Who here has given up on a social life?

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I sort of have but not completely. This pandemic has affected some of my friendships. I have a couple of friends (one Aspie, the other Fragile-X) who aren't into social media and aren't the sort to talk on the phone or text. So because I haven't been allowed to meet up with them this year I have kind of lost touch. I do try to hold the friendship above water by texting every now and then to see how they're doing but to be honest there's not much to talk about in 2020, as everybody's doing basically the same thing day in day out. One of my friends have been on furlough most of this year and hasn't been out only to the local supermarket.
I have another friend but she lives on her own and the pandemic has isolated her so much that she's become withdrawn from the world and has sunken into a deep depression, so she's not up to talking on the phone at all, and she doesn't do social media either.

Yep, this pandemic has really torn people apart. The only friends I'm closest to now are the people at work.

5 years seem like an entirely different lifetime to me now.
If I didn't know any better, might as well ask who the heck wrote this under my own username...

To elaborate, the year 2008 was the time I had a major burnout, got depressed enough to practically quit school and almost not leaving the house for at least of 2 years worth of time.



If I can send a message to my past self; this very poster is 19, almost 20...


Still not interested having a social life -- but this time, both online or offline...

Still as satisfied, if not more.
But this doesn't mean I do not get bored enough to get involved in any one.

I basically have since some point in junior high. After a couple years of depression and loneliness, I realized that I’m actually happiest alone.

All my life (or at least since secondary school) it's been a case of 'friends add to my life but don't make or break it'.

Nasty people break it. I don't like when people are mean to me.

But being alone doesn't bother me. I enjoy both solitude and having friends/pleasant acquaintances.

Being around nice people is nice but it's hard to know when someone is a friend versus a pleasant acquaintance. If I was rebuilding society from scratch, there would be a process of saying 'do you want to be my friend' just like there's a process of asking for someone to be a bf/gf. Even as you get older that process of gf/bf changes and it becomes a thing where you only ask for someone's hand in marriage and turn the rest into 'do you want to go for coffee'. Too vague for me tbh.

I used to think I'd be better off with no social contact, so I endeavoured to see if it was true. On the contrary, I ended up quite sad and frustrated. For many years I filled my life with "things", "experiences", "accomplishments", to see if it was better than "people", "friends", "family". I came to the conclusion that although I am thoroughly socially incompetent, I'd rather be bad at it and persist to make connections with people, than live in a empty life of things.

Bit by bit I'm picking up my social life again, and although I never expect to wake up with a hundred new messages in my phone, a decent social life is worth more than any thing I can collect, or experience or knowledge I can put in my head.

i'm the only person who groks me.

I suppose I gave up on having any footprint of a social life mainly because my social anxiety got too bad again. I am so far in my comfort zone that this anxiety is likely to stay for a long while.
Despite this, I have really enjoyed spending a lot of time on my own. It's very comforting and drama-free.

I had a limited social life pre-Covid (I have very few friends).

With Covid, my social life is essentially non-existent.

I'm ungiving up. If I can charm over someone who by all intents and purposes should view me as not suitable I can probably make friends with people too. Even if socializing is stressful, sitting in my room moping isn't gonna make me feel any better.

Covid equals no RL socialization ,

I work with several thousand other people who are all forced to socialize IRL on a daily basis. Clearly I can socialize on Saturday with the same people I socialized with M-F.

gave up a long time ago

not worth cost benefit analysis

The. Juice ain’t worth the Squeeze .


?

Never had one. I did make vague attempts at starting one at various times, but I could never find sufficient interest or drive to keep any kind of social relationship active. I just never got anything out of it that was worth even a fraction of the effort involved.

I have given up on meeting people with the same interests in Houston (because there aren't any).

For years, I have planned to relocate to Seattle to meet people with said interests, but the high cost of living there is keeping that from happening. Instead of doing something I enjoy, I am looking for work that pays at least $100,000/year in order to live there, even if it's something I hate. Seattle was my third choice, after being priced out of NYC and the Bay Area.

Though I believe social skills are important, I am through being told to
1. Work on my social skills
2. Socialize more

All the while, the other party refuses to bend while I am on the one who has to bend over backward for them. Sometimes, you have to learn to be your own friend and talk to yourself in the mirror.

"Hey, what do you want to do today?" Then you take yourself to do the things you enjoy.