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Seems like a very general question. But how to deal with intense loneliness? (Not a theoretical question)... I don't know why people don't feel like doing activities with me or just chatting. Honestly, I've looked at my personality and I don't see something repelling...
Seems like a very general question. But how to deal with intense loneliness? (Not a theoretical question)... I don't know why people don't feel like doing activities with me or just chatting. Honestly, I've looked at my personality and I don't see something repelling...
I'm sorry you are feeling lonely. I can definitely relate to what you're going through and it sucks. My answer to your question is to combat intense loneliness by going somewhere you're interested in where there's a lot of people and to try to be friendly and engaging. You can't always depend on people responding to you being outgoing, but if you try enough someone will respond and could turn out being a friend who will want to chat and do activities with you. I'm sure your personality is fine and you're not repulsive. You just probably haven't found your niche yet. Once you find your people, you will have many friends.
I'm borderline agoraphobic and I barely leave my apartment except for work and an occasional food run. My social alienation and anxiety issues increase the more I avoid social interaction with others. I literally have to psych myself up for hours before going out into the world. So don't be like me. I encourage you to simply make a choice not to be lonely. Go out and do things, go where the people are, and interact with them. This is my advice given the limited details you provided.
It used to be that people were glued to their TV and would not come out of their homes to socialize (unless the electricity went off). These days it is even worse with cell phones and texting. People will go to other people's homes or go somewhere with someone else, then sit there and text on their phone - totally ignoring the person they are "visiting".
So I can have someone over at my house or go somewhere with someone, yet STILL be quite lonely! (Because they are texting constantly.)
I do have two dogs and that helps. Also I walk my dogs around the neighborhood and have found a couple of neighbors who prefer to work in their yards and talk to people walking by.
Some older people detest cell phones, so might try visiting a senior center.
Note I asked one friend, before he recently got married, if he and his wife were going to say "I do" by texting each other on their cell phones. (They were actually able to say the words.)
Seems like a very general question. But how to deal with intense loneliness? (Not a theoretical question)... I don't know why people don't feel like doing activities with me or just chatting. Honestly, I've looked at my personality and I don't see something repelling...
I usually have something to do when lonely. I see it as my back-up plan so that negative feelings about others or myself don't start to take over.
I moved to a place where I knew no one except one old friend who didn't have a lot of time for me. I remember feeling very down at one point and wishing so much that I had a friend to do things with.
Then I made friends with an older lady who is on my condo board. Now she calls me every day and wants to know why my car is there when I'm supposed to be at work if I take a day off...she's nice and I like to have the occasional dinner out with her and sometimes we sit at her house and have a glass of wine, but she's a little too much at times. Still, I try not to complain because it was hard to always be alone week after week after week in those other days.
I used to go to the library just so I could be near some other human beings, even if they didn't talk to me!
I also met some people through a church and a writers' group (found the last through Meetup.com).
I used to go to the library just so I could be near some other human beings, even if they didn't talk to me!
I was known to do things like that when I lived alone for a time. For me, it was neither here nor there. Sometimes being in a shared experience with other people makes you feel like you're part of society but if there is no actual interaction beyond being in the same room it can actually heighten the sense of alienation. It seems like there is always someone in such settings having some sort of actual interaction, or at least sitting together in companionable silence. Kind of ruins it for me sometimes.
I have since then become a better "best friend" to myself, and have come to view relationships more realistically as the two-edged sword that they actually are, and if I were living alone now I would like to think I'd be more content with just the background noise of society as sufficient ambience. But I still worry that my head would be right up my touche in a few weeks. I think too much sometimes.
I was known to do things like that when I lived alone for a time. For me, it was neither here nor there. Sometimes being in a shared experience with other people makes you feel like you're part of society but if there is no actual interaction beyond being in the same room it can actually heighten the sense of alienation. It seems like there is always someone in such settings having some sort of actual interaction, or at least sitting together in companionable silence. Kind of ruins it for me sometimes.
I have since then become a better "best friend" to myself, and have come to view relationships more realistically as the two-edged sword that they actually are, and if I were living alone now I would like to think I'd be more content with just the background noise of society as sufficient ambience. But I still worry that my head would be right up my touche in a few weeks. I think too much sometimes.
After four years of living alone, I'm not sure I would be able to live with someone else again. I had a large family and for a time when my daughter was growing up, we lived in my parents' house along with a grandmother and my also-divorced brother, and his daughter would come on the weekends. Now my grandmother, father, and brother are dead, I live sixty miles from my mother, and my daughter went to college, graduated this past year, and is living 180 miles away. I was used to having people around, and sometimes they could be a pain. Living alone and not knowing anyone where I moved to was a big adjustment at first, but I knew it was something I had to do.
Dating is not likely anything I will experience again, so it wouldn't be a matter of being in a relationship, but if my daughter decided to move home for a time, it would probably be a bit of an adjustment now.
I know what you mean about being out and feeling a sense of alienation. There are certain things I just don't do anymore. For example, I have a friend who nicely included me in her occasional gatherings, but I was always the only single person there. I felt as though I stuck out like a sore thumb and that others looked at me in horror as if I were the thing they feared could happen to them. I felt very, very alone at such gatherings, even though I certainly didn't envy some of those people their partners or their relationships. It was just the feeling of being the one who didn't fit. I decided I wasn't going to be in that position anymore, and so I decline such invitations now. I'd rather be alone alone than alone with a bunch of people who are coupled up.
Maybe you could try making new friends. Find activities that you are interested in or try meetup.
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