A whole lifetime without friends?

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Anyone have the experience of simply, having never had any friends at all your whole life? Nobody who ever reached out to you on any serious level? Quite literally, nobody who's ever sent you Facebook messages or given you a phone call about something that wasn't work or school-related? The only person I remember who could have even remotely been considered a friend was this one time I hit it off with this girl I knew in high school. We had almost all of the same interests, and when she was going through rough stuff at home I really took time out of my schedule to support her and be there for her as much as possible (all those talks on the phone and IM late at night), because I really wanted to be a nice friend. Then one day I realized that whenever we hung out and did stuff together, it was nearly always me doing the inviting. So I decided to do an experiment. I went nearly 8 months without sending her an email, text or phone call. Guess what. She never even once attempted to contact me. You have no idea how much it broke my heart to realize that our friendship meant so little to her. All those times I was there for her, it never once occurred to me that she wouldn't have done the same.


But that is probably the single instance in my life where I even bordered on any kind of personal relationship outside of my parents and mentors. After that whole incident I thought, never again will I initiate relationships. The only true way to know if anyone cares about you at all as a human being, is to see if they come to you. Alas, they never do and never have. There is pretty much no one in this whole universe who thinks of me as anything other than an acquaintance. I'm just............ there and that's it. It has been this way throughout my entire 21 years of existence. I try not to care for the most part. Of course there are things more important than making friends, like having a great career. If this was something I really allowed to affect me then I would just be a majorly depressed sad sack all the time. But sometimes the invisible feeling is just unbearable, it really hurts to know that nobody thinks of you when you're not there in front of them.

I have had friends throughout my life, but with varying degrees of closeness. At the moment though, I'm the complete loner. Usually they would be friends within the school structure, but outside I would be pretty much be by myself. When I would interact with relatives in would be confined to specific occasions and once that occasion was over, our contact would be pretty much zero.

I have had friends invite me and show an interest in doing things other than when we're forced to interact with one another, but those instances can probably counted on one hand.

I don't think you should give up on forming relationships though. I think the biggest problem especially with socially inept people is that we expect the other person to be friendly and make the first move, but if everyone did that, no one would have any friends. But I do understand the feeling of showing an interest in wanting to initiate a friendship, but the other persons feelings towards you seem rather indifferent.

Btw, is that an Arctic fox in you avatar?

I have never had any "true" friends. Sometimes I think my mother is my only real friend...sad....

Although I somehow (how?) made a few friends in my early school years, I became completely withdrawn as a teenager, and never had any real friends in these years, instead just sharing and latching onto my parent's friends and people the family members. To be honest it was my choice back then. I had always looked at teenagers and thought I couldn't possibly get along with them, so just decided to do what was safe, easy and comfortable for me.

However, when I got to about 20 I became desperate to have my own friends, I realised this was missing from my life. I knew loads of people during this time, family, people at church, people at work, parent's friends....would get lots of Christmas cards, but had no real friend in my own right. During my 20's I managed to develop a few friendships with people who shared my interests. I think what drove those friendships was people who would want to talk to me about those things because of what I knew or my interests in the subject. However it wasn't till my late 20's I ever had anything resembling a good bunch of mates.

However today now at 32 things are totally different to how they were ten years ago. For me one thing that helped me massively was music, and being a good guitar player, and finding other musicians that want to do music with me. They wanted to make use of my skill. Everyone has something they're good at (or at least something useful they can do) and it's a question of finding people who want the skills you have, and networking from there.

Here's something to encourage you all

I've recently met a guy who hadn't had a friend for 18 years. I'm trying to help him get out and encourage him. He's joined a couple of groups and I can see his social life is really developing fast now. He's very honest about his situation, lacking confidence but always friendly and considerate and people are warming to him. When I spoke to him recently, he told me that he could do gardening, and done this for an old lady once, and I suggested he could find other people that want someone to do gardening for them.

Yeah, i've met a lot of people during my life including people that i considered friend but i've never been in that "deep layer" of friendship that i see so many people into.
Basically i have some known people at work but we only talk about work stuff, i've met people in college but we only talk about college stuff, i've met people on the church but we only talk about church stuff and this is how it is in every area of my life.
There's no one that is my absolute friend and that just call me to talk about their problems, ask me advice or just invite me to go walk on the park while chatting.
There are times that i care about this and there are times that i don't, especially because i understand that this can be my fault for not showing too much empathy (at least not the way they expect me to) when some of those things finally happen.
I'm also too focused sometimes in what i am doing and i think that this interfere in the way i relate with people in some places. For example if i am having a class in the college and someone starts a conversation i don't give too much attention because i'm there to study, not to chat. I would like if they come back and talk to me any other time when i'm not doing what i'm there to do. But for some reason they don't understand that.