Hard to leave home base of friends/family...

Post Reply New Topic

I have a small but close group of friends... and I find it very hard to change directions in my life and move away from them. It took a while to get these friends, and the thought of getting new friends is very uncomfortable.

Same thing with family, I have a large extended family in the area, and moving away from them is also difficult.

It's like I have a core unit here... that keeps me normal/sane... and getting away from that is something I don't think I can do.

How about you? Do you have a core group of family friends that you stick close to...to the point that you would sacrifice a career/opportunities to stay around?

To be honest, I have trouble maintaining contact with my friends, even the ones who were really close. They're busy with Uni or work, and we're pretty much slowly drifting apart. I realize that I didn't have much in common with them in the first place, so it must've been lucky of me to even speak to them so much in the past. I find that in order to have stuff to talk about with them (when catching up), I have to do a things which they're interested in to create conversation. I find it a chore, especially when they don't do the same behavior towards my interests.

These days I don't really bother trying to make close friends, because I don't have much in common with most people in the first place to deepen the friendship. I find it really hard to talk to people if we don't have much in common, plus the fact that I pretty much dislike banter/frequent joking, so I don't have many opportunities unless I join clubs/groups/forums of what I enjoy doing.

I have a core group of friends, and we try to get together every friday. There's usually 3~5 people around including myself. That's about as much socializing I like... we also have various planned get-togethers when everyone brings more friends and wives/girlfriends, holidays and whatnot. The friday thing is usually 'guys' night.

I'm lucky to be a part of this group, I'm socially isolated otherwise... and all these people understand and get me. It takes a long time for people to warm up to me... and even then I don't socialize with them outside of the environment we know each other from. I never feed the relationship... and the other groups don't really give me anything to feed on either...

We do things though, play games of various sorts... mostly board games lately. With out this common ground, we would probably drift apart.