So, this isn't exactly LGBT related... well... maybe a little, but this is really a bit more of a general issue I'm having. It's about my friends. Specifically, about a couple of sets of friendships that haven't exactly stood the test of time for various reasons. I thought I would turn to EC because I couldn't seem to find any friendship advice that wasn't geared towards women. In my life, I have had three friendship triangles, I guess you could call them. The first one was between me and two girls (Let's call them E and M). I made friends with E first back when I was in kindergarten and she was in second grade. We met through an after school program. When I was in first grade, through this same afterschool program, I made a new friend, M, who was new to the area and didn't really have many friends. Naturally I decided to make a group with E and M, and it was so much fun, but over time they began to exclude me, until eventually we just grew apart completely. Now, I used to think it was because they were girls and I was a guy, but now I don't think that's quite it. I think, in this case, it was partially because I was an only child with a mildly over protective single mother, and so because I was rarely allowed to go and hang out with them that we grew apart. I could be wrong, but hey, this isn't the case that gets under my skin, especially since we have reconnected because of a chance encounter at an anime convention. The second case is between two male friends (Let's call them H and J). I made friends with J in kindergarten because our two classes had recess at the same time, and so did H (but he hung out with other kids). In first grade J and I became better friends because we both joined cub scouts. We got really close that year as his parents were getting divorced and I was the only (for lack of a better term) the only "bastard" child within the entire pack. So, I understood what it was like only having one parent. In second grade, H joined our little scout group. He felt like an outsider because his dad had just died, so the whole one parent dynamic kicked in again. But also, J and I were just so naturally nice and inviting that we became fast friends. A few years passed, and J was sent into private school because public school classes were too big for him (3rd grade), and two years later (5th grade) I moved and was put into a neighboring school district. We all remained in cub scouts though, so our friendship remained strong. Then it happened, the next year H was sent to the same private school as J and I began to notice it. They started to exclude me a bit (mind you, this didn't happen with H and I when J was the only one at a different school). They suddenly had private jokes, and I just couldn't quite relate to them anymore. About this time, we transitioned from cub scouts to boy scouts. It was also about this time that I started struggling with the fact that I wasn't attracted to girls yet, but was noticing men increasingly more (I didn't want to admit to myself that I was gay, because back then I was taught that it meant a bad thing because it was different). But we stayed in boy scouts, all of us, and we still had fun. But, I was invited to things like sleepovers and general parties less and less, and had to start doing the planning if I wanted to see them outside of scouts. In 2009, H quit BSA because his mother married a douche and he had a nervous breakdown. In 2010 I dropped BSA because my grandmother died, and I was having a very hard time coping with intense depression from before. I rejoined in 2012 and had a cool reunion with J. A couple months later and H rejoined us too. In the interim J told me all about how he and H were still going to school together, but they hated each other. I was fairly content with that because before quitting I found out that H had been talking bad about me behind my back for about a year or two, and had been otherwise stabbing me in the back (you must understand, BSA is incredibly political). So, when H came back, I thought it would be a very terse reunion for the three of us. I was so wrong. H and J acted like nothing was wrong, so of course I followed suit. The three of us Eagled out (ceremony was actually today. It's what got me thinking about this) this year. In these two years I got to see it again, but worse this time. They started to edge me out of our group again. And yet, they genuinely disliked each other. Fast forward to today, I find out that for all my trying to arrange a hang out or something, and receiving silence or three word replies, they've been texting and talking (and hanging out prior to leaving for college) with each other and excluding me. Even today, during our shared ceremony, they were talking more to each other than to me. So I guess they made up, or something. I feel like my closeted homosexuality may have made be withdraw a little bit in the latter part of the friendship. I actually had a third friendship, that was a bit like a fusion between those first two, but that was horribly traumatic, and happened during the time I was absent. I don't want to rehash that one at all. My problem here is that, it seems like I can't hold onto friendships anymore. Even in high school, in my big groups of friends, they eventually began to cut me out entirely (and it was just me in these particular scenarios). I was just hoping for some advice perhaps. Am I just making the wrong kinds of friends, or am I doing something wrong? I should mention that I am always the nice friend/ the counselor friend.
