Why do I feel lonely, even with my friends?

When you’re sad or scared a bunch of the time, it’s hard to feel like you belong anywhere. Even with the people you're closest to, there are just so many ways to question whether you really fit in.

Do your friends have their lives just *that* much more together than you do?

Are they all naturally gifted hosts who love having people over (always with the perfect spread)?

Do their careers have more of a general sense of, what’s that word… direction?

Or maybe it’s not that your friends are all doing better than you. It’s just that they don’t seem to get so completely knocked about by life’s ups and downs.

(What are they, wizards???)

A while back we looked at how comparing yourself to others can actually be useful, if you do it right. But this week, what do you do with that pervasive feeling of unbelonging can that can settle over your friendships, especially when you've been having a hard time?

It’s harder to fit in when you already suspect you don’t

There's a funny thing that happens when you start to ask yourself 'do I really belong here?'. It’s a little bit self-fulfilling.

If you have uncomfortable questions drumming through your head every time you see your friends (are they thinking about how I hardly ever host stuff? Does that make me a bad friend?) then it’s harder to be present. It’s harder to be authentic. It’s harder to have fun.

Your worried thoughts become this big, glass barrier between you and everybody else. Fish Bowl Friendship.

It’s not that you can’t still connect and enjoy people’s company when you’re in this mode. It’s just that it’s *hard work*.

And the more hard work it is to enjoy yourself, the more those nagging thoughts gain a foothold.

No one else seems to be second-guessing whether they belong here. What does that say about me??

The fish aren’t alright

In The Great God of Depression (a podcast about the scary places our brains can take us) they describe it like this:

“When he was very depressed, he felt like his words would never reach the other person when he spoke, that they would just fall flat and lie limp on the floor. And he couldn’t actually communicate because the words would just be flapping there, gasping for air.”

Or, as the great feelings sage of our time Allie Brosh puts it:

Even when you’re not quite that deeply ensconced in your own private aquarium hell, you can still feel like you’re communicating through a glass wall. And after a while, that can get a little lonely.

Longing for belonging

For me, the Fish Bowl Friendship mode comes and goes. But in the past few years, it’s been more persistent than it used to be.

Was it hitting my mid-30s, with all the churn and shifting priorities that brings to any social circle? Maybe. Was it going through a divorce? Oh yip, that’ll do it.

Whatever the reason, in the last couple of years I’ve had the ‘do I really belong here?’ knob turned up higher than I used to. And it takes its toll.

I’ve been in Melbourne for six years, having moved here from Auckland. Long enough to put down roots, but apparently not long enough to trust those roots will hold if a big storm hits.

I want to change that. If 5 years of regular hangouts hasn’t done it, maybe I need to be a little more proactive with my friends?

Trying something new

I’m sick of feeling like I don’t belong, even when I’m with my good friends.

Here is something I’ve been trying trying lately, that seems to be helping.

Challenging my self-imposed storylines

Here’s the thing about me. I have my quirks. My known limitations, relating to my big feels stuff.

Some of it can make friendships a little tricky sometimes.

Here’s something I’ve known for sure about myself for years. I hate hosting.

The logic is simple really.

Me: Oh, you want me to have a party at my house? Sure!

Me five seconds later: Wait on, does that mean I can’t *leave* this party whenever I want to? Yeah that’s going to be a problem.

There’s other stuff in the mix here too. I've lucked into a friend group who are all gourmet cooks. Great! Except, also, a lot of pressure when it comes to returning the favour.

But here’s the thing. After a while these known limitations can become all-powerful storylines that limit the way we see ourselves, and the choices we think we have.

I regularly feel like I am not pulling my weight when it comes to my friend group’s regular social get-togethers, because I almost never host them myself. More and more I feel guilty. I wonder if I’m being a crappy friend.

And that pressure has lately led me to stop even going to these get-togethers. As if the only two options I had available were: 1) keep going, but wonder if I’m really all that welcome, and 2) stop going, and wonder if I’m really all that welcome.

(Tasty.)

There’s usually another option, as long as you’re willing to be very uncomfortable

But see, there’s a third option I wasn’t even seeing.

Host!

First, I plucked up the courage to publicly announce to my friends: ‘I’m going to host one of our next get-togethers.’ This was a terrifying prospect.

In the past, part of my strategy for justifying my lack of hosting has been to tell myself I’m just not up to it. ‘Some people just aren’t built for this, why not let the naturals do it?’

That didn’t leave me much to go on when I tried to imagine how it would all go. ‘Will I hate every minute, or will I find a way to enjoy myself? Shit I don’t know, I can only tell you what non-hosty Graham would do in this scenario, but he’s clearly not the one who’ll be there.’

But here is a theory I’ve been working on...

Some of this interpersonal stuff, the feeling of belonging or unbelonging? It only gets solved, well, interpersonally.

That doesn’t mean you have to mold yourself in-line with everything you think your friends want of you. You get to decide what you’re up for. But if something has plagued you with doubt or shame for years, and no amount of reassurance or internal affirmations can shift it, maybe it’s time to try a more public solution?

How I learned to stop worrying and . . . worry about other stuff instead! (Like what to cook??!)

There’s every chance my self-limiting story (I can’t host!) doesn’t apply to you. Maybe you have the opposite problem - bending over backwards to do everything for ungrateful non-hosters (like that grifter, non-hosty Graham). But I’ll share with you my process, in case it helps challenge any limiting storylines of your own that just might have outgrown their usefulness in your life.

Here’s what I did.

Step one. Find something I can cook for a large amount of people. I’m good at cooking for my housemates, but that’s three people, not ten.

With my housemates’ help I settle on 3 dishes from an Ottolenghi book, each more out-of-my-comfort-zone than the last. Yay!

Step two. On the day of this get-together, I spend 2 hours making the simplest of the three dishes - a bean salad - for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I spend most of this time feeling increasingly hectic, and watching the clock defy the known laws of physics.

Step three. When my first guest arrives, I make surprisingly convincing small talk while spending the entire conversation thinking ‘is the schnitzel burning? Why did I think I could make schnitzel?? WHO AM I, NIGELLA??!’

Steps four through seven. I make a good meal, that my friends genuinely enjoy. I watch them having a good time as I scramble with the food and the clean up and feel a little bit removed from it all, but not in the usual ‘I don’t belong here' way. Instead, by the end of the night, I feel strangely more connected to everyone. I feel useful.

It’s not pride exactly. Sometimes you come to things so much longer after everyone else has, ‘pride’ just isn’t really relevant. Instead I just feel good.

Contributing to a group is a shortcut to fitting in

We are wired to want to contribute to our communities.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls this our “hive switch”. It’s part of what distinguishes us from our primate forebears.

We humans have the ability to form strong group bonds, in which people often go out of their way to benefit the group even when there’s no obvious benefit for them personally.

Why? It’s because it doesn’t just make you look good when you do something for others. It makes you feel good. It turns on your hive switch. It helps you feel like you belong to something bigger than yourself.

In other words, it gets you out of the Fish Bowl.

And what I’m starting to think is that this is true no matter what stories you’ve told yourself about what you can and can’t do. (Or what stories others have told you.)

Maybe you can do that thing you always told yourself you couldn’t do? Or maybe you can’t? (Who am I to say - I only just learned how to cook for my friends at age 35.) But what is the smallest possible way you could test the theory, either way?

Hosty Graham cannot be stopped

This whole hive switch thing makes sense to me, having done nothing more complicated than cook a meal for some close friends. I did something that cost me time, worry, and effort. Something I can’t even brag about, because frankly, it’s about time I learned how to do this sort of thing. And it feels good.

And the best part? It’s addictive. I’ve hosted four more things in the weeks since, and via some simple online recipes and a trip home to learn from the guru herself (hi mum!), I’ve learned a few more meals I can make en masse. Mostly little gatherings, but just enough to keep the Fish Bowl away.

I’ve been thinking about some of those other storylines I have about myself. And I’ve been wondering, which ones could I (gently) challenge next?

Join us over on the Patreon for a deep dive into this one!

Together we'll ask:

What’s something you always thought you couldn’t do, until you did?

What’s something you still think you can’t do, but you’re curious about?

What helps people (especially sensitive types) take those bold first steps even when they’re half-convinced they’re gonna fail?

If you wanna add your two cents on this topic but but you’re not yet a card-carrying member, find out more about all that here.

(P.s. The awful thing that I don’t know how to talk about.)

There's something I've conspicuously avoided talking about this issue, despite it being very front and centre in my mind.

Christchurch.

I went back and forth over whether to say anything, and what I would even say.

I will say this much. This one really got to me, and I’m still working out what to do with it. I grew up in Christchurch. We have a few longtime Big Feels Club members who live there. Right now I don’t have any words other than, I’m thinking of you all. Me te aroha nui ki a koutou katoa.

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