online friends. But, and here's the freaking but, I thought I had several online friends but many of them let me down or bailed on me for dumb reasons, and ended up with just a few, and due to location or their schedules they can't be online at all the moments I'm online, specially at nights. This leaves me feeling very lonely and sad. I am aware of how extremely unhealthy is this attitude. I do have my hobbies, but certainly they just can't completely replace human interaction. It gets worst because due to this feeling of void I crave for a deep connection, on a level that sincerely exceeds a friendship. That's why no longer feel capable of forming new friendships, I feel that I am good with the ones I have right now. If someone wants to know me and try to be friends I'm cool with that, but since I have this silly desperation for being in a relationship, when see any girl I find interesting online I prefer to just avoid contact her since I can't offer a sincere friendship, because if I'd try to be her friend I'll most likely would end up attached to her and feeling bad out of jealousy, not to mention a "what's the point" feeling that completely discourages me from wanting to talk to them anyway.

Right now I guess I rather endure the loneliness than a hurtful friendship, but it still sucks and I wish I just stopped caring altogether.
 

selon

Well-known member
Aaah it sucks to feel that way :( From my own experience I just know that it comes and goes in waves.. but giving in to this feeling of despair is the worst thing you can do. It'll just drag you deeper down. I don't have any real advice except for hoping that you'll manage to try to meet people and talk to people. It's easy to wish you'd stop caring but once you actually stop it's a lot harder to get that feeling back!
 

vj288

not actually Fiona Apple
Friendships is a label for something, so the first thing that I would ask is what exactly is it your looking for in a friendship? I just mean, if you had a friend what exactly is it you'd want to do with them? With depression, it is hard to make friends because you a lot of times you don't feel like doing anything, and thus friends don't serve much purpose.

But past that, are there things you'd like to do with people? I don't have to share common interests or have a whole lot in common to be a friend with someone (although it helps), just find some people who you can interact or do things with. Something like going to the movies is something you can do with a group of people you have little in common with, and discuss afterwards. Food, as we all know is a topic just about every human being on the planet can get on board with, and thus going out to eat is something that people can always do together.

I'm far from an expert on making friends or starting relationships though so take all my words with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how to find them, but I'm sure somewhere there are people around you that you'd like to spend time with, even if the two of you didn't have all that much in common. Maybe if you take an interest in some of the things other people like, they would in turn take an interest in your likes. People may surprise you,give them a chance?
 

MikeyC

Well-known member
You're right in that loneliness sucks, and it hurts a lot when you feel that nobody really cares about you.

Making friends is hard, because you have to initiate a conversation with someone who you don't know and hopefully you click. All I can suggest is you delve into what you like and hopefully you'll meet someone that way.
 
It's hard to make actual, good friends. Just the thought of approaching people makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. As does the thought of being approached.
 

EternalIce

Well-known member
I have similar problem as you, it is very discouraging. You can't progress because you're discouraged and you're discourage because you can't progress.
But it shouldn't be this hard to get in a relationship! Almost everyone has one, I just can't understand... But I like to remember that there really isn't a point to anything ultimately, so there doesn't actually have to be a next step, eg: the point of having a girlfriend doesn't have to be to eventually get married.
 
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