Why Do I Hate Wanting Friends?
I want friends but I don’t want the hard work of keeping in touch. I love my own solitude but I often wish for another friend other than my wife.
I posted a story here a long while ago about how I discarded my high school friends. They grew together as a group fostering similar interests like soccer while I drifted away. And when I decided it was a chore to meet with them, I just went incognito.
I haven’t spoken to them since.
The only people I would call friends are mutual friends and their wives I met through my wife. We don’t meet often but we do have a similar vibe. Our interests, however, are different.
It’s an issue I had my entire life. I always felt like an outsider. I was always interested in creativity and other things but somehow drifted into a group of friends who were interested in other things.
It’s part of the reason why I grew to love acting. Most of the people there are actual creatives, even if they don’t do it as a full-time job. But then I get to the next issue when I do reach these people.
How do I communicate?
My parents were pretty chill when I grew up, allowing me and my sister to explore our desires and wants. However, I believe they were too loose. While my sister was thriving socially I was locked in my social anxiety hugged by my four loved bedroom walls.
Only through my desire to change did I force myself to acquire social skills and aspire to be something more than a person living in his mom’s basement. But no matter how many social skills I acquired, my inner uncertain core remained the same.
We expect good things to come to us, but in truth, we have to work for them.
And maintaining relationships is always a thing I was bad at. Some people seem so natural at it, keeping daily or weekly tabs on friends, while it feels like a chore and a task for me.
Having big aspirations and building a few side hustles while working a full-time job and maintaining a loving relationship with my wife leaves no room for anything else.
It’s the paradox of wanting more social interactions while having more fun being by myself and following my dreams and passions. It’s seeing my wife go out with her friends and having fun while having a lone meal to myself and enjoying alone time.
Is it an inner calling from our primate days because we survived better in groups or a true call for friendship? I’ll probably never know. And in this stage of my life, I will not work hard to have friends.
There is a mantra or a way of life, the source of which I don’t remember, that says that sometimes you need to let go of wanting something so bad. By putting less importance on your desire, it should arrive easier.
I believe that now I am not in the stage of life where I’ll have friends, even though I am approaching my mid-thirties. I’ll believe in life and that it will bring friends to me through experiences, like my side hustle endeavors.
But for now, I’m sitting here alone writing and having the best time of my life.
When was the last time you were out with friends?
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And you can read here how I discarded my friends
