Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I feel I deeply need some friends in my life, who I can socialise with offline (face to face) sometimes.
I don't know why, but finding friends online doesn't work for me.First, I can't keep my concentration on social media or videos on screen. Second, I feel I need to see/feel people's face and reactions to capture what's heppening to our relationships. If it's all online, I recognize myself becoming too hash (critical) and sometimes I may hurt people. I think it's because I can't see others reaction. If there's a physical presense, I can sense they're hurt or laughing or confusing or... I mean I can capture more information to understand the situation.
But contrary to my needs, physical communication or going out to new place make me exhausted.At the moment I don't work (I quit last year), and this means I don't have regular opportunities socialise. I tried joining some events for the last few months (like learning tech-trends, drawing pictures...etc), but joining groups of people I always feel awkward. Like I don't know what to speak... Yes I'm very bad at small talks… Sometimes I could find a person that I can talk well if we have any common interests, we ecxchange contacts, but… I don’t know what should I do after that (sending ’thanks for a lovely talks!’ each other, and our relationships ends)
And the biggest problem for me is my energy left.Joining events physically, keep chatting people online, set time to talk to people... everything for socializing burden me so much energy.If I set a meeting with my potential future friend at a cafe on one day, or if I participate 90minutes event, that consume my whole day energy and I feel I can't do anything else on that day (I can do some routine stuffs like chores, but I can't complete any tasks that I need concentration - e.g. writing resume, learnings).This means I want to go out to find new friends, but I can't because I can't spare my energy that much for this. Because I need to live my life too.
Is it common needs of socializing in face to face?If you have any physical friends, how and where did you find them and how do you maintain your friendships for long term???
Maybe shorter meetings including an activity, like a walk, a scrabble or just a half an hour cup of tea?
Hmm, for me it's always difficult to make things shorter. But yeah that make sense that I should be brave enough to cut my schedule shorter if it makes me exhausted... thanks!
Hey Zoey
You could perhaps let the people you socialise with know that you might have to excuse yourself after a while. Try and explain early on how you can get overwhelmed and if you cannot regulate this affects your mood and potentially the rest of your day. I do share your concerns though, even if I take part in something of great interest my social battery gets run down and I need to disappear.
I will take my own advice one day I’m sure but masking is a necessity for me right now. I have a partner who doesn’t accept my diversity and doesn’t even want to try and understand… it’s pretty much split our family down the middle. I do have friends but only friends that we have met as a couple, I don’t maintain the friendships as a Nt would come to expect as I find that too much hard work and overwhelming. I would love to get out there and meet some people with whom we share the same life experience. I do have a friend who is bipolar and adhd and although I have only known him for 10 years compared to my pretend friends (as I call them) we know each other so well. It’s a strange relationship as we don’t socialise at all and sometimes will not be in contact for months if not a year but we pick up pretty much where we left off. Zoey if you can meet some people like you it won’t be a case of being brave enough to reveal yourself, you will feel that comfortable you’ll just share that information. I really do wish you good luck
Take care
Yeah, maybe I need to be a little more brave to reveal my self and tell my needs to people. Thank you!!