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Is it weird not to love friends?


Seraphim

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I think due to being betrayed by friends on very very intimate (emotionally ) intimate levels as a young teen I was unable to love friends again. I know I did before this time . If I am betrayed by a friend they never get close to me again and I never feel the same . And I absolutely can’t seem to change my mind about that . As a friend you only get one chance to hurt me and I am emotionally done with you. And since being an early teen I have never loved a friend again.

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I don't think it's weird not to love friends at all and I would even go so far as to apply this same sentiment toward relatives, in-laws, neighbors or those within my community. It's perfectly normal to feel permanently wary and jaded from past, negative, very painful experiences. Who wants to make themselves vulnerable to get hurt again? I am the same way. I may like a friend or friends a lot but I'm not gushy in love with them. I admire, respect and treat my friends right. I can do that but not more.

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Funny you should post this, as I am trying right now to decide how to handle an upcoming event that I've been invited to. Unfortunately, my "bad" ex-friend that I wrote about earlier this year will be there, and I'm deciding whether to just skip it or show up and potentially deal with her hurtful comments. If I skip, then I miss a fun event, which is not what I want, but I'll be so upset if she starts in on her nonsense hurtful garbage with me.

 

And yes, this has made me very skittish to get close to friends. As the saying goes.....with friends like these, who needs enemies.

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I don't think it's weird not to love friends at all and I would even go so far as to apply this same sentiment toward relatives, in-laws, neighbors or those within my community. It's perfectly normal to feel permanently wary and jaded from past, negative, very painful experiences. Who wants to make themselves vulnerable to get hurt again? I am the same way. I may like a friend or friends a lot but I'm not gushy in love with them. I admire, respect and treat my friends right. I can do that but not more.

 

True. I can admire and respect and enjoy friends, but, love ? No. That is reserved for my dearest family members.

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Funny you should post this, as I am trying right now to decide how to handle an upcoming event that I've been invited to. Unfortunately, my "bad" ex-friend that I wrote about earlier this year will be there, and I'm deciding whether to just skip it or show up and potentially deal with her hurtful comments. If I skip, then I miss a fun event, which is not what I want, but I'll be so upset if she starts in on her nonsense hurtful garbage with me.

 

And yes, this has made me very skittish to get close to friends. As the saying goes.....with friends like these, who needs enemies.

 

I just don’t bother with friends like that anymore.

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True. I can admire and respect and enjoy friends, but, love ? No. That is reserved for my dearest family members.

 

I'm the same way. I treat everyone with respect and I too only reserve love for closest, dearest family members and no one else. Blood is thicker than water.

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I believe we generally receive back what we give and if it doesn't happen this way, we innately sense something is wrong. This is a unique gift. We are able to sense when something is wrong in the give and take. We are able to develop complex behaviours, currencies and methods of communication where we communicate all manner of feelings, goals, plans, strategies.

 

We're born as social creatures and, interestingly, most of us die as social creatures or hope to die among people we know or in a familiar place. It doesn't matter very much if a person identifies as introverted or extroverted. We are made to communicate and share ideas. In the end, our species evolves as a whole due to shared information and shared wealth.

 

The evolution of friendships is just a microcosm of the entire universe and our species interacting within it. We interact with each other and I think it's an evolutionary process at heart. We have to look no farther than the evolution of our species or other intelligent species. Friendships happen when there's a sharing of information/wealth. To stunt it is unnatural. To experience stunting is unnatural. This is just my personal belief. We should seek to bridge gaps and expand our thoughts and ideas and create mediums (methods of communication) that promote shared wealth and strengthen/deepen our ties. I'm talking more about humanity as a whole, not in terms of social media, for example.

 

I am naturally an introvert. I don't gain extra enjoyment out of interacting with anyone in particular but I am forced to think or act otherwise for my work, with my family and yes, also with my friends. This has made me think twice about friendships and their importance or where I see us as an entire species (in terms of forward growth). Just my two cents.

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I've been sort of stymied by this thread. I completely understand the concept, and yet I'm trying to wrap my head around it.

 

I think the issue I am having is that it's not a hard line for me.

 

I think that once upon a time, it was a hard line. I remember drawing it out in a diagram, like there were only certain avenues for personal connection. But since that time, the line has gone all fuzzy. It's no longer a strict boundary.

 

Now, even the concept of that line it is hard for me to grasp. But I know it wasn't always that way.

 

I would also say that my life has improved since that time, and that I'm happier and more fulfilled.

 

Interesting....

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Good topic. I guess an important question would be, is this something that bothers you, and would you want to change it, or are you content with it?

 

While I've been hurt by people in my youth, I think I internalized it against myself because I was hardly an angel. By the time I grew aware enough to recognize that nobody 'deserves' mistreatment, I was already capable of crediting myself for using better judgment in my choices of friends--so I'm trusting my own capabilities to assess harm and walk away rather than viewing myself as being at the mercy of anyone else's capacity for disloyalty.

 

I love my friends, not only because I've selected them (with a few exceptions being those who I was too young to 'select' but who are still with me), but also because I consider myself to be loving by default. On one level, I love humanity and all living creatures. On another level, I've adopted certain friends who I consider to be a valuable part of my family. And just as with family, I may love them in a constant way even at times when I don't 'like' them very much.

 

I've walked away from mistreatment, and I've faded on people who didn't inspire me, yet this doesn't necessarily mean that I haven't loved them. I just view some people as better loved from far away.

 

I think that I view loving and hurting on different prongs. They can overlap or not. This doesn't make me right or anyone else wrong, I think it just means that we all process harm differently. A generalized love is my default state, and it comes with a neutral setting on my trust meter. I observe people over time, and I let them show me whether I'll want to increase my trust or withdraw trust and exit.

 

While it's painful, I have been able to walk away from someone I love if they prompt me to withdraw trust. These are unfortunate instances, but I won't allow them to dissuade me from love, because love feels to me like my purpose on the planet. Why should I deprive myself of loving because someone ELSE hasn't learned how to conduct themselves?

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I would say I am pretty loving overall with people and animals. My family being top priority. I do a lot for others. I am loving in actions.

 

I think maybe I am curious when I hear people say they love their friends and their friends are like family or are family.

 

I was raised with the idea that family is family and friends are friends and the two aren’t the same . Not that we shouldn’t do good things for them or be helpful or have loving actions but that family is a top priority .

 

No ,I wouldn’t say that it bothers me it just seems natural .

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I was raised with the idea that family is family and friends are friends and the two aren’t the same.

 

They're not the same, because we can't choose our blood family, but we can select additions to those we consider family.

 

For instance, I have a friend who has been with me since we were babies. She lived next door to my grandparents, and we were too young to know the age we were introduced. She's always just been in my life, 'like' family. While I may not like her at times, I consider her as important to me as family and I'm closer to her than most of my blood relations. Same is true of other friends who I selected later in life. One friend since my early 20's has since lost all family members, so I'm her designee for medical decisions and have hospital privileges, etc.

 

In one way we get to choose who we love, and in other ways, we may love people regardless of whether it's necessarily good for us to allow them access to our lives. I think we all define 'love' differently, and I believe that that's okay as long as our definitions match with those of chosen romantic partners or spouses.

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I was raised only blood is family.

 

Interesting about that.

 

Everyone in my family would be upset if I said they weren't my family because I was adopted.

 

My boyfriend's mom looks upon my adopted family as my family. But she always qualifies statements about her own adopted brother with "adopted brother. Not my real brother."

 

I am always fascinated by the rules that people follow.

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Interesting about that.

 

Everyone in my family would be upset if I said they weren't my family because I was adopted.

 

My boyfriend's mom looks upon my adopted family as my family. But she always qualifies statements about her own adopted brother with "adopted brother. Not my real brother."

 

I am always fascinated by the rules that people follow.

 

Oh no, I didn’t mean that adopted would not mean that you are not family. There are adopted members in my extended family . Those are family members . We consider adopted members still blood family .

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I struggled with love for a long time... it’s only been recently in the last few years (I’m 47) that I have become comfortable expressing love and affection. I am not sure what shifted except that I felt like I wanted to recieve love so I needed to learn how to give it and I had to learn how to walk through huge fears of being hurt and abandoned. For me the rewards were worth the work I needed to do.

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You have explained that part of your emotional guardedness with friends is due to being betrayed or hurt by friends in the past, and part of it is due to the way you were raised. I guess a lot of factors impact how we relate to other people.

 

I have also felt that it is difficult to be emotionally vulnerable with friends, ever since my mid-twenties. I think when most people are young - teens and twenties - we find it easy to latch onto friendships and form deep bonds that usually weaken or fade as we get older and more independent. But there is something sad about that loss of intimate friendship.

 

I have wondered, for myself, if my hesitancy to allow myself to become vulnerable and emotionally close to people was due to fear. I have wondered if I keep my feelings guarded to protect them because I my emotional state is too fragile to let someone else in.

 

So then I wondered if I were to build up stronger internal support systems - self-esteem, confidence in who I am without external validation, a strong center for my identity and values - then maybe it wouldn't be so scary or uncomfortable to let someone in and risk being betrayed, judged, and rejected. Because if I had that strong sense of self-esteem and strong sense of myself, then it wouldn't matter if someone rejected it or disrespected me. I would be able to say "you can't hurt me because I don't rely on this relationship."

 

But then, there's the rub. You cannot truly become emotionally intimate without some of that vulnerability, can you? If you don't in some way entrust someone with something fragile of yourself, and say "I am depending on you not to hurt me" then is it even really intimacy? If you don't NEED the friendship, and if its dissolution would not affect you, is it even valuable or deep? I think not.

 

 

So then, we have to ask if there is something valuable to be gained from that willing vulnerability, and would there be something valuable to be gained from getting hurt and rejected?

 

And that vulnerability, that sacrifice you have to make to form a deep friendship, is not just a fear or risk of getting hurt. It's also like cutting out some of yourself and giving it away. Because real friendships take a level of emotional energy out of you - you have to listen to the person, care about them, spend energy on the anxiety of "Does this person reciprocate my efforts? / Am I giving as much as I'm asking from this person?" It is legit exhausting to love someone!

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nobody 'deserves' mistreatment

 

I want to point this out because it's an important reminder and can't be stated enough. But also I think people tend to misinterpret the concept of deserving something, both for themselves, and for others. I often interpret actions as leading directly to their consequences. I mean, that's just human nature to look at something that happened and try to find out what led to that. Then when you identify certain choices as causes, I tend to think that I, or someone, deserved what happened because of their actions that caused the outcome. But when I really think about it, that's not the same thing. Causing something to happen, or contributing to an outcome, doesn't mean that outcome was deserved. You might say I was responsible for something but is that the same as saying I deserved it? It's a conflation of accountability with justice and I think there are subtle differences that, if we remember to parse out, can help us with learning and changing behaviors, without allowing that to overlap with blame and shame and pity, which don't necessarily contribute to growth or change.

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The reason I have trouble with it is because I told a friend when I was 13 I was raped repeatedly by my uncle and she told the entire school. Then I was brutally teased and called a wh*re and family bleeper for 3 years every single day.

 

I can see how that can leave a mark. I don't think it's weird not to love your friends. It's neither uncommon nor unhealthy. It's just how you roll. You said this isn't a problem for you and that you don't feel a need to change. You have people you love. That, I think is an important tjhing to have. In my opinion, it doesn't matter who that person is or how they got into your life. I just think loving someone is a gift to experience, and you have that. And you have friends. What more do you need, right?

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That is the way I see it too.

 

I can see how that can leave a mark. I don't think it's weird not to love your friends. It's neither uncommon nor unhealthy. It's just how you roll. You said this isn't a problem for you and that you don't feel a need to change. You have people you love. That, I think is an important tjhing to have. In my opinion, it doesn't matter who that person is or how they got into your life. I just think loving someone is a gift to experience, and you have that. And you have friends. What more do you need, right?
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The reason I have trouble with it is because I told a friend when I was 13 I was raped repeatedly by my uncle and she told the entire school. Then I was brutally teased and called a wh*re and family bleeper for 3 years every single day.

 

Seraphim, I'm terribly sorry to hear this. I think it is possible to love a friend or family member for who they are IF they're good to you or anyone. However, the word "love" shouldn't be mixed up or blended with the word "trust." I love certain family members (relatives & in-laws) and friends to an extent but I wouldn't go so far as to trust and confide in them. There is a difference between those two words "love" and "trust." You or people can still love to a point but not risk betrayal by fully trusting and confiding in them.

 

Unfortunately, you nor anyone cannot control gossip and entertainment at your expense. I too have confided in those whom I loved and trusted only for it to sorely backfire. Like a bad burn from cooking on the stove, I've never forgotten nor have I confided ever again. I've arrived at to the conclusion that yes, I can love certain people in my life whether family or friends but I stop when it comes to trust regarding certain topics. I draw the line there.

 

I confide in my immediate family and a few friends but I only go so far and I NEVER reveal everything. There are some topics that I'll carry to my deathbed.

 

When you're young, you're naive. We all are. Unfortunately and often times, it takes betrayal of trust to learn hard lessons about keeping your mouth shut.

 

Again, I'm terribly sorry for your trauma in your youth. I hope you're on the path to healing.

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