, 9 min read
If You Struggle to Make Friends, Watch this.
I was 21 when I recorded a pretty popular video called “I Have No Friends.” I basically just talked about my upbringing and struggling with loneliness my whole life. And at the time of recording, I didn’t have any of the answers. I didn’t know why I had no idea why I couldn’t make friends. I didn’t know why people liked me, but I couldn’t connect with them. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I felt so lonely and I didn’t know how to fix it. But now, at 23, I do have some answers—not all the answers, but I figured some things out and I feel in a much better place. And I’ve even made some friends since, so I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned because I really think that it’s helpful.
I grew up in a really big family in the middle of nowhere. My parents divorced when I was young, and it was messy. My siblings and I didn’t get along; it was kind of survival of the fittest. Then, I just remember spending most of my time alone. And even though it felt really normal to be alone, I knew something was missing. I felt lonely and I really desperately craved human connection. I wanted friends. I wanted to know how to make friends, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have social skills. The only thing I knew how to do was to be alone.
I want to just give like a quick definition of what I consider friends. For me, friends are not simply the people you hang out with casually or the people that you see every day, like coworkers. To me, friendship means that you share, and you have trust, and honesty, and open communication. You work on the relationship, and you both trust that you can depend on each other in the future — something that’s
- deep,
- real, and
- lasting.
Fear of rejection
The most pivotal realization that I had, that was a big turning point for me, was that I was alone in my adult life by choice. I never thought that I chose to be alone, but I realized that I was making decisions—conscious or subconscious decisions—to self-isolate, to isolate myself more. And I guess that led me to question why. Why was I self-isolating despite craving friendships? A simple answer is that self-isolation is a way to protect yourself.
It also took me way too long to realize that I was terrified of being rejected by people. I never thought I feared rejection because I had never really been rejected in life. But that was solely because I presented a fake self — being extremely nice, agreeable, even submissive. Because I presented myself as being so agreeable, I was never rejected by people. I was the typical stereotypical people-pleaser. I definitely believe that if I ever was my real self — if I did something like show real emotion, negative emotion, or tell somebody if I was upset with them — I believe that that self would be immediately rejected. So my natural go-to was being that people-pleaser. And in high school, it absolutely worked. And beyond, it works because people end up liking you. It’s a defense mechanism, by the way, so I don’t judge myself or anyone who does this. It’s a way to keep yourself safe, but it’s not healthy for you or other people. Even though people will like you, you won’t be able to connect with people. And that was like the one thing that I wanted most — was to connect and to form real, deep relationships. And that is impossible if you are presenting a fake self.
It also tracks the wrong people into your life. For example, the people that I generally attracted as friends were people who loved to talk about themselves and loved to vent, because I was a very, very good listener. I’ll get into that in a second.
The last problem is if you do it for long time you may come to a point where you realize that you don't actually know, who you are. You don't know what your beliefs are, or how you truly feel about things. You might suppress feelings. You might learn to only think of others and not think about yourself at all. So you’re really out of touch with yourself.
When I was 21, in that video, I asked the question like,
“Why does everybody like me, but I can’t form connections with anyone?”
And the answer is: Everybody likes a nice, agreeable, people-pleasing person, but people can’t connect to you because you’re not showing your real self. And if they can’t see you, how can they connect with you? They don’t know, who you are, because you’re not showing them anything, all right?
So, as I mentioned before, I was a very good listener, and still am. And when people want to vent, I even encourage people to vent. And I always thought that was solely because I cared about other people.
And I truly believed, subconsciously, that friendship was contractual, where in order to be worthy of another person’s friendship, I must give them something at all times. In order to deserve talking with the person, I must give. And I felt like the only thing I had to offer anyone would be being able to listen really well. So I thought that was a really great gift that I was giving to people. And people did appreciate it, but it led into some problems. Our entire friendship would be based on somebody venting to me every day and me consoling and listening. And even after like years of that in high school, the other person didn’t know anything about me at all. And it wasn’t on them.
Sharing about myself
It was because I chose to never share anything about myself. I didn’t talk about myself at all, ever. And that’s still pretty much the biggest flaw that I have right now that I still have.
When I meet a new person, I share almost nothing about myself. I never open up. I’m very closed off.
There’s a listening psychologist speaking, and they said something that blew my mind and made so many things clear to me. He said that when a person only listens and never shares anything about themselves, it leads the other person to feel very vulnerable. And at the end of the day, after a long enough period, the other person won’t trust you.
Because trust comes from mutual self-disclosure. To people sharing personal things about themselves. That’s kind of how trust is built. For one way that trust is built. That was one of the greatest things that I ever learned because it opened up my eyes to realize that one of the biggest problems I had making friends was that even though I thought I was giving by listening, it ended up where people would not trust me.
And nobody ever told me they didn’t trust me. One person did say,
“I can never tell what you’re thinking. You’re so unreadable,”
or something like that. And I think that was their way of trying to say,
“I don’t trust you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. You make me uncomfortable.”
That could also be another way somebody tries to tell you that. They say,
“I feel uncomfortable around you.”
Clarify, I was very closed off as yet another defense mechanism. And it presents a big array of problems. And one of them is because I was closed off and guarded, the only way that I would be able to make friends is if one person put in prolonged, consistent effort to get to know me. That puts all of the work on the other person and also puts all of the risk on the other person.
It was my way of avoiding risk and rejection and definitely taking all of the responsibility off my own shoulders and throwing them onto anyone else.
But at the time, I definitely believed that no one would want to put in that kind of work to get to know me. So I just resigned myself to the fact that I would be lonely forever and not have friends because I felt like the only way it would ever happen would be if someone were to pursue me, which is flawed. But I again, I don’t judge myself in the least for this way of thinking. I understand it was just a way to protect myself.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to be stuck in that way of thinking. You can change! Yay! This is what I did. Even in early adulthood, when I was trying to make new friends after high school, after our first meeting, I would wait for them to contact me because I figured if they liked me, they would contact me. And that pretty much never happened, or maybe never happened. And I assumed it was because they didn’t like me, which is wrong. And actually, everyone understands that everyone wonders,
“Does this person like me?”
So they were probably wondering the same thing and probably waiting for me to reach out to them. And that’s how those connections just didn’t build.
Now, I know I’m laying out a lot of problems here, but don’t worry, I do have a whole section. In fact, the second half of this whole thing is going to be dedicated to the ways to solve these problems. Now, if somebody does choose to put in that kind of effort to get to know you — sometimes it does happen, and it’s usually just one person — usually people are not going to put in that kind of prolonged, consistent effort to get to know you if you’re not open in the least.
If you have these huge, huge walls up, what can happen there, and most likely will happen, is you will develop an overly attached, extremely dependent relationship to them. You will feel a desperate need for this person and be way overly dependent on them because they were the only people who were able to get through your walls and actually get to know the real you. So that feeling of being known finally by one person, it’s going to lead you to be extremely needy, which is not healthy for you and the other person.
But this video is about you, so we’re gonna talk about how we can solve these issues and how I’ve worked on them and how I’ve actually made progress.
And I’ve had a lot of good things happen since. Now, I know that I brought up a lot of problems in this video, and if you related to any of this, do not focus on the problems. It’s a beautiful thing to know your starting point. In my next video, I’m going to talk all about the things that I have done that actually helped. I am so excited to share that with you.