isolation

[dsfu]

Hi. Has anyone here ever had zero friends and no romantic relationships and improved your situation. If so, how?

Thank you.

 

[Aspychata]

Can you define a little more of improved your situation? We may not get what you mean.

 

[Judge]

I don't know if it improves one's situation in the aggregate, however isolation can achieve "balance" in reducing some of the negative aspects of social interactions one must deal with when they choose or have to be around others on a frequent basis.

It all depends on one's ability to successfully interact with others, as well as your friends or lovers have the ability to successfully interact with you. Not everyone is magically able to be a social butterfly and make every connection with people work. And for some of us, we may ultimately conclude over a significant amount of time that for whatever reasons, it just isn't happening. Where we may choose to shift our priorities elsewhere.

If one's social interactions with friends and/or lovers are consistently poor, then it's not difficult to surmise that isolation may well be a step above such toxic relationships. Allowing you "recovery time" when it comes to other types of more mandatory social interactions we don't like, but must be involved with, such as work. Where you might achieve some kind of balance with your social interactions, as opposed to only stressful failures.

I've lived in relative isolation for the last twelve years. I can still get lonely at times, but in general the minimal social contacts I maintain keep me sane. In spite of what Neurotypical psychologists may claim to the contrary.

 

[Giraffes]

Hi yes and no i have had and lost many friends, i have been married and had a long term relationship and now am alone again, i have a Daughter and Grand-Daughter. My 'connection' and 'disconnect' is due to so many factors..... some about my 'different way of being' and also due to my 'perceptions' of myself, self esteem, anxiety and depression.

 

[Els]

I had 0 friends until I was 13 and I really suffered from that through my childhood (but I had no clue how to make it nor what I was doing nor what others were doing), then I extensively trained myself to socialize and "be normal" and "don't be crazy" (I was thinking in those terms, it's so harsh). I can understand the frustration.
Then I did "improved the situation".
Had friends and romantic relationships. To be honest about it, it was very stressful to deal with, there were a lot of mandatory things to do that were really difficult to keep on doing continuously and were extremely overwhelming, I had to keep up constantly, I was tired, I was lying all the time about what I liked and disliked and was interested in or not, about what I wanted to be doing while I didn't want to do those stuffs, what I was actually doing and not doing, I had to lie about how I was feeling, I had to correct a lot of body language issues, I had to hide. I had to hide tons of stuffs and create a fake identity and behaviour that would be ***"""normal"""***, had to make a lot of mental efforts to build and maintain relationships in time, to understand what people were saying when making comments about my natural behaviour and what I was driven to and interested in, I had to correct constantly, to be available even when I wanted to scream because it was too much, and I had completely repress all of that in order to socialize and keep friends. I improved my isolation through. I had to repress myself a lot, to monitor everything, to be very fast (which implies that I'm stressing myself and making myself anxious in order to be as fast as recquiered), and so on. It was a nightmare to be honest, I had to destroy everything in me to keep up, I felt constantly uncomfortable.
It improved things... and it didn't improve things for me, it was an internal disaster to be honest.

I think it's better to socialize around something that's interesting, makes you feel good makes you happy than to try to socialize by passing/masking if that's what you're asking. It didn't improve my situation at all, I'm happy I learned skills doing that, but I'm even more happy to meet myself again.
If you need human contacts, I think you can improve the situation by going to social events and meetings around something that you actually enjoy and feel good with.
Althrough I learned a lot, I wouldn't advice anyone to improve isolation by doing what I did. I had no friends at all until teenage, then I "improved the situation", but it was a disaster for me. Go for things that interest you, events and gatherings around something you enjoy/like/want to try, that you really want to do, etc, and don't force nor push yourself. Otherwise it won't be healthy.

 

[Aspychata]

To me - improve means sometimes l have these contacts and sometimes l don't. If my life is busy with obligations such as a demanding job, social contacts aren't really happening. Sometimes we aren't interesting to other people if we aren't employed or busy with a hobby or passion.
But this can be draining and we don't have much time to cultivate such social interests

 

[AprilR]

Like the user Els mentioned, i also bad no friends until age 16 maybe. (apart from my mother's friend's daughter who was weirdly obsessed with me) I had to create a fake identity to gain friends and after a while became depressed and missed my old self.
I think to gain friends you must first know and like yourself, what your likes and dislikes are and what you will be able to change and what you will not change.
Also to be honest after a certain age people don't care about friendship much, i have been told this by several people.

 

[Matthias]

Hi. Has anyone here ever had zero friends and no romantic relationships and improved your situation. If so, how?

Thank you.

Yes, I was like that for most of my life. I improved my situation by correcting unhelpful beliefs about myself and others that made me feel depressed and anxious which is why people didn't like me. It's also really important to be yourself. If you try to hide who you are and act like a generic "normal" person people will think you're dull and boring and won't want to be friends with you. I explained how I did it in my blog.

 

[Ezra]

Actual real life relationships seem like a complicated arrangement to me. They often seem full of strife, conflict and difficulty. And seem to require constant maintenance.

 

[Karamazov]

Up until the age of nineteen the only friendships I had were two that were organised by my parents with their friend’s kids.
There were kids that “tried me out” for friendship, but it never lasted more than a few months.

As an adult I’ve managed to have friends, but only with people I have had to see for higher education or work purposes: once that reason has been removed I’ve never felt any need to continue the relationship, and never been contacted from their end either.

I’m married now, that, my customers and my wife’s small number of intimate friends uses up all my capacity/appetite for “real world” socialising.

I used to feel profoundly lonely and isolated, but that’s evaporated over the years and I’ve realised that I function better on a day to day basis without the distraction, frustration and anxiety of trying to be sociable.

 

[100skerls]

If you want to know how to meet people as someone who doesn’t do it easily I’d volunteer or join a club or meetup about something you enjoy. I’ve done that before. It tends to work to a degree.