|
I need help with new, budding friendships.
I have spent the last 10-ish years nearly isolated. I had lost trust in the ending of poisonous friendships all those years ago and I haven't had any caretaker stability. I had basically at one time went from changing out every single person I had ever known and I had done well at first when making new friendships. Yet it was at the awkward becoming a teenager stage and apparently I went from cute to ugly. All my friends dropped me because I was ugly. It's not in my head. It's true. I had braces back then and I was just awkward and weird-looking. My parents emotionally neglected me and my other relatives lived states away so I had no support system whatsoever. After each of my friends dropping me, I developed I root that grew around and inside my heart of deep mistrust. I don't think I can trust a single human. It's true, I can't. I do grow to love new people and I have even these last years had "hangout friends". I haven't had anyone close. Closest I've had is my cat. I am above average intelligence and that doesn't help. I have to try to dumb myself down in social interactions or just go along with the attitudes of the group. Not conforming, just going along in a way to not put down their own esteem. I can see through people too well and that doesn't help the whole mistrust issue. Even with people in my church that I'm just getting to know the past couple months... I'm seeing through some of them and it bothers me to know that's there's a select few that use deceitful tactics and think it's acceptable behavior. Not that that entirely in itself bothers me even if so done to me, what bothers me is after the deceit of being nice to me... they are "turned back off." Their interest with me had gone out the window. Their getting to know me becomes getting to know a facade they paint before my face. I want to be known for me and not as some walking billboard consisting of whatever they put on it. Even to one I told I was once into homosexual activity although that's not of my ways anyone. Further, I was never a homosexual, I was more that genre where you loved people for being people. I went either way in my days prior to salvation. I'm now a firm believer in being the way the creator made us to be. Back to where I was going... To her I'm now the homosexual-painted-billboard. She never makes an initial text anymore and brushes me off and quick to end conversation when I message her. To me I take that as someone with a phobia. I'm not even of this phobia. How we got to sharing this was in the beginning us telling each other our faults and things that happened to us. She had told me one thing and I still have the text. Weeks later she tells me another thing. I even apologized for accusing her of lying because she said me telling her that I was once with a girlfriend will not change the way she views me. It DID. She stopped trying to engage me as her new friend that she confided in. What would you think? I did want a good friend better than just a "hangout only friend". The thing she lied about was something personal she had told me about her past. She had denied it happened. As if she forgot she told me in the first place. She had changed phone numbers even in this time and it seemed like an accident that she shared her number with me. She's not all there maybe because she acts so innocent. "Like what? You're confusing me." She's 6 years younger than me so I'm sure that has something to do with her demeanor. It had just seemed we had much in common. If people can't or won't be friends with me because my homosexual history then maybe I should never tell another soul. It only bothers women. Of course I live in the same area I had always lived in just some miles off. I'm sure if I don't say it, someone will. My mistake of having a girlfriend at age 17 turns into me never ever being able to have close female friends? My "hangout friends" didn't care but of course some or most of them were more consumed with themselves. They just liked having someone to serve them and their self-god. I have a fornication history, too, but I sure won't tell that to anyone at church. The preacher tells of how we shouldn't not love our neighbor because of their history but then when it comes to me having a more sinful history, it seems people accept what he says and choose to be "tolerant". Like "Hi. -Smile- Bye." That's not loving anyone. I don't like the Judas people in the church. Not their behavior. I want people to get to know me. The real me. I want people to want me in their lives. I know I hinder that because my years of isolation. I'm human. I have a need for belonging. It seems I haven't quite belonged in so long. I had battled depression because of this and severely so even to the point of a suicide attempt at age 17. It's true that being alone is worse than losing any close family member even a son or daughter. The pain is that much worse. If you don't know being alone like that then you can't see how bad it truly is. Nothing breaks the soul more. I don't even know why as a child I had to have all this happen to me. I was molested as a child and the punishment afflicted on me by others continues and continues. At one point I'm sure I didn't have something I had done attribute to my consequences especially all that had happened to me as a child. When I had brought this up to God once prior to me being saved, He heard me and answered my prayer. Therefore He must have not wanted those things to have hurt me like they did. I want new friends but I can't just be willing to get to know people and they "try" getting to know me with a dead-gaze in their eyes. I may have made some mistakes but I much more than those mistakes. My personality goes far and wide. I hate that people minimize me. I'm that person who has an endless amount to say that says little.
[ ]
Want to answer more questions in the Relationships category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Friendship?
Your story reminds me of several pastors who dressed up as smelly unkempt streetpeople. Each came in to the building and where shunned by all except one said 3 or 4 people were welcoming. These men exposed all the parishoners as being judgmental and unloving and hypocrites. Some stories were of their current pastor, one recently I saw was a churches new pastor who did this on his first day there. What you need to realize is that a church is not a place where they really live life as Jesus did. A church is actually a place where mostly people who repeatedly do wrong, will attend. I used to attend church and yes, it is like what you described, even tho I can't say I've been thru the harsh history you have. There are more imperfect people in a church than there are those who are somewhat more mature and spiritual and loving. I can't say where you are going to meet unjudgemental people, those who love unconditionally but you could talk to God again and ask him to bring them along into your life. He does answer prayer as you know. HOwever, the catch is, those who are meant to come across your path can be stubborn as humans will be. We dislike change, so we exercise our God given free will and resist listening to Gods or angels promptings. The thoughts of what is being suggested to a person, most often are thought of as our own , rather than God dropping them into a persons mind. So even though you ask for God to send friends, those meant to be are not being forced to respond due a certain due date. If I am honest, I have clearly known what God wanted me to do and often put it off, refused, or put up a really long argument. As I matured as a believer, I came to trust God no matter what and no longer protested, but did what he asked as soon as I could. I have had my 2nd husband come into my life a year later than first time he saw me. I had already prayed by then for God to provide my 2nd husband. It took a year before he finally made contact with me. I guess in ending, the best I can suggest is to work on getting closer in your relationship with God, with the goal of getting to the point you can have a conversation back and forth. Thats where I am and I rarely meet people who say they have done this.
When you can be asking God for his suggestions on what you can do, and getting his instant answer in your mind as another thought right after you asked, that is when you will have all the answers you need to know where God may want you on any particular day, so He can put you in the path of persons meant to meet you.
]
More Questions: |