Shine

I am not sure if this will be a popular opinion.... It sounds like you endured a lot of damage within relationships. It’s great to find strength ‘on your own’, and at the same time we are social animals. You spoke of having therapy, and I noticed that another member talked about those experiences being quite short. Finding a therapist that you can develop a deep sense of trust with is really important to the therapeutic process. Much of the time emotional damage occurs through hurtful and toxic relationships. A therapist that you actually ‘click’ with and you feel actually gets where you’re coming from can be the first step to some healing. I think that it is fantastic to work hard on our own, and at the same time it’s through repeated experiences within a respectful and caring relationship that we slowly heal the wounds that were caused through negative relational experiences. I think it’s really important to honour that we are relational creatures, and often healing can occur within repeated positive relational experiences. From personal experience, it is not alway easy to find a therapist that has a ‘good fit’, sometimes it might take seeing 2-3 (or more) different therapists until you have a sense of them being a good fit for you. It is important that we honour our selves enough to find the right fit. As I see it we’re the ones paying, if the therapeutic relationship is not useful, move on and keep going until you find the right one. From there, unfortunately there are no magical cures, it takes time, courage and faith in the process of healing. If you decide that therapy is the right avenue for you, it takes time.... Sometimes it’s hard to hold onto having faith in the process, it can be slow going sometimes, and then you might have great strides forward, and then again it feels like nothing changes. These are the times that it can feel so hard to hold onto hope. You matter, and I wish you well on your journey.

This is just such a toxic thing to say to you. Marriage/partnership does not automatically mean that you’ll have someone there beside you at the end.... If you meet someone amazing and you find that you do make that sort of commitment then that’s really exciting and would hopefully bring joy and growth into your life. I hope that you have some great friends, and if you’re lonely reaching out here is a good place to start, and then following your passions in life brings you into contact with other like minded people. Having a partner is so not the only way of being and feeling valued in this life. As others have talked about focusing on self development, meditation and following your passions are the things that bring our lives greater meaning. Try to block out this negative and damaging message and go about living your best life. I wish you strength and happiness.Have faith in your self, define things for your self, sometimes even people that love us, can say really toxic and negative things. I think that putting it out here, and seeing the response that you are getting might affirm for you that this is just someone else’s fears, their opinion. Live true to your self and trust in your self.

Thank you, I didn’t expect any sort of response so quickly. It means so much, just brought me to tears, in a good way. Thnk you

Hi, I am new to this forum, in fact have not ever done anything like this. I am older, (48) and no longer have any real and dear friends. I have a beautiful partner and two grown children. I have a couple of superficial friends, and I used to have a really dear friend, however this person stopped talking to me suddenly. We were friends for almost 15 years, and this has hit really hard. I miss having her friendship because we talked about the deeper experience of life, and I trusted her completely. Now I have friends who I can share small talk. I miss having a reciprocal life enhancing friend. I’m really confused trying to work out what went wrong. One day we were talking as we always have, and then she never answered a call or text again, (I know she’s not dead)! I wonder if there are others feeling profoundly lonely in life. I am interested in how others might deal with loneliness. I miss having someone to nut out the deeper experiences in life. It’s not just that I miss being able to talk to her, I miss our deep conversations and feeling like I could also be a support in someone else’s life. It’s interconnection that I miss so much. I feel sad, and profoundly lonely. I’m not great at small talk, I can do it, and I get that it is an important part of life but I’m talking Buber ‘I and thou’ sort of communication.