Socializing

[u/workingitout4me]

I (29 F) i’m having serious trouble with communication. I have found that for the past 10 years, I have been in and out of many interpersonal connections with coworkers, friends, partners, and family. I often find it very difficult to be friends with men because they tend to take me being kind and not mean as flirtatious and simply take things the wrong way despite me setting boundaries and I don’t know what to do. I find that as I’m getting older, it’s harder for me to maintain friendships with women as well because I’ve been in therapy for the past few years and I’ve learned a lot about gaslighting and abusive behavior, and I do my best to show up as a kind, open and smart individual but rarely is that consistently reciprocated. I have found myself in a number of one-sided friendships or have gravitated towards people who are very damaged and I learned the hard way that they are liabilities. I’ve now started being extremely closed off and spend most of my time gaming (I find it a lot easier, safer and consistent to make gamer friends than ones in real life) and have recently eased up on heavy drinking and smoking so that I can have more clarity, focus on achieving my financial and education, goals, and gain back the confidence that I feel I’ve lost over the past 10 years.

It’s been really hard, keeping friends because everyone is too busy with work or their kids. I am single with no children and it’s not because I necessarily want my life to be that way, I’ve just had a string of bad relationships because the men that I attract tend to want a mom/caretaker instead of a girlfriend /wife/partner. I’ve managed to keep some good women friends for a long time, but in the past couple of years, I’ve lost touch with a few 10 year plus friendships just due to being in different places (they have husbands/kids/important jobs/ or live far away) on our journeys.

Normally someone would probably talk to their parents about this, but I don’t have any contact with my parents. The only people that I have to talk to are social workers and I don’t really feel comfortable opening up to my coworkers anymore because I just feel like that’s being a little too vulnerable in a place that’s meant for focus. I just feel like I don’t know what I’m doing and I want to figure it out and stop feeling so clueless. Anyone have any tips? I would really appreciate it if anyone would share. Thank you for reading.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the sub! This is a simple automated message just to let everyone know that the mod team are actively working to make this sub kinder and more welcoming.

Please remember that ALL discussion should be made in good faith, comments as well as posts. No trolling, ragebait, or bigotry of any kind. We reserve the right to use mod discretion in applying this rule.

Please remember that your fellow Redditors are human beings, and that it costs nothing to be kind. Please report any comments you see which are unkind, obnoxious, out of line, trolling, or which otherwise violate the rules of this subreddit.

Here are the LifeAdvice Rules and here are Reddit's Sitewide Rules. Please read before commenting in this subreddit. Thanks.

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.