Poll How Are Your Friendships?

[Changing4Best]

This poll is about how your friendships are, if you have just one or if you have many. There are many choices, because we can have many friends and each relationship can be different.

Feel free to discuss your friendships below as well, thanks!

 

[Venusian]

I don't have many friends, they seem to come and go. I don't know if it is the PTSD or the fact that we were constantly moving when I was a child. Probably a combination of both, my siblings didn't seem to have a problem. Long term friends, no, I don't have any of those. It is hard to make a distinction between friends, work colleagues and acquaintances. I don't really have anyone I can count on. I get forgotten by a lot of people who say they are a friend.

 

[Changing4Best]

I can relate, Venusian, Especially about where someone rises up from aquaintance into friendship. I'd say that the former are folks that I meet who I've never gone out for coffee or to eat with, never been to their home or they to mine, never gone shopping with or sat down with somewhere, maybe like the library, Gym or a park and had a good chat with.

If they have my phone number and use it, that counts as a friend, I think, especially if they live far away from me. I have one close friend, for instance, who calls me every morning without fail at 8AM and reminds me to take my meds. Then we chat for ten minutes or so about everything and anything. That is a real friend, even though she lives 600 miles from here!

I have a dicey situation with neighbors sometimes, as to whether they are friends or not. One keeps saying she'll call and invite me over, but never does. Another invites me up for coffee quite often (and I invite her sometimes too) and we go to church together as well. I feel she is a friend, even though we've had a few spats or differing opinions, while the other is not a friend, obviously!

 

[txtrace]

I have about 4-5 good friends. The ones you can always count on and they you. I count everyone else as acquaitances, I talk to them infrequently and don't have face to face time often. My former co-workers are somewhere in between.

Suffering from PTSD has caused an end to a couple of "friendships" that I thought would be forever. They just can't deal with the changes in me and they don't understand it.

 

[Loloma]

I have four or five really close friends. Most of them live overseas unfortunately, so I don't get to see them that much.

These people have been my friends since I was a young mother with babies and know everything about my past life. They have stood by me when I've been at my lowest point and also through the good times. Sometimes they do not understand certain things I do, but accept me the way I am. They are wonderful people and I am lucky to call them friends.

 

[Changing4Best]

I had a talk with someone who gives me rides sometimes and she said that she prefers to stay home alone than to be around people. I maybe suspect that she has been hurt, but I did not say that I suspected this or ask her any questions. I simply accepted what she said at face value.

I did then talk about me, that I would sometimes feel sorry for myself after about 3 days of sitting at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sometimes it only takes hours of being alone to do this to me, and I LIVE ALONE! I do very much enjoy getting out if I have a ride, as long as I am not going to a place that is too demanding. I cannot think of one right now, but when they arrise, I know them right away. Nosey people will do that to me, as will pushy ones. I try to keep my distance from these!

 

[maddog]

None of the options seemed quite right to describe my situation, which probably reflects how turbulent and confusing I feel it is.

I could literally write a page about each of the below points, but for now:

I don't make friends easily or even like most people. I am, however, usually pretty good at appearing to be much friendlier and closer to people than I feel.

I find it difficult to accept that anyone could truly care about me. Actually, I think I still find it impossible, in spite of evidence.

I find it almost impossible to feel genuine emotional closeness to the people my head tells me are close friends. I just don't really attach to people. I find it almost impossible to rely on, or reach out to, my friends in times of need. Part of this is my difficulty in asking for help, and part of it is my inability to really feel connected to people.

I tend to tire of people quickly and easily and to have little tolerance for the superficialities of friendship. Again, I fake it more than I often want to though, as I am hyperaware of social convention and appropriate behaviour and the apparent need for them.

I feel intense, sometimes overwhelming loneliness and isolation which don't seem to be improved by friendships. It's as though I'm constantly searching for something that doesn't exist, or not in my life anyway.

I feel overwhelmed at the thought of having lots of people in my life and even in my ideal world would have only a couple of close friends.

I have lots of acquaintances and feel a lot of obligation and pressure to maintain contact with them, to the extent that I think that obligation turns into resentment at times and actually results in me making even less contact.

I wasn't going to write a page about all of this though was I...
Friendships are really, really tough for me.

Maddog

 

[aka]

I unfortunately really do not have any friends. The only actual friend I have ever had moved to another state when I was eleven. The other childhood "friends" were nice sometimes and other times would take there frustration out on me and therefore aren't in my life now. I was hoping my roommates could become a friend but lately all she been doing is avoiding me or doing something that triggers me. :(

My Therapist (T) been pushing me to try to make friends but I can't seem to find the courage to do as she suggests. Which is frustrating because half the time I am lonely and in need of a conversation with another person. I can only take so much of only talking to my cat and dog.

 

[NarcSis]

The friends I have left are virtual and even those relationships are strained now.

 

[Changing4Best]

I can relate, at least to some degree, to everyone's situations here that they have written about. I'd say that the bottom line is that friendship is a touchy, difficult subject for the majority of us here and for PTSDers in general. I, of course, having started this poll, believed that this might be the case. And the poll is really beginning to prove it to me, especially when I read all your comments.

One thing I do sometimes is to put my foot in my mouth, as the old cliche goes. I speak first and then think afterwards! I cannot believe some of the things, embarrasing things, rude things, thoughtless things... that I have said to folks over the years.

Then too, I can speak up on a matter that I have very little understanding of, but that has been bothersome to me. And example of this is living in the southern United States, but being from the northern United States. There was this civil war some 175 years ago... or so I thought! But there are folks here that still think it is ongoing in some way. I discovered this when I said last Sunday at lunch after church, that I was glad that is was over and that we could all live in peace. Well! The southerner I was talking to about this disagreed! And I had no way of disagreeing with her then, but I had always been taught that this war was OVER, over a century ago!

So there I sat, being totally confused, having nothing to say that would make any sense, other than to say that all my relatives arrived in this country AFTER the time of this war (but then if she considered it not over, guess what, NOT!)

So how can somone who doesn't even understand what a Yankee is, be friends with someone who hates Yankees??? And apparently I am surround by folks who hate me for being a Yankee, yet I do NOT hate them!!!

 

[Privateer]

I have a few very close friends that I've known for a long time, including a couple I know from my flight training days, and lots of people that I get on with. I seem to make friends pretty easily among certain types of people.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

But there are folks here that still think it is ongoing in some way.

I know what you are talking about Sheila. I live right down the road from a battlefield and only 15 minutes another one and 45 minutes away from one of the biggest battles in the Civil War. People here have not forgotten and the way it is right now they never will.

It does make friendships here harder because I am not a southern, I am in a interracial marriage and I think so much differently.