I, personally, grew up with a giant lack of self-confidence. After I turned 25, along with quarantine to truly understand myself, I feel I have gained more confidence/self-worth.
My field is technology, but most of all my friends are not “engineers” and I have felt I have been missing out on some key bonds that are preventing me from sharing my knowledge to grow with them in a mutually beneficial way. I felt most of my friends were of the business kind that “always had an idea” and had a pocket engineer to talk to.
But, recently the past 2 years I have been more “mature” saying no to things or starting to give low-level, instead of high-level, overviews about certain topics. I felt it was in-fact hurting my career, to not talk in-depth so I began to join discords and build up my social vernacular observing/conversing with engineers online. But, whenever an in-real life discussion would start with a topic that I had researched, I would always make sure to “correct it” in case fake observations are brought up and/or decisions were made based on them.
Lately, though I have felt I have lost bonds with almost all of my in real life friends. And I can’t tell if, I am the *sshole, or if I have just “grown?”. I have felt that I was always aware of how I shared my “side of the story” and/or reasoning behind my decisions respectfully. But, I just can’t get it out of my head that I am in the wrong in some way.
My SO struggles with this too. I just get by with only one or two people I’d call friends and that works for me. I don’t need a lot.
But my SO struggles with friends in much the same way. They are always the one to reach out to the friends and ask to schedule things and plan in advance but it’s never the friends reaching out to do the same. I consider those not real friends - they’re friends out of convenience because it gives them something to do sometimes instead of actually caring.
So maybe keep track of things like this and see if your friends are actually friends and they care about you or because they get bored and occasionally want things to do.
It seems to me to be pretty normal as you age to distance yourself from others. Especially if you’re in a relationship and/or have a career or job you’re passionate about which it appears you care a lot for your field. Those two things alone will eat up the majority of your time. Throw in friends with that who also may have relationships and jobs etc that eat up all their time too. So naturally it’s difficult to plan things and people fall apart. Totally normal.
Yeah, the biggest challenge lately was understanding if the friendships were for an other’s “convenience.” It’s also hard to communicate with friends, if not tech focused, how much mental energy it takes do some tasks or implement something. So it’s hard to communicate clearly that I can’t do certain things or go to certain events, because my focus will be affected and in turn my quality of work. It always comes out as being a scapegoat and/or probably “bad at their job”.
not sure if I’m understanding correctly, but you’re telling your friends that you can’t do xyz because your work will be affected? when it comes to friendships in general, if you’re constantly turning down invites for whatever reason, then it just comes off as you don’t want to do anything with that person. at least that’s how I would feel - and then eventually I would stop trying hang out.
also if I had a friend that only talked about one individual subject (tech or otherwise) and I felt like I couldn’t have just normal conversations with them, I don’t know how much effort I’d be willing to put into talking to them. I love talking about games or shows I like with friends, but that’s just a small portion of what we’d talk about
i don’t know if any of that helps, but that’s how I would feel going off of what I understood you to be saying
Yeah all of that is right. I think I also hate giving context, but also expect friends to see things from my perspective and understand where I am coming from. All in all it simply has always been a communication issue with incorrect expectations on my part. But, this definitely helps! This comment and most of the thread made me realize, since I don’t have friends that align with my passions, I don’t get that irl release, in turn forcing it into all conversations. So that second point about the individual subject really fits.
ahhh I’m glad I wasn’t making some wrong assumptions. totally understand how lacking the context probably means people aren’t fully understanding here in the comments. but like you said, might just be the people you’re currently friends with have drifted far enough out of your interest spheres that everything feels forced for you now. I hope you find people you can closer relate to and have plenty of fun conversations in the future. it sucks to feel lonely when you’re surrounded by people
Yeah sounds like your current “friends” just don’t get how mentally exhausting some things can be for you.
I have some coworkers that commiserate and talk about technical work junk and usually that is enough to get it out of my system & with actual friends we usually don’t talk about work and just shoot the shit and relax and enjoy NOT being at work together.
Good luck getting your stuff figured out my friend!
Yeah this entire thread made me realize, I am literally getting it out of my system and not having that outlet. The stuff leaks into friendships and being unable to “shoot the shit”.