Loneliness and the associated depressive feelings is ruining my life

LegacyUser

This is a big problem for me, and also tends to ruin my relations with the opposite sex. I've been lonely pretty much my whole life. As an only child, I naturally spent more time than others alone. Couple that with the fact i'm a shy guy, and you can see how I was alone a lot.

I was never completely friendless as a child though. The natural environment of everybody being together meant I could pretty easily make friends. I was bullied a small bit when I was young for being intelligent but nothing major. I guess the loneliness really set in and started to wear me down around college when I had a choice about going to class and interacting and I just didn't bother going.

The fear of loneliness really effects me when it comes to relations with the opposite sex. As soon as I have one girl in my life I become attached to her. I get jealous, insecure and just act like this bad person who I don't want to be. I'm mid 20's and have been in one relationship in my life, it lasted 3 years. It ended in 2012 but should have ended earlier. But I was too scared to end it because of the fear of being alone again. The fear of going back to a situation where only my family cares about me.

Since then, I've got close with 2 girls. Both have not been right for me, one due to her not wanting a bf and the other due to long distance. The current one is the long distance one. I had a fling with her on holiday for a month. I had seen her twice before but only for 3 or 4 days. I know she is not right for me firstly because of distance and secondly because she has other men that she's interested in who actually live near her. But I keep on obsessively messaging her and calling her asking why she isn't talking with me. All because of fear of loneliness. If I stop talking to her, I'll have nobody messaging my phone or calling me now and then and that scares me. Because that's when severe depressive feelings set in for me.

I wish I could just enjoy my time with women without fearing that it's going to end and i'll be back to square one - loneliness. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach now because I know I will stop talking with the long distance girl soon. Loneliness scares me. Because it feels like nobody cares. When I stop talking with this girl, I could put my phone down for a month and there won't be a call or a text on it apart from my mother. I keep thinking, I could die and nobody would bat an eyelid.

I feel like such an irrelevance in life. Like nobody gives a **** about me. It's causing me to behave in a way that is not healthy for me - obsessively clinging to girls who are wrong for me, desperate for them not to cut off contact. I'm crying as I type this because I can feel the loneliness coming on again. I guess I am just looking for advice. Thanks

LLMMML

Have you considered counselling? Sounds like something CBT might help with. Not sure Internet advice can really help with the kind of feelings you're having. I suppose there two things you have to somehow do. Realise that hassling someone to talk to you is counterproductive and won't help with loneliness. And secondly, make more friends.

shaymus27

If you are ever feeling really lonely, ring the samaritans. I don't know much about them but I would guess they have different people so if one doesn't suit you just ask to speak to another. I haven't heard much about them recently so I hope they are still going as they would be good for you to call just to talk to someone. If this would be costly you might ask them to ring you back.

The more interests and social life you have the more you will be around people and less lonely you would be.

Sometimes the more time we have on our hands the more we focus on how lonely we are and feel more lonely as a result - I've done that myself. The more occupied you are, the less you focus on being lonely.

Hang in there as people develop over the years, they meet people and things change. Be proactive about meeting people to give yourself the best chance to meet people. You may need to work on your self-confidence as if it wasn't low to begin with, it may reduce with loneliness.

Hope things improve.

Dellnum

The thing is OP we would all be in the same boat if we didn't step out of our comfort zone and try and make friends to socialize with. What you have to do is join as many clubs as you can and then get out there and mix, forcing yourself even when you don't want to. The trouble with you is that you want things to be easy and so you take the easiest option so that you don't have to make any further efforts. Nothing in life is ever easy and most things have to be worked at. You were probably used to having everything handed to you as you were an only child so now it goes against the grain to have to do things for yourself. You have proved that you can get girlfriends, so that's a plus. It takes a while to meet the right person, but in the meantime go out, join clubs and just have fun. Join meetup.com for people in your area and once you get started you won't know yourself. I don't believe that you are any different to anyone else who doesn't make an effort, but nothing will happen for you until you get out there yourself and join as many clubs as you can. Hope this all works out for you soon.