Home→Forums→Relationships→Did I lead myself on?
- This topic has 124 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by Anonymous.
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February 15, 2019 at 1:41 pm #280363HParticipant
Hi Anita
I ended up sending it by mistake as I was saving it to my drafts. I hope I’ve not ruined everything now. I do respect what he asked if me and I just feel like I’ve proven him right.
Thanks
February 15, 2019 at 1:48 pm #280365AnonymousGuestDear H:
What can I say to that? I hope you find a way to not send anything to him anymore, not intentionally and not by mistake. Remove him from your list of contacts, do what it takes to respect what he asked of you.
anita
February 15, 2019 at 1:51 pm #280367HParticipantHi Anita
I know there is nothing you can say. I feel so hopeless right now that I’ve ruined another friendship.
Thanks for all your help
February 15, 2019 at 1:59 pm #280381AnonymousGuestDear H:
You are welcome. I wish I was more helpful to you.
anita
March 3, 2019 at 1:53 pm #282691HParticipantHi Anita
Not sure what to do. Keep on trying to fix things with my two friends but failing. Just lost all my energy. It’s been six months now since my nan passed away and I just feel like everyone is leaving me. I know it’s probably ideal to let things go but struggling.
Hope you’re well
Thanks
Harminder
March 3, 2019 at 2:16 pm #282695AnonymousGuestDear Harminder:
“Keep on trying to fix things with my two friends but failing”- if by trying to fix things you mean messaging them repeatedly, again, and again, better stop it, it is not fixing anything, instead you are breaking what is already broken-
December you wrote: “I don’t want to have to repeatedly bother someone but irrational thoughts take over which leads to asking the same things over and over again or messaging someone repeatedly”- better stop this behavior.
Tell me about your nan, how she was, how she treated you?
anita
March 3, 2019 at 2:27 pm #282703HParticipantHi Anita
Not messaged them repeatedly this time, just keep on drafting messages, trying to find the words to mend things. Have been trying really hard to stop my obsessive behaviours.
My nan was wonderful, my whole world and she always had time for me. I looked after her during the last year, so when she went I felt lost. Coincidentally on the same week she passed away, my best friend stopped talking me suddenly. So I can’t seem to think of one without thinking of the other which ends up being very painful.
March 3, 2019 at 2:42 pm #282707AnonymousGuestDear Harminder:
Your nan was wonderful to you, unlike your father and mother, always had time for you. You must have photos of her, one maybe in a frame on your desk? Look at her photo from time to time with a smile, remembering the affection she had for you.
So you “keep on drafting messages, trying to find the words to mend things”, like before. Better stop drafting messages.
Why don’t you go for a walk outside, in the fresh air, every day, for a whole hour each day? Maybe now?
anita
March 6, 2019 at 12:09 pm #283387HParticipantHi Anita
Yeah I loved her very much. I have a few photos but really struggle to look at them. I feel like I should have grieved by now but I’ve been in the same loop for over severn months. I keep on thinking about my friend Diana, how she left me on the same week as well. It’s harder to accept because she’s still alive. Is it wrong of me to want to closure? I wish I was one of those people who didn’t care about things so much, it would be easier but instead I feel every little emotion.
I have been getting some fresh air but not as often as I should. Just taking it one step at a time
March 6, 2019 at 12:36 pm #283401AnonymousGuestDear Harminder:
I read your recent post and hope you get more fresh air. I was wondering what your daily routine is like, what are your activities during the day?
I will be away from the computer next and back in about seventeen hours from now.
anita
March 6, 2019 at 1:17 pm #283407HParticipantHi Anita
I’m at work Monday to Friday, full time so that keeps me busy. Weekends have been very unproductive over the past few months. I’ll usually stay in bed, sometimes get up and go downstairs for food and spend time with Mum and little brother. But mostly in my bedroom. I’ll sometimes watch a few Netflix shows but I struggle to focus on that as well now. Mostly I’ll be glued to phone, checking it.
Thanks
Harminder
March 7, 2019 at 4:06 am #283439JayJayParticipantHello H,
I’ve read the whole way through this thread. Forgive me if I’m interrupting.
Just to put my following comments into context, I previously worked for years in the communications dept of a large UK university, lecturing in writing related subjects. Before I did this, I spent a year learning communications as they related to teaching others, and how to communicate correctly with others, how to read body language correctly and so on. I am retired now.
The first thing that strikes me is that you have an unhealthy obsession with your phone. That’s not so unusual these days, especially with younger people!
The second thing that I noticed is that you are rarely interacting with anyone in the ‘real world’. You seem to be living in a virtual reality. Like you mentioned somewhere else in this thread, others have said you can’t really love someone you haven’t ever met in the ‘real world’. Met in person. Interacted with, face-to-face. You can like them an awful lot, you can enjoy communicating with them. You can love the inter-reaction. But unless you have known them in a physical environment, you cannot really ‘know’ them.
So what you have with this and other on-line friends is simply that. An on-line friendship. Communication via email is the modern form of having a penfriend and writing physical letters and posting by the mail. Although we have Skype and other visual electronic aids to communication, although graphical images such as smileys were developed to aid the communication of feelings digitally, it is still nowhere near having a conversation with a person face to face. You see each other on a screen, you cannot reach out and touch that person, even though you might be able to see their facial expressions.
Communication face to face is rather different from virtual communication. A face-to-face conversation with someone involves body language, facial expressions, and a whole lot of other non-verbal clues as to how both people are reacting to the conversation. Also the tone in someone’s voice is also communicated. Their scent (pheromones) is picked up by receptors in your nose and brain. Based on all those clues, either the conversation continues or it doesn’t, depending on what the content of the conversation is. And how those other clues are feeding into the conversation.
Humans have been communicating with each other for centuries face-to-face. Even without realising it, we have evolved to read the non-verbal clues – body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, pheromones, and a whole host of other things… and that dictates the way the conversation runs. This is a basic survival instinct of the human species.
A virtual conversation, either via a social website, or email or whatever else in electronic form, carries none of these clues as to how someone else is thinking, feeling or enjoying the conversation. The conversation here is simply words. It is very easy to misunderstand what someone says when it it simply written down. There are no clues as detailed above as with physical face-to-face conversations, although you might be able to see an image of somebody smiling on a screen. You still don’t have the complete picture of someone.
You are tying yourself up in knots over something you may have written and that someone *may* have taken offence to… so you over-compensate by sending more emails as that is your chosen form of communication.
Although you won’t like me saying this, I think you need to get off that phone, and get out into the real world. Make friends in reality proper, not virtual reality. Start with spending less time in your bedroom and interacting more with your mother and brother. Cook a meal for them and yourself. Sit at the table with them and share the meal, converse, interact. Spend time with real, live friends in a real live environment. Walk in the park, say hello or smile at other people. Learn to interact with real humans. You work all week, so do you email the people you work with or do you speak to them? Or are you glued to your phone at work as well, whenever possible, making conversation and inter-reaction with those that surround you impossible at work as well?
I say the above not to criticise you, but out of concern for your well being.
Try turning off your phone for one whole day. Just one day, for now. For a whole 24 hours. Can you cope with that thought? Could you do that? Can you turn off your phone for half of a day? For an hour?
With best wishes,
Jay x
- This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by JayJay.
March 7, 2019 at 5:26 am #283447AnonymousGuestDear Harminder:
What a wonderful, excellent, professional reply from JayJay!
Yes, time to get out more, after work, take walks outside, join a yoga class perhaps, some other meetup group of people, even a support group of some kind where people come together, in person, to talk.
If I remember correctly, you wrote that you prefer online communications because you don’t like the way you look, so online people can’t see how you look, am I remembering correctly?
anita
April 30, 2019 at 11:22 am #291869HParticipantHi Anita
Sorry for the late reply, I don’t seem to get notifications!
I have been getting out more, managed to make it to the hairdressers a few weeks ago and spent time shopping. Other than that I have therapy going on as well. Saw my friends couple of weeks ago which was nice
Yes, I began to prefer it as I found i could be myself completely. I rarely would eat a lot of food in front of people in public but with my friend I could easily just talk to him and eat a copious amount of food. It had a sense of security about it. I never really liked the way I looked, but my friend got me comfortable in my own skin.
It’s been three months now and we’re still not talking. I’m exhausted from grovelling and now I know I have to leave it to him. Talked about it a lot in therapy, how love manifests in different ways. Had to admit that neither of us knew what we meant to each other which is probably why there were so many broken boundaries along the way.
Hope you are well
Thanks for the reply Jayjay, I will reply in awhile. Don’t want to give you a half hearted reply.
April 30, 2019 at 12:43 pm #291885AnonymousGuestDear H:
I read that you want to take your time replying to JayJay, so I am okay with you answering the following later, anytime you want to, if you do:
How many friends do you have that you see face to face (“Saw my friends couple of weeks ago which was nice”), and why didn’t you see any of them recently?
You wrote regarding one friend, a male friend, “I rarely would eat a lot of food in front of people in public but with my friend I could easily just talk to him and eat a copious amount of food. It had a sense of security about it”-
– will you tell me more about that “sense of security” in the context of eating a lot in public, in front of that friend?
You rarely eat a lot of food in public because…? But in private you do eat a lot of food, and if so, is this connected to you being uncomfortable with the way you look?
anita
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