The strange, confusing world of adolescence

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slashfrehley42
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03 Jan 2010, 8:22 pm

Here is a situation in which help is required. About a year ago, I had a really great group of close friends (about 5 of us). It had been difficult for me to make friends in the past for obvious reasons, so I utterly rejoiced in and celebrated this friendship. In addition to this, they all worked together (I won't mention where) and this opened up a new social arena for us. This was particularly exciting because we all attended (and, as of this writing, still do) an all-male school and through their shared workplace, we met girls and became fast friends with them. So, at the age of 15, after years of being an outcast, I was finally doing all the stuff adolescents call fun; parties, group hangouts, etc. It was great. Yet, as I write this now, right before I enter my final year of high school (This is Australia, so I am about to do Year 12) for some reason I can not quite put my finger on, this has all changed. I still have my best friend (who won't be mentioned either) and he still has me, but it seems that we don't have the other guys. And I don't get it.

Often, friendship is built upon shared experiences. I don't want to go into detail about these experiences, but we went through a lot together, as a group. There was this sense of kinship among us, that we would do anything for each other. Often we did. But now the other guys don't return our calls or call us. We're all on Facebook (of course) and are still "Facebook friends" but we don't seem like real friends. They turned up to our school dance together, without inviting us to their pres. They spent New Years' Eve together, without inviting us. In fact, they spent New Years' with a friend I met at my old job (not the same place they worked)! One of these friends went through a really rough patch in his life earlier this year, and the other guys had a meeting with their friends from work, the people we were hanging out with only a year ago, where they spoke about it, and planned intervening. Without us. We've known these guys (and the guy who the intervention was about in particular) forever, but they do all the things that friends do together without us? I don't know if I did anything wrong or not, but some of the people from their work didn't like my best friend, so maybe that had something to do with the entire ordeal. Basically, I need some advice as to whether I did something wrong, or how to fix the rift that has grown between us, or what not to do in the future, or how to build a new group like the old one that I treasured so much.

And I don't want to hear someone say "if they don't want to hang out with you, they're not your friends" or something similar. Because when we talk in person, it's fine, they laugh at my jokes, we have a good time. So I'm confused.



leejosepho
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03 Jan 2010, 10:44 pm

slashfrehley42 wrote:
... when we talk in person, it's fine, they laugh at my jokes, we have a good time. So I'm confused.


Pick one or two you know the best and who have been candid with you in the past and maybe tell them a little of what you are saying here and ask what might be changing about the group or about your relationship with it. You might or might not get a clear answer, but maybe you will ... and at least you will have tried.


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