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Insecurities about having friends

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by VHS Tape, Apr 10, 2016.

  1. VHS Tape

    Regular Member

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    Oh boy. Where do I begin??

    My first two years of college represent, for me, both a rough patch and a growing experience in my life. In those first two years, I lost most of my high school friends, had trouble establishing a group of similar proportion in college, and when I was finally in a small group, they ended up being a toxic collection of characters; I went through deep, long lasting periods of depression, and finally came to terms with my sexuality; I lost twenty pounds, and went from what I percieved as being fat (I was fat, not obese, but for my height of a minute five feet, I was fat) to being at my ideal weight, and also discovering...I was attractive???? At the end of these two years, all of these big changes have effected me tremendously, but for the first time since I graduated high school, I have been experiencing a long standing feeling of happiness and confidence.

    Which, I'm now afraid, is threatening to disappear and once again be replaced with depression. Mostly, now, because of my insecurities with making friends and lasting relationships, and also because I feel ashamed that I'm not popular, or that I don't have many friends. I know it's a weird situation; this is the type of problem I feel like high schoolers face more so than college students, but here I am, feeling this way. Importantly, I never went through this "I want to be popular" phase in high school, so maybe I'm making up for all those missed years of pining after a social status of some sort :lol:

    But, so, I'm going to try and explain as best as I can why and how I feel this way. So, I've never been big on social media. I've used all of the popular platforms out there, and I've abandoned most of them. My preferred digital way of keeping in contact with people is through texting, but more than that, speaking, and especially, maintaining a relationship outside of the internet, fosters more love and care for me between myself and my friends. Therefore, I find it tremendously difficult to maintain online profiles, with the exception of instagram; but even then, it can be difficult for me to extend much care to laboring over acquiring masses of followers, or friends.

    I despise facebook, and rarely used mine in high school. But, that was never a problem for me, seeing as I had about twenty or so CLOSE friends, like REAL friends. I didn't care about having 1000 fake facebook friends because my real life friends were so dear to me, and understood me so well. I thought we would all always be friends. And then college came around and (this is really my fault) I never kept in contact with them. We all broke a part. Everyone made new friends in college, and kind of forgot about each other. It didn't mean that we hadn't cared about each other in high school, but our lives just went all different ways in college.

    And that's where it got tough for me. Making friends in my college has been a pain in the ass, mostly because my deep set depression started right on the cusp of my transition from high school to college. I wrapped myself up in my own mind for about the first year of college, and largely ignored my classmates in my first semester. I made a few friends in my second semester, but no long lasting relationships.

    That was tough for me. I was alone, but with the people deflecting trust issues that developed that first year, I didn't try very hard to make myself better.

    My second year, I tried. I made a group of friends. It was a small group of not very nice people. I was constantly being spoken over, constantly being ignored, constantly being made fun of or undermined, and I felt like I was in high school being bullied when I was with them. But they were all I had, so I stuck to them.

    Finally, this year (my best friend says it was faith) that group dispersed and I, miraculously, have been feeling a lot better and a lot more positive about my life. I've become more confident (I was always sassy and snappy, but that side of me disappeared when I started struggling with the depression) and personality traits I had long forgotten are starting to return!!!

    So, I have recently made the "mistake" of trying to get into the jest of social media. I've found out that most people on average have around 700 friends and more on facebook, and their pictures tend to get many likes. I, on the other hand, had deleted most of the facebook friends that I had, and have only about 90 people on my facebook. My pictures all have very few likes...but the part I hate is that THIS makes me feel bad. I feel like people are judging me for not having more friends.

    I tend to make many acquaintances and few friends, but this year, I made about five new friends who I would like to stay in contact with. And yet, this is overwhelming for me. And so, also because of this, I feel shame and sadness that I'm not going out of my way to try to befriend more people.

    I don't go to clubs, mostly because the clubs at my school don't interest me. Like, clubs are either religious/cultural in nature, or business inclined (b/c my school is a business school). I considered joining a society, but my friend who's in one says she doesn't even make friends; people just go to have the credit on their resumes and a certificate.

    Even if the group of my second year was toxic, none of them used social media, so I didn't feel bad about it. Even now, one of my new friends doesn't use social media because she doesn't like it. But, me going out of my way to try and stay in contact with classmates through facebook has opened me up to the realization that many other people have loads of "friends." And I don't, and I feel bad about it.

    But I'm also so confused. These same people complain about being lonely, or friendless, though their friend counts and picture likes online say otherwise. Like, I just feel so much conflict. I feel alone and insecure. At the same time, I feel like people with THOUSANDS of friends complain about being alone and having a lot of fake friends ON FACEBOOK, too THEIR FAKE FRIENDS. So like, wtf? Like is this just what the general population is about now?? Are my insecurities valid? Should I really be feeling this bad about not having many friends, or is it something I need to get past? I'm so afraid this insecurity is going to push me back into being lifeless and depressed...already I'm sad and have cried about it...

    Also, the thing about being happy is, it's made me want to do things and get out there. It's made me want to go to plays and musicals (theater is all the rage nowadays, supposedly), BUT I don't have the money to do that. However, it's also made me want to GET A JOB. Something that is proving tremendously hard to do, and is giving me an obstacle to having the money to do at least some of the things I want to do.

    Now, while I have had trouble make friends, I have no trouble communicating with people. The problem isn't communication; it's all this fakeness and popularity competition stuff that goes on irl and online.

    Either way, my communication skills are excellent, and I'm still finding it difficult to find an ENTRY LEVEL JOB. I've never had a job before, but I have certainly volunteered my time during high school; because of traveling limitations during HS I could never get a job, but it didn't stop me from volunteering...but that's now what jobs want; they want ten years (a bit of an exaggeration :lol: ) of experience to man a cash register (if anyone knows an entry level job in the NY area with no insane experience necessary, please let me know).

    I avoided getting a job these past two yrs because of my depression, but like, I hope it comes across in this post that I am REALLY trying. I'm trying to make friends, I'm trying to put myself out there, I'm trying to get a job, but all these things are just crashing onto me and I feel SAD again. Like I cried today, and that's what made me think I needed to talk to someone about this stuff. And idk, I just am feeling immensely lonely again recently and I'm not sure how to fix it. And sorry, this went off into a rant at the end about the job; I apologize for that.

    EDIT: I forgot to add that, since losing weight and becoming more confident about my appearance, I've also had more people, or well, guys specifically, have crushes on me. And so they approach me, but generally, I don't like every giy, and ultimately, I tend to prefer women. And so I also feel bad, because I feel like some of my friendships just seem to he arising from someone being attracted to me, or vice versa, and like, right now, quite a few of friendships have started that way, and I don't want this to be the way I make friends...and also I would actually lvoe if one of these mutual crushes actually went anywhere, but that's partially my fault...
     
    #1 VHS Tape, Apr 10, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2016
  2. yuanzi

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    VHS Tape, it is late here so my reply might not be entirely coherent :slight_smile:

    My story is somewhat similar to yours but lately I feel like a broken record for repeating it again and again without getting anywhere so I will try to keep it short: I was fat and very unpopular in high school but it never bothered me much because I spent most time studying/trying to get into a good university. Then my insecurities exploded in college when I realized how unattractive/unpopular/you name it I was. I reached my lowest after being rejected by my first girl crush and I was seriously thinking of killing myself but then decided to starve myself instead. A girl has to die pretty right.... I lost about 30 pounds (I am short so that's a lot) and remained unpopular throughout the rest of my college life.

    I am sorry that my story is rather anti-climax. I have not come to some true revelation about myself. Right now I am into my 4th year in graduate school and I still find myself jealous of the many undergraduate girls who stagger around in their short skirts on Friday nights (yes they might be immature but they seem popular and happy, maybe?). I do have a few close friends who I stay in contact with over the past 5 years (we are all in different cities now) but other than them I have only one close friend in the same city and she is not always available to talk. Most of the time I do not care about casual friends but occasionally I wish I just had someone to grab a drink with. Sigh...

    I really don't know what advice to give you other than acknowledging that you are not alone. One last thing: I also have many many male colleagues/co-workers and some are interested in me. If only I was more into guys, I would probably be much less lonelier now. Therefore I also blame myself sometimes :frowning2:

    Good luck to your job hunting. If you can't find anything, you can always come to graduate school (that's what they say :roflmao:slight_smile: