No. 32315Anonymous 18th June 2023 Sunday 2:09 pm32315Feel like there's nothing here for me anymore
Ah, it's a weird one. I feel like I am forcing myself into the lives of people around me.
The context is that I spent most of the last 6 years being away working for very long periods of time and in between that, in a relationship with someone out of the country.
Now I am back in the country and trying to spend time with people, but I have a hard time getting anyone out to do anything, and I am always the one initiating things.
This sort of feels like I am always having to push to make myself even acknowledged in the lives of people who I hold in quite high esteem, and now I feel a constant sense of frustration mixed with anxiety that I'm just forcing myself to be a part of people who, for all intents and purposes, couldn't care less if I was around.
It's pretty rare for me to even get a reply on text from anyone, or worse still to make plans. It feels like I'm being kept at arms length a lot of the time.
Part of me feels like just fucking everyone off and letting things die off with an intent to starting again and building new relationships, but also I think it could be harder once you're out of your twenties.
It's really causing me a lot of distress to the point where I'm drinking alone to fill my time during the day.
When I'm working it's fine, because I can get into a routine, but as I work in quite a condensed manner, I really feel miserable on my downtime because I am in this void where I feel like a ghost in the lives of people I love.
I'm open to different perspectives on this situation to help me understand it a bit better.
I think it's a natural occurrence in everyone's life, unfortunately. As people get older, more and more of them drop out because they've got married, had kids, moved, or even just got sick of hanging out with the same friends every week. You're not doing anything wrong; life is just moving on without you until the only friends left are the unstable alcoholics who just don't want to drink alone.
Also,
>I spent most of the last 6 years being away
A lot has happened in the past six years. Not just to your friends, but also to society in general. I'm afraid you're probably going to have to just make new friends, and even then, they'll be people who go to the pub a lot less often than they did in 2017.
No, of course it is. I'm just not really entirely sure what to do to proceed, really.
Obviously I know that hanging on for people who don't really make me feel appreciated isn't healthy, but I feel like the ways I'd make a relationship now would feel almost entirely inorganic and I'm a bit afraid of it being forced, if that makes sense.
This might seem trite because it gets said here a lot, but it's 100% true: men need hobbies and clubs.
Men aren't particularly great at maintaining friendships. That gets worse once you hit your thirties, because people take on the sorts of family responsibilities that make it harder to justify going down the pub. We need structure in our social lives, we need a thing to do every Thursday night or Saturday afternoon.
For the vast majority of older men with healthy social lives, that social life revolves around some sort of club or team. The activity itself is pretty much irrelevant, it's just a reason to get out of the house even if you're knackered, a justification for seeing your mates instead of taking the kids to the park or going curtain shopping, a gang of lads who don't need to be persuaded to go out because they do the same thing at the same time every week. We need a social life that commits us to something, or all of the other commitments in life will inevitably take a higher priority.
It might be possible to rope your old mates into something, but you would probably benefit from expanding your social circle. The withering away of old friendships is inevitably painful, but it can be a positive opportunity to broaden your horizons. As a childless man in my late 30s, my social circle has a much wider age range than it used to. Blokes my age often don't have a lot of free time, so the men I regularly see range from their late teens to well into retirement age. It's a really nice dynamic to be a part of, because there are so many different perspectives in the mix.
To echo what others have said, partly it's just normal as people's lives move on. You've been away for all these years, and you've missed to gradual slipping away phase, so it feels like you're just outright being rejected; but really if you'd been there the whole time you'd have gone through the process of slipping further adrift until you barely see each other. Not that you would necessarily feel any better for that, but it would at least give you a bit of context that would stop you feeling quite so alienated.
Adult life just takes its toll, gradually, I think. Even without considering kids, you tell yourself it's that you're "busy", but really it's not, it's just that you're fucking tired. I'm exactly as un-busy as I was at 23, it's just that I'm ten years more fucking tired. I don't want to go round my mate's house and get stoned until 11 o'clock and then come home to play Fallout for 3 more hours before getting up for work again at 7, I simply don't have the energy now. I want to put feet up on the sofa and nod off by about 10.
So what you end up with is a social life that's really only viable for a Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday at a real push. But the effect that has is you're pushed to split those windows between an increasingly splintered friend group, and your partner (or attempts to acquire one). Nevermind the fact you just need a day to yourself time to time, because weeknights weren't enough and you need to spend all day Saturday napping on the sofa.
It's just hard innit.
I saw one of my mates for the first time in about 6 months the other week. We had a brilliant time and I hope we will stay more in touch from now. I'm going to make an effort at any rate. But even so, I know it'll never be hanging out 3-4 times a week like we used to. Just one of those things you've got to roll with as you get older I think.
