Loneliness: not knowing what to do or expect

[L. Jay Echoes]

Whenever you start a new skill, the first thing you notice is how bad you are at it. Beginning artists have to face how uncoordinated they are or how blande their perspective is; amatuer writers run into trouble pinpointing conflict or constructing a narrative; rookie musicians will foul up their timing, dwell on the wrong notes, ignore warm-up excercises… I'm sure you get the picture.

In my case, it's making friends. I've gone to the emotional support channel a few times to talk about this, and I feel the need to make it public. I need help. I'm not good at interacting with people outside of a superficial passing or a classroom discussion. I think part of this has to do with the fact that I've spent so much of my life as a shut-in that my desire for close relationships has starved. My parents' attitude towards my generation has been a factor, but for now, I'm going to try to leave them out of this.

The term "friend" is so broadly used that I need to be a little more specific: I want to find people who like talking about serious and personal things. I want to find a group that will help me mature emotionally. I find casual conversation and small talk extremely boring, and sometimes even painful. This combination of preferences leads me to keep people at arm's length under the guise of respecting their boundaries, and that puts me in a very lonely place.

The odd thing is that I didn't necessarily feel lonely until I started my networking season. I was happy to work from home on my art, stories, music, whatever. I was satisfied with going to church. It was only when I started looking for a group of friends outside of my religious community that all the things I am bad at socially began to surface. And it's agonizing.

I have always considered hurt feelings to be a sign of weakness on my part although I was taught that others' hurt feelings was a sign of my moral inferiority. I would like to get to a place where I am not so wounded by petty things, such as getting turned down for a handshake or stumbling across a YouTube video criticizing my idols. I would like to be able to hold down a job and value my employment enough to weather shitty bosses and not quit after a few reprimands. I am not at that place right now. I have the emotional maturity of a first-grader.

Here's my attempt at showing self-awareness: Today, I stormed out of a few Discord servers because I didn't find what anybody had to say to me comforting. I was angry. A few minutes a go, I left a major furry telegram group after complaining about never getting hugged (I'll get to that  in a minute) and a handful of people tried to show some sympathy. Leaving like this is not the actions of a mature adult. It's childish, I know. I don't know what effect this is having on the people who see what I read, but I do know it's not condusive to a good-term relationship. I can't promise I won't do it again. I'm not great at predicting my own actions.

I can't mature by myself. This is why I seek the things I do. The things that upset me are so trivial that it's embarassing. It's especially embarassing when I try to talk things out with people in person. At the best of times, I don't make eye contact because I have to concentrate so hard on my word choice, I can barely stay focused on a single topic, and I my eagerness for an in-depth conversation on a personal matter comes out in dirty jokes or overly personal question. I've tried to mitigate this last one, but it still happens. I also freeze up emotionally and intellectually when shit goes South. I've caught fevers because my immune system went offline when I've been on the receiving end of a tirade. This is one of two extremes of fears that I have; pissing people off by missing something that is apparently so obvious that I apparently am deliberately pissing them off, the other extreme being my fear of scaring people off with my overwhelming neediness.

This brings me to something I've discovered about myself, something that, now that I have words for it, has comes as much of as surprise: I crave affection. Physical affection. Not sex, just embraces. This is surprising because I've always hated physical contact. I hate the feel of skin-to-skin contact, and I've been reprimanded for not meeting someone else's need for affection, which leaves me wanting affection from a fursuiter. It may sound weird, coming from a 28-year-old man, but I suspect that it's the result of nearly three decades of empty, guilt-driven hugs and kisses from my parents. Virtual hugs do not cut it. It's just about the only thing that keeps me hanging on to this local chat group.

My honesty is all I have to offer at the moment. I can't stay this way anymore. I fully intend on going through with everything I started during networking season, but even what little I've done has expended a lot of energy. I don't know where to go from here.

[anoni]

Well I'll give you a few pointers, rather than sympathy or reliance, more constructive things to work on cause maybe that'd help more?

  Now by the sounds of it you want to make deep, non-surface level friends, and doing so is actually rather straightforward I find, but being straightforward doesn't mean it's easy. So lets talk about some of the things you can do.

  1. Show interest in someone: Not romantic interest mind you, I just mean interest. One of the things people really like doing is talking about themselves, if you want to create a strong friendship you have to show you are interested in hearing that. This interest should be genuine though, but you may find someone you were originally not interested in, becomes interesting once you know a little bit more about them! So basically ask questions, how was your day, what are you doing? Is everything ok? These questions should be all about them, you shouldn't go "How was your day?" "IT was good I did X" "OH that reminds me of when I did X!" No, you shouldn't be waiting for your turn to speak about yourself, you should just listen, ask questions and take notes. That's the first step of getting someone a little closer to you. (Keep in mind if they ask YOU a question then the roles are reversed and you can talk about yourself, but if they start talking about themselves again go back to listening, this is not permanent and is just at the start of the relationship).

  2.  Becoming vulnerable: Deep relationships are built at the core on a sense of mutual vulnerability and trust. Vulnerability and trust is putting yourself in a situation where the other person could harm you, and doing so can be frightening and potentially dangerous. One of the tricks to maintaining a good level of healthy vulnerability and trust is to keep at whatever pace they're going AND that you're comfortable with. What this means is as you ask questions about them, they'll eventually reveal more and more facets of their life, they'll start revealing things about them that they consider personal, and sometimes even secret. You reveal at their pace, when they say something they consider not public but also not too personal, you should then reveal only on that level, not your deepest darkest secret right away. Relationships take time to build, sometimes in months, sometimes in years, a relationship that blossoms in only a week is usually a very unstable one full of high peaks and very low ebs. Learning not to reveal too much too quickly or too little too slowly, is important, moving at their pace. And when they reveal something secret, its helpful to know that they know something about you too.

  3. Helping and supporting: One of the important things about a relationship is being helping, when your friend is down you should be there to help them (and ideally the same would be said in your situation). But again you follow 1. and 2., you don't start off a relationship by skipping to 3, sometimes when your friend is feeling down they may not want to talk, you haven't created that level of trust yet and, in those situations you should just say "I'm here if you need me", remember, relationships require patience (I should also mention even deep friends may not want to talk all the time, people handle problems in different ways!). Conversely you shouldn't start a relationship by asking for help yourself, that's the origin of an unhealthy relationship! You can ask help from people at any time but if you want to create a strong relationship, you need to start at the surface, and you need to start with "I'm your friend" not "I want you to be my therapist". But it is at those times when people are at their worst, after a mutual trust has been gained, that the strongest of bonds of form.

There's more to it but the rest you kinda have to figure out on your own, making a strong relationship requires work. But eventually the "work" won't feel like work, and you'll have a friend you can talk to with just about anything.