I’ve always been a person that needed to be in contact with other people, and I love to hang out with my friends more than anything.
One of the problems is, I live in a small town and I need to get the train or the bus each time to see them, so I cannot afford going to see them everyday. My parents always want me to make friends here, but I can’t find anyone, since my town is mostly filled with elder people, and the few friends I’ve managed to make there have their own lifes now (My old best friend moved to Belgium without saying a word, my only highschool friend doesn’t seem to be too interested in talking to me and the only other girl I’ve known there either puts me off or ignores me whenever I try to meet her again), so pretty much all my friends live far away from me, which makes me feel awful since all I do when I’m not with them is, apart from my own things and hobbies, doing chores and helping my parents, and despite doing a lot of things like drawing, doing arts and crafts, reading, learning to compose and listening to music; I still feel rather empty. I’m not an introverted person in that sense, I need to be in contact with others, share my love with my significant others and be loved.
I’ve always tried to meet new people, with varying results, but in general it’s very difficult for me to form good friendships. Something that happens way too frequently is what I said earlier: whenever I meet a new person everything’s fine and dandy, until I ask them for something like their phone number or Facebook to get in touch (or after that, to meet them again); then they seem to get uncomfortable and put me off and refuse to talk to me from that point on. I try to be optimistic and think to myself it’s a misunderstanding or me being paranoid, but if the problem keeps going I start to feel horrible, and the thought of being unable to make new friends makes me wonder if the word “CREEP” is written all over my forehead.
Even if a relationship goes well, there’re times where something goes wrong and that person dissapears from my life abruptly, and I fear the same thing will be happening with my current friends since “nothing lasts forever”. Something that also makes me feel uneasy is that I barely have any male friends and I feel much more comfortable while being around women, despite being a man myself, and I don’t want to be seen as a pervert (see above) for that reason: when I tell my parents or even my sister I met a new friend who just happens to be a girl they always assume I’m in love with her or even trying to make love with her. I’ve never had a girlfriend, and the only person that showed any kind of attraction to me was a pansexual boy, which I rejected because I’m heterosexual and wasn’t attracted to him, so it gives me the awful impression that they see me as a walking lonely nerd stereotype.
Regarding my current friends and the people that surround me, all the people I know seem to have amazing close friends already, they’re living happily with their significant others and I really feel left out, since I barely have the chance to make new friends and I’ve never been seen as a “first option”, and for some reason I don’t see my current relationships being fulfilling enough. I don’t see my friends showing interest on me most of the time, or at least at the same level they seem to show interest in others: 95% of the time I’m the one that has to start the conversation and arrange the meetings/dates; and when I’m chatting online with certain friends they don’t appear to show much interest in answering me and seems like they would rather spend their time posting random stuff on their Tumblr/Facebook pages. Half of the time they don’t even answer my e-mails…
So I’m asking, what’s the problem? Is it just me? Am I being selfish and too entitled to their attention? Is there something I can do about this? Can I really fix anything?
This is stressing me out so much I’ve began questioning my own mental health; I can feel that my self-consciousness, anxiety and insecurity have increased lately at an alarming rate and I don’t want to be seen as a crippling and toxic person for this reason; since pretty much all my friends loathe negative people.
What can I do? I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
