I'm worrying about myself...

Last night I had a very good friend over to visit. We were doing bead
jewelry together. We've been close friends for about 12 years.

Anyway, at some point during the evening, Roxy came by for a cuddle.
So I let her hang over my shoulder and purr, while I cooed and petted
her. And suddenly the thought came into my head, "I feel closer to
Roxy than I do to _____ (my friend)." It wasn't just an idle thought.
It's true! Although this friend and I have known each other a long
time, and we've shared a lot of experiences, and I've told her a whole
lot about myself, she is very closed-mouthed about her own feelings,
and in fact, prefers not to talk much at all. She has always kept me
at arm's length in that way, and because of that, I often don't feel
satisfied by conversations.

And she really is my closest friend. I do have one other very close
friend, and that friend and I share a lot of personal emotional talk,
but it's a bit one-way. I do most of the listening in that friendship.

Yeah, I need some new friends. Not that I want to dump these friends,
because despite the flaws, they're great people. And everyone has flaws -
every relationship has things that are missing. But I would like to have
some relationships that are more consistently satisfying. I'm working
on it, but it's not easy. You don't go to the friend store and buy new
ones whenever you feel like it. You have to keep reaching out to people
in the hope that something will come of it. Most of the time, nothing
does. I've made some new friends recently, but it takes time for them to
develop into the kind of intimacy that I have with my older friends. I
don't like to push hard or rush things - I'd rather let them develop in
their own time.

But meanwhile, I get lonely. And the only truly dependable, loving
friends, who give affection freely, who I never worry are judging me,
and who I utterly adore, are my cats. I see the path in front of me,
and it points to "crazy cat lady" in my future - perhaps the not-so-
distant future. We joke about this a lot on this newsgroup, but this
scares me. I see nothing wrong with having a lot of cats, nor of
adoring them to death. But it does worry me that I'm becoming more
and more separated from my own species. I used to be a very social
person, but it seems to get harder and harder. My cats are my primary
relationship! I've had periods like this in the past, where a cat was
my best friend. But it's not so weird when you're young - you know it's
just a phase. At my age, I have no reason to believe that things will
ever change again.

Can anyone relate? Any suggestions? Reassurance that I'm not a social
failure (as far as anyone here can tell, of course)? Is this a symptom
of the Fall of Modern Civilization?

Joyce

wrote:
But meanwhile, I get lonely. And the only truly dependable, loving
friends, who give affection freely, who I never worry are judging me,
and who I utterly adore, are my cats. I see the path in front of me,

What about us?

--
Victor M. Martinez
Owned and operated by the Fantastic Seven (TM)
Send your spam he
Email me he

"Victor Martinez" wrote in message
...
wrote:
But meanwhile, I get lonely. And the only truly dependable, loving
friends, who give affection freely, who I never worry are judging me,
and who I utterly adore, are my cats. I see the path in front of me,

What about us?


Yes, we'll tell you when you don't have anough friends. :P

wrote:
Last night I had a very good friend over to visit. We were doing bead
jewelry together. We've been close friends for about 12 years.

(snippage)
But meanwhile, I get lonely. And the only truly dependable, loving
friends, who give affection freely, who I never worry are judging me,
and who I utterly adore, are my cats. I see the path in front of me,
and it points to "crazy cat lady" in my future - perhaps the not-so-
distant future. We joke about this a lot on this newsgroup, but this
scares me. I see nothing wrong with having a lot of cats, nor of
adoring them to death. But it does worry me that I'm becoming more
and more separated from my own species. I used to be a very social
person, but it seems to get harder and harder. My cats are my primary
relationship! I've had periods like this in the past, where a cat was
my best friend. But it's not so weird when you're young - you know
it's just a phase. At my age, I have no reason to believe that things
will ever change again.

Can anyone relate? Any suggestions? Reassurance that I'm not a social
failure (as far as anyone here can tell, of course)? Is this a symptom
of the Fall of Modern Civilization?

I can relate, Joyce. I don't think you're a social failure. If people sort
of hold parts of their life back I can see where things might be a little
difficult and leave you feeling something is missing.

I have no idea how to go about making the kind of friendships you're talking
about. I've never really been much of a social creature. (John finds that
hard to believe since when we're working the art shows I can laugh and
schmooze with the best of them. Sure, but that's not the same has having
close friends.) I had two very close women friends but they both moved far
away years ago. We still keep in touch via phone and email but it's not the
same thing as getting together with the girls for dinner or drinks. With
those two, though, I felt a real connection. Haven't had that for about 15
years now.

Jill

On 19 Nov., 02:34, wrote:
Can anyone relate? Any suggestions? Reassurance that I'm not a social
failure (as far as anyone here can tell, of course)? Is this a symptom
of the Fall of Modern Civilization?

I can relate. I am sort of at the same point right now.
My separation from people has reached a point where I really feel
I should go out again and reach out for people.
After I parted from my last living-partner, which was 1994, I kept
only "my " friends, the others seemed to vanish.
I had a couple of them but some are living all over the world, i.e.
USA, UK
which lets us only keep contact through email and postcards.
When I moved in 1999 from south-germany to an old house near Berlin
(east-germany)
my friends down south got lost over the years due to reasons I don`t
understand.
Maybe it is because everybody is busy with his own life.
So I am living in this rural area which is really nice to do but have
only
one close friend left. She lives in south germany, but we are heart-
connected
and phone every week to share lifes challenges.
Then I found a friend while working in a Berlin TelCo-Company who
developed to be
a real, good friend over the years. Even after he`s found a girl-
friend he keeps
contact. Which speaks for his strength. I`ve lost a lot of friends due
to their
girl-friends or new wifes forbidding them to have female friends.
What is it with women - a woman living alone seems to post a threat to
all other women.

There are days where I too wonder if I am a social failure, where I
miss
living together with a wonderful DH, but then I look around and see so
awful many
marriages and partnerships where people give each other living hell
and I again decide
that everything is ok with me. I won`t marry somebody just to not live
alone,
as many seem to do. If the right one will show up, ok, if not I won`t
force myself
into a situation where I am unhappy. To put it in other words:
Better sometimes unhappy alone as all the time unhappy in company.

There are many ways to live life and what do you mean by "social
failure"?
There is not such a thing as that.


And yes - my cats are nearest to me. I took on responsibility for
their well-being
which connects me closer to them as to people, cause people should be
able to
work it out by themselves.

Literature keeps many statements about friends and humankind.
One author said: "I`ve come to know man and decided I prefer dogs
(cats)."
Which is sort of disillusional but understandable.

Another source says: ...the older you get the more will you detect
that
real friendship is found seldomly. So If you find in your life 2-4
really
good friends who will accompany you throughout your whole live you are
lucky."

This statement seems to be true. A real soul-connection seems to
happen seldomly.

On the other hand one has to give fate a chance. Means that one has to
go out
and do things to meet other people, to make new friends.
Who knows - there might be a soul-connection waiting.


Now - sometimes I am scared as well by the prospect of getting
"the old lady with the lot of cats" who lives alone.

But this emotion results of looking at the statement from the
outside.
I learned for myself that it is only relevant to look at it
from my inside: "If I won't meet the right DH then I will
become the old lady who lives not alone cause I have my cats around."

It depends on how one judges a statement. And seen from my inside -
hey what is wrong with living together with cats?

The "Old lady" statement is only frightening because it judges the
situation
from the outside - seen from other people. Who cares what they might
think.

I would be a wonderful old lady living happily until I die.
I would chase little boys who try to steal apples from my appletree.
Just that they have the fun of being chased.g
I would be a threat to every house-door selling agent who tries to
cheat on little old ladies.

So if life makes me an old cat lady I would make the really best of
it.g


No Joyce, you`re not alone.

Even married people or people with lots of friends have phases where
they feel abandoned.
But I've also learned that there are always new friends to make.


love

Bettina

Bettina, thank you for a lovely response. You've said a lot of important
things, especially the part about thinking only about what it feels
like inside, and not about how others might judge you. That's something
that I need to be reminded of from time to time, as I will forget it. Not
that I care about what this or that specific person thinks, but sometimes
I do get caught up in the "image" of what I'm doing, rather than in the
*experience* of it.

And wow, you do have a point about unhappy marriages. I've seen plenty
of them, too. And after my last partner dumped me in '99, I swore I didn't
want to have a marriage type of relationship again for a long, long time.
I guess I was assuming that I would want it eventually, though. And here
it is, 8 years later, and I'm still single. But you're right, it's better
to be single, and sometimes lonely, than to feel suffocated or miserable,
or bored, or god forbid, abused, in a marriage/partnership, etc. At least
when you're single, you have the potential to find a good relationship.
But when you're stuck in a bad one, you first have to go through all the
pain of ending it before you can find a good partner. And ironically, it
can be very painful to end a relationship even when it's a bad one.

I do miss that intimacy, though. And I think it should be possible to
have some of that with good friends. I just don't have it right now, or
at least, not enough of it. Except with my 4-footed friends, of course!

By the way, some men can get pretty possessive and jealous if their wife
or girlfriend has a male friend. I think our culture (by that I mean
Western culture, or maybe even human, I don't know) is plain suspicious
of opposite-sex friendships in general, doesn't matter whether it's a
woman who is jealous that her male partner has a female friend, or vice
versa.

Thanks again, I really enjoyed your post!

Joyce


Bettina wrote:

I can relate. I am sort of at the same point right now.
My separation from people has reached a point where I really feel
I should go out again and reach out for people.
After I parted from my last living-partner, which was 1994, I kept
only "my " friends, the others seemed to vanish.
I had a couple of them but some are living all over the world, i.e.
USA, UK
which lets us only keep contact through email and postcards.
When I moved in 1999 from south-germany to an old house near Berlin
(east-germany)
my friends down south got lost over the years due to reasons I don`t
understand.
Maybe it is because everybody is busy with his own life.
So I am living in this rural area which is really nice to do but have
only
one close friend left. She lives in south germany, but we are heart-
connected
and phone every week to share lifes challenges.
Then I found a friend while working in a Berlin TelCo-Company who
developed to be
a real, good friend over the years. Even after he`s found a girl-
friend he keeps
contact. Which speaks for his strength. I`ve lost a lot of friends due
to their
girl-friends or new wifes forbidding them to have female friends.
What is it with women - a woman living alone seems to post a threat to
all other women.

There are days where I too wonder if I am a social failure, where I
miss
living together with a wonderful DH, but then I look around and see so
awful many
marriages and partnerships where people give each other living hell
and I again decide
that everything is ok with me. I won`t marry somebody just to not live
alone,
as many seem to do. If the right one will show up, ok, if not I won`t
force myself
into a situation where I am unhappy. To put it in other words:
Better sometimes unhappy alone as all the time unhappy in company.

There are many ways to live life and what do you mean by "social
failure"?
There is not such a thing as that.


And yes - my cats are nearest to me. I took on responsibility for
their well-being
which connects me closer to them as to people, cause people should be
able to
work it out by themselves.

Literature keeps many statements about friends and humankind.
One author said: "I`ve come to know man and decided I prefer dogs
(cats)."
Which is sort of disillusional but understandable.

Another source says: ...the older you get the more will you detect
that
real friendship is found seldomly. So If you find in your life 2-4
really
good friends who will accompany you throughout your whole live you are
lucky."

This statement seems to be true. A real soul-connection seems to
happen seldomly.

On the other hand one has to give fate a chance. Means that one has to
go out
and do things to meet other people, to make new friends.
Who knows - there might be a soul-connection waiting.


Now - sometimes I am scared as well by the prospect of getting
"the old lady with the lot of cats" who lives alone.

But this emotion results of looking at the statement from the
outside.
I learned for myself that it is only relevant to look at it
from my inside: "If I won't meet the right DH then I will
become the old lady who lives not alone cause I have my cats around."

It depends on how one judges a statement. And seen from my inside -
hey what is wrong with living together with cats?

The "Old lady" statement is only frightening because it judges the
situation
from the outside - seen from other people. Who cares what they might
think.

I would be a wonderful old lady living happily until I die.
I would chase little boys who try to steal apples from my appletree.
Just that they have the fun of being chased.g
I would be a threat to every house-door selling agent who tries to
cheat on little old ladies.

So if life makes me an old cat lady I would make the really best of
it.g


No Joyce, you`re not alone.

Even married people or people with lots of friends have phases where
they feel abandoned.
But I've also learned that there are always new friends to make.


love

Bettina


--
To reply privately, take the X's out of my user ID.

wrote:
Bettina, thank you for a lovely response. You've said a lot of
important things, especially the part about thinking only about what
it feels
like inside, and not about how others might judge you.

By the way, some men can get pretty possessive and jealous if their
wife or girlfriend has a male friend. I think our culture (by that I
mean Western culture, or maybe even human, I don't know) is plain
suspicious of opposite-sex friendships in general, doesn't matter
whether it's a woman who is jealous that her male partner has a
female friend, or vice versa.

I usually found it was the *women* who cut off ties to their female friends
when they got married. I've encountered it a number of times over the
years.

I knew these men; obviously not as well as the women did (!) but they didn't
give any appearance of being possessive or controlling. As an outsider to
the male/female dynamic you often see the signs well before they get
married.

In these cases I think it was the women who suddenly felt... not threatened,
but more akin to, "okay, I'm married now, time to close that chapter".
Which is a shame, because none of those marriages lasted. They suddenly
found themselves adrift, having cut all ties to the women who used to be
there for them.

Jill

jmcquown wrote:

By the way, some men can get pretty possessive and jealous if their
wife or girlfriend has a male friend. I think our culture (by that I
mean Western culture, or maybe even human, I don't know) is plain
suspicious of opposite-sex friendships in general, doesn't matter
whether it's a woman who is jealous that her male partner has a
female friend, or vice versa.

I usually found it was the *women* who cut off ties to their female
friends when they got married. I've encountered it a number of times
over the years.

I was talking about a different thing - not a woman cutting ties to her
female friends, but avoiding or cutting off *male* friends because her
husband/boyfriend was jealous.

But I've seen what you're talking about, too, definitely! Some people
believe that the marital or couple unit is the be-all and end-all of
life, and once they've found their one-and-only, they feel like they
don't (or shouldn't) need anyone else.

In these cases I think it was the women who suddenly felt... not
threatened, but more akin to, "okay, I'm married now, time to close
that chapter".

Exactly.

Which is a shame, because none of those marriages lasted. They suddenly
found themselves adrift, having cut all ties to the women who used to be
there for them.

I remember many years ago - a whole other life - I was dating a guy,
and all my friends had boyfriends, too. And all of a sudden it was
like everyone was in their couples, and we didn't hang out in a group
anymore like we used to. That got very lonely for me, especially since
I was pretty unhappy with this guy (and it didn't last much longer!).
I really, really missed hanging out with my friends. Luckily I hadn't
burned any bridges, so when I broke up with the bf, my friends were
still there.

I'm really not a one-person-only kind of gal, never have been. One
summer during high school, I was in love with this kid, and we went
out for about 4 months. It should have been a magical time, and in
some ways it was, but I remember being really lonely a lot, because I
hardly ever saw anyone else. I did have a best girlfriend who I saw
about once a week, but that was it. By contrast, the following summer
I wasn't dating anyone, but I had gotten into a fantastic group of
friends and we spent all our time together as a group. That *was* a
magical time - one of the happiest of my youth.

Joyce

You're not a loser. Relationships and needs ebb and flow.

All my best friendships have come through doing things that I enjoy
and happening to meet people I have a lot in common with that way.
Fellow writers and toy collectors and fandom nerds and role players
and witches and military people, all through doing stuff I liked to
do, and got lifelong friends while doing it.

So instead of wishing for the friend store, go do something new that
you've sort of wanted to do and never tried....a hobby, a sport, a
community or religious group, whatever, give it a try and if you like
it, you may meet a lot of new people that way.

That being said, humanity is overrated and I sometimes wish I were
back living in a tent in the woods coming out once a week for
supplies....

--Fil


I'm really not a one-person-only kind of gal, never have been. One
summer during high school, I was in love with this kid, and we went
out for about 4 months. It should have been a magical time, and in
some ways it was, but I remember being really lonely a lot, because I
hardly ever saw anyone else. I did have a best girlfriend who I saw
about once a week, but that was it. By contrast, the following summer
I wasn't dating anyone, but I had gotten into a fantastic group of
friends and we spent all our time together as a group. That *was* a
magical time - one of the happiest of my youth.

On Nov 19, 8:08 pm, Enfilade wrote:
You're not a loser. Relationships and needs ebb and flow.

All my best friendships have come through doing things that I enjoy
and happening to meet people I have a lot in common with that way.
Fellow writers and toy collectors and fandom nerds and role players
and witches and military people, all through doing stuff I liked to
do, and got lifelong friends while doing it.

So instead of wishing for the friend store, go do something new that
you've sort of wanted to do and never tried....a hobby, a sport, a
community or religious group, whatever, give it a try and if you like
it, you may meet a lot of new people that way.

That being said, humanity is overrated and I sometimes wish I were
back living in a tent in the woods coming out once a week for
supplies....

--Fil


Good suggestions, Fil. One solution is definitely to get out and join
a
group with interests like yours. I met a lot of friends joining a
quilting group. Then I have my humane society friends. Then
my church friends, from whom I have to admit I get the closest
thing to unconditional love next to family.
And you're right....sometimes humanity is over rated. I tend
to keep people at arm's length, because sometimes I treasure
solitude more than friends.
Sherry