Resigned to Loneliness
I have finally come to the realisation that most people just don't like me. I also now see that perpetually trying to make friends ultimately leads to me being hurt. Therefore I have become resigned to loneliness and no longer try.
When I mentioned this to my doctor he immediately said that he thought I had depression and that I needed anti-depressants. But the thing is, I don't feel depressed. Yeah, I feel sad about it but I haven't come to this reality through mental illness. I come to this reality because it's true.
It may well be true that I'm a lovely person but that doesn't change the fact that others don't like me. I am sick of people invalidating that truth. Do you know what I mean? When others say that it's not true, lots of people like you, you just need to get out more, try harder, relax a bit blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
I'm guessing that Wrong Planet is the one place where others will know exactly what I'm talking about. Correct?
Yes I know how you feel, but I think the reality is that I make myself believe that people don't like me, in order to justify my isolation. Yes it's true I am different and have been subjected to some really horrible treatment by certain people (which still carries on today), but the truth is I have this void between me and the rest of the world. It's a feeling of somehow being different and not being able to understand or relate to them. I have always felt like I'm on the fringe of society, never being part of it, instead just being an outsider looking in.
I know I need to take the plunge and jump into the ocean of people and acceptance , but I just can't gather the courage to do this. Something in me is just too tentative and afraid to try it, and thus the void exists. I know myself better than anyone, and deep down i know I will never take the leap. I can only hope that someone drags me in and cushions my fall.
So I guess for me anyway saying that people hate me is easier to accept than to accept my own weakness and timidness. That's basically the reason why I've resigned myself to solitude. Don't know if anyone else feels this way, but yeah that's my two cents worth.
No, I like to think there's always hope. I've long given up on being popular with the mainstream, but I've noticed that I can do quite well if I stick to oddballs, weirdos, dropouts, alternativists, hippies, anarchists, musicians and artists. If it wasn't for music, I'd probably have stopped bothering with people, but the shared special interest works wonders......if I'm not feeling very social, I can just focus on the music and they don't chuck me out. In some ways, playing music with people is socialising.
I've read that a lot of Aspies give up on socialising because it's just too damned hard and it so often goes horribly wrong. But Aspies also commonly feel loneliness, I don't think that many of us start out as loners. I think it's just that we soon notice we're a lot more successful dealing with things than dealing with people.
So my advice is, if you feel lonely, accept it as nature's way of making you become a bit more outgoing, and do something social. One good rule is to always make sure you know what the common purpose is between you and the other person......groups with no true common purpose usually collapse. "Just keeping each other company" is a perfectly good purpose, but be sure that's what it really is.
To have anything like a reasonable social life, I have to make it a special interest. If I don't, then I can't keep up with the social flow at all.
I know it's often very difficult. My father (who was full of Aspie traits) practically became a hermit in the end, though all the way through his life he'd shown signs of wanting company. I agreed with his reasons, but I could tell he was lonely, even though he claimed he was fine on his own....in unguarded moments he'd say things like "I have so much love to give, but there's nowhere for it to go." So I felt he'd made the wrong decision, and I resolved that I'd never throw in the towel with people like he did.
I take breaks from socialising, pretty long ones at that, but I always know I'll be back. There are some pretty good people out there. It's up to me to find them among the rubbish.
So my advice is, don't give up, unless you're lucky enough not to feel loneliness.
I know I need to take the plunge and jump into the ocean of people and acceptance , but I just can't gather the courage to do this. Something in me is just too tentative and afraid to try it, and thus the void exists. I know myself better than anyone, and deep down i know I will never take the leap. I can only hope that someone drags me in and cushions my fall.
I don't think it has to be a plunge. It's possible to advance in small ways, like a having short chat with somebody, or working out a few questions (really there should be no logical problem with creating questions, if you want to know what kind of person you're dealing with, though it's probably better done "offline" and stored for future use in the field), or you could look at your activities and see if there's anything in there that people would be interested in if you shared it with them, or you can read a bit of psychology. Just keep chipping away at it, making your interactions better by degrees. It still takes courage (and hard work), but it doesn't demand a lot all at once.
I used to feel that my "big test" would be to walk into a room full of strangers and make a friend or two by the end of the session. I even achieved that once, when I really set my mind to the task, but eventually I realised that I'd never be able to do it as a matter of course, and although I can still feel bad about myself when alone in a crowd and getting nowhere, I've pretty much accepted that it's not my way......there are other ways of making friends, you don't have to be the life and soul of the party, you can look for people who don't like big parties. But I know what you mean - when I'm in the thick of a social event, it's very hard for me to understand why I can't just go up to people and start talking with them.
That's all well and good, but I'm not timid and I am outgoing. I have no problem joining social clubs, special interest clubs, making contacts and such like. But the fact remains that the best I can expect is to be tolerated.
In the past I have even thought that I made friends. But these relationships are never reciprocated. I do have 'friends' who are really nice people. If I contact them and arrange to meet, then we meet and chat and get on fine. But nobody ever contacts me. They'll come to my birthday party but I never get invited to theirs. Does anyone understand what I mean?
And the worst thing, the most painful is when one of these friends decides, out of nowhere, that you're persona non grata and suddenly it's like you've murdered their cat. It happens with everyone sooner or later.
In the past I have even thought that I made friends. But these relationships are never reciprocated. I do have 'friends' who are really nice people. If I contact them and arrange to meet, then we meet and chat and get on fine. But nobody ever contacts me. They'll come to my birthday party but I never get invited to theirs. Does anyone understand what I mean?
And the worst thing, the most painful is when one of these friends decides, out of nowhere, that you're persona non grata and suddenly it's like you've murdered their cat. It happens with everyone sooner or later.
Oh, I see. I get invited to quite a bit these days, though it's nearly all for the music.....without that I'd have very little. Lack of invites has bothered me at times, and I've sometimes thought that if I made a point of never inviting them until they'd invited me, I'd soon be left with nobody. Being rather non-invitational myself, that's more or less what happens. I've never been invitational to the point where any reciprocity shortfall would be noticeable......I seem generally very well-defended against evidence of rejection. So I think one of the reasons I don't readily invite is because I don't want to get the result you're getting. Not reciprocating a birthday party invite does seem hard to dismiss - it's not as if you have an invisible personality like mine, where people could easily forget I existed. How many times has that happened though?
I think it's possible to learn not to be lonely even if you are resigned to aloneness. Loneliness seems at its root to come from being cut off from the world in some way. It's hard to explain. It's the reason a person can be "lonely in a crowd" and another person can be happy even with no friends. It's not just some fixed value (the way people talk about introversion and extroversion can make it sound like that though). But when you develop a genuine, solid connection to the most important parts of the world around you, it's much harder to be lonely even if you're alone.
I started off incapable of loneliness, then as I got cut off from certain things I became more capable of loneliness even if I had friends (real or fake, either way). I ended up developing more and more connection to those parts of the world that are most important to me. Now, the only times I get lonely are when something's physically wrong with my body and it's throwing my mind out of whack.
The only problem in all this is to explain what those connections are, and what they are to. I can't do that. Don't know how. But I do know that this completely solved my loneliness problem regardless of presence or absence of other people. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm saying it's easy. It's not easy. And for some people (if they can't figure out where the connections are that they need to make) it may not be possible. But for me, it's been worth the struggle of at least trying.
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
In the past I have even thought that I made friends. But these relationships are never reciprocated. I do have 'friends' who are really nice people. If I contact them and arrange to meet, then we meet and chat and get on fine. But nobody ever contacts me. They'll come to my birthday party but I never get invited to theirs. Does anyone understand what I mean?
And the worst thing, the most painful is when one of these friends decides, out of nowhere, that you're persona non grata and suddenly it's like you've murdered their cat. It happens with everyone sooner or later.
Oh, I see. I get invited to quite a bit these days, though it's nearly all for the music.....without that I'd have very little. Lack of invites has bothered me at times, and I've sometimes thought that if I made a point of never inviting them until they'd invited me, I'd soon be left with nobody. Being rather non-invitational myself, that's more or less what happens. I've never been invitational to the point where any reciprocity shortfall would be noticeable......I seem generally very well-defended against evidence of rejection. So I think one of the reasons I don't readily invite is because I don't want to get the result you're getting. Not reciprocating a birthday party invite does seem hard to dismiss - it's not as if you have an invisible personality like mine, where people could easily forget I existed. How many times has that happened though?
Always, all my life. Every birthday I have ever had, I've either had a party or gone out for curry or something. I've never been invited to anyone else's.
It's not even just 'friends'. It's the same from family as well. I have 4 brothers and sisters. I send presents for birthdays and christmas for them and all their children. My daughter and I have never recieved so much as a postcard. They don't even acknowledge receiving the parcels I send.
I'm not saying this to elicit pity, just to demomostrate that this is the reality I have to deal with.
I thought I would never find friends but, though my special interest, I have met people and been accepted. I know I will never be 'popuolar' but beleive me youself speical interest is the way in.
join a group and your knowledge be respected and admired and you can actually talk to people about your favoutire subjuect and even learn more from them.
Always, all my life. Every birthday I have ever had, I've either had a party or gone out for curry or something. I've never been invited to anyone else's.
It's not even just 'friends'. It's the same from family as well. I have 4 brothers and sisters. I send presents for birthdays and christmas for them and all their children. My daughter and I have never recieved so much as a postcard. They don't even acknowledge receiving the parcels I send.
I'm not saying this to elicit pity, just to demomostrate that this is the reality I have to deal with.
Ooh.....that's quite a lot of times then. When you're with those people, have you noticed any problems between you and them, or does everything seem to go quite well?
I'm not saying this is what's happened to you, but Dad somehow managed to get ignored by most people after Mum died. I can only guess at the reasons - he was rather jovial by the end of the funeral reception, and I thought at the time that he might be offending people by seeming not to be unhappy about Mum's death. Certainly people were looking sightly anxious as they left. But he was also reknowned for talking people's back legs off about his special interests, he wasn't really the listening type, and I suspect that people didn't want to be trapped. He was undiagnosed, so nobody could work out what was going on with him, and he never really admitted to his social performance being in trouble. His only social success was with children, and with people who he could share his hobby with on a one-to-one basis. He wouldn't touch clubs - because of corruption, he maintained, though I suspect he might have been unable to make anybody in those clubs like him very much.
Always, all my life. Every birthday I have ever had, I've either had a party or gone out for curry or something. I've never been invited to anyone else's.
It's not even just 'friends'. It's the same from family as well. I have 4 brothers and sisters. I send presents for birthdays and christmas for them and all their children. My daughter and I have never recieved so much as a postcard. They don't even acknowledge receiving the parcels I send.
I'm not saying this to elicit pity, just to demomostrate that this is the reality I have to deal with.
Ooh.....that's quite a lot of times then. When you're with those people, have you noticed any problems between you and them, or does everything seem to go quite well?
Not when I was child. They would all come and have a great time and completely ignore my presence. As an adult there is no problem that I am aware of. All hugs and kisses and see you again soon at the end. But then nothing unless I contact them. It's weird, it's like they are my friends but I'm not theirs.
The way you word your post makes me suspect you may have some depression too.
Seriously I don't have depression. When the doctor first said it, I went to see a psychologist and she didn't think I had depression either. Depression is a numbness, a greyness, a lack of sparkle, like your batteries have been drained. I have been there, a long time ago and this isn't it. This is sadness at walking away from a battle I realise I will never win. There's only so many times you can have a door slammed in your face before you decide better not knock again.
Not when I was child. They would all come and have a great time and completely ignore my presence. As an adult there is no problem that I am aware of. All hugs and kisses and see you again soon at the end. But then nothing unless I contact them. It's weird, it's like they are my friends but I'm not theirs.[/quote]
Yes that's weird. I've known one or two people who have been difficult to get a visit out of, though they always seemed happy enough with my company once when did get together. I sometimes wondered if they'd got fascinating secret lives that I couldn't compete with. Otherwise, I'm stumped. There has to be some basis for their preference.
Yes. I've been there. I have a problem with depression, and the way for me to fight depression is to accept that there is simply something about me that separates me from most of the human race. It is not the isolation that makes me depressed; it is the hope that I can somehow connect to people. It is the uncountable attempts to make some sort of connection to the people around me, which always seem to fail.
I haven't quite given up hope, but I am cautious. I only make a few attempts now. Those attempts are carefully chosen. I'm tired of always having to try so hard, for so little.
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"Like lonely ghosts, at a roadside cross, we stay, because we don't know where else to go." -- Orenda Fink