Don't want to be married, don't want to be single, not sure what to do

[Xantippe]

I just remembered that there are some more legitimate options specific to the university community.

My husband did faculty-in-residence for several years, living in a college dorm. At that college, there were also chaplains-in-residence (mostly lay) in each building, and a residence hall director living in the building. Every single one of those positions offered pretty much as much of a social life as you could organize and had the budget for. Despite having first one little one and then two at the time, we did 2+ student events every week of the academic term–we did a weekly movie, cooking events, theater, opera, ballet, some lectures, etc. It was hard work for a young family, but a wonderful time in our lives.

When I was an undergraduate, I was on good terms with a 50-something bachelor faculty in residence. He showed movie marathons periodically, did jazz outings, and ate pretty much every night in the cafeteria, where I often joined him with a bunch of other students and occasionally staff.

 

[pianistclare]

The point I’m making here is that not only the desires for what’s not allowed are being frustrated, but also the desires that are normal and by and large a necessary part of life. I’m finding that, at my age, friendships are pretty much entirely ephemeral things. People move regularly and friendships die with the distance. New boyfriends or girlfriends take up all people’s time; married friends have babies and drop out of social circles, at least those that aren’t with other new parents.

Also once you’re past college age, even if you have friends, you’re going to see them at most once a week. Generally what I’ve found is you see people one or two times a week, in a group setting, and then you spend the rest of your time alone. And that’s really lonely for someone like me. But most people think it’s weird and something bad must be going on if you do anything more than that.

I want stability, and I want to not be spending 90% of my time either alone or with people I don’t really know outside of work sort of relationships.

Frankly, this is exactly why and how people get involved in ministry to the poor, the homeless, St. Vincent DePaul, choir, church grounds beautification, etc. They make tons of friends within their shared passion that has nothing at all to do with their sexual orientation. People who are superior gardeners come in all shapes sizes and sexual orientation. People in my parish attend an adult religious ed class, for the shared interest. They are either married, widowed, or single. No one cares what their “orientation” is. They are simply friends.
Join some group either civic or church related, and see if the good people there don’t make perfectly acceptable friends that don’t demand anything of you than your friendship and a shared interest in the topic at hand. Many of these people go home, live alone, but they are not lonely on any level. They have time that they share with others, and then they have their private time. And they are happy and well adjusted people. I don’t understand why people can’t experience great friendship…and privacy.
Sometimes a friend dies. It happens. Sometime they move. Email, snail mail, phone calls. Friendship are permitted to die, by the people who don’t value them. Those we treasure, we keep, come what may.
But…Being single is a valid vocation.
Peace.

 

[bsf]

Sorry about everything.

Excuse my bluntness. I feel it best I be brief.

I am sorry you have experienced and are experiencing considerable hardship. I want you to be well. You need competent, professional assistance or more assistance than you currently are receiving. You are not seeing things clearly; I suspect, completely blind to some healthy options. I understand becoming trapped inside a false paradigm.

Are you currently receiving assistance from a spiritual guide and/or mental health professional? If not, for your sake, I would like to see this discussion turn to how you can overcome the obstacles preventing you from receiving this assistance.

God bless.

 

[Vico]

It’s not the lack of meeting people that matters, but the lack of a real connection. You end up with large numbers of relatively shallow, transient relationships. Those don’t affect loneliness for me. I could find someone I could chat with about gaming and pets and other such things just about any time I want. People like me well enough as a person to have around - though generally only so long as I stay upbeat enough all the time. Most people only want to be around others when they’re happy, and will shy away at any hint of something beyond “let’s hang out and have fun together.”

What’s missing are depth and stability. I find myself in a position of having plenty of friendly acquaintances, but those people by and large don’t want to be anything more. The relationships come and go quickly. A friend gets a job in another state and moves away. A young man decides that he can’t get a date if he’s friends with women and pulls back. A woman has her first child and stops talking to her single friends. Another burgeoning relationship vanishes from your life, yet no one notes it or cares because you were just friends. It’s silly to actually be hurt. Most relationships won’t even go that far - most people have their romantic partner and then a few friends they joke around with, but they wouldn’t consider a real connection with anyone else.

If you want someone to go out to the bar and have a few drinks, or spend some time gaming with, that’s easy.

Shallowness and lack of stability exist in marriages as well as between friends that live together, so I don’t see a solution there, rather an assist. The idea that happiness comes from external validation is not conducive to mental health.

 

[DarkLight]

Honestly the biggest issue I’ve found is just that people move around so often. A good friendship takes a long time to develop. It’s very hard with the way my life is and the circles I’m in, to give it that time, especially if you’re not seeing each other super often. By and large, there’s only about a year or two between when you meet someone and when one of you moves away. If you’re seeing people once or twice a month, that doesn’t leave much chance to form deeper relationships.

I don’t really want a bunch of casual relationships. What I really want is someone where we can sit down over tea and have a three-hour conversation over theology, and I can know that I won’t be jumped on for accidentally saying something the other person doesn’t like (a rarity unless you know your partner well). Or when my family’s going nuts again, to have people I can actually talk it over without hearing the same inane advice or dismissal that many people give, because sitting around thinking about it just doesn’t help. (And having tried it many many times, therapy does NOT help with this sort of thing - you’re lucky if it doesn’t make it actively worse.)

 

[Xantippe]

Honestly the biggest issue I’ve found is just that people move around so often. A good friendship takes a long time to develop. It’s very hard with the way my life is and the circles I’m in, to give it that time, especially if you’re not seeing each other super often. By and large, there’s only about a year or two between when you meet someone and when one of you moves away. If you’re seeing people once or twice a month, that doesn’t leave much chance to form deeper relationships.

**That’s probably going to slow down in a couple of years.

Also, the good news about mobility is that people come back and that if you stay in academia, it’s a sort of small “village” and you’ll see people at conferences or seminars or when they doing visiting professorships or whatnot. Some 13 years ago, I met a very nice lady a couple times and thought, “Wow, what a nice lady!”. (They were just visiting for a single academic year.) 13 years later, it turns out that her husband is considering a job in our area and I find myself having a long walk and talk at the zoo with her and my baby. With any luck, he’ll take a job, they’ll move here, and I’ll be able to invite her for more walks.
**

I don’t really want a bunch of casual relationships. What I really want is someone where we can sit down over tea and have a three-hour conversation over theology, and I can know that I won’t be jumped on for accidentally saying something the other person doesn’t like (a rarity unless you know your partner well). Or when my family’s going nuts again, to have people I can actually talk it over without hearing the same inane advice or dismissal that many people give, because sitting around thinking about it just doesn’t help. (And having tried it many many times, therapy does NOT help with this sort of thing - you’re lucky if it doesn’t make it actively worse.)

I don’t think that at your age, three hour tete-a-tetes are going to be a thing. One hour is much more reasonable. People have to run off to teach their classes, people have meetings, families, people have dogs to get back home to, people have to get up early tomorrow, etc. I’m pretty sure that the three hour conversation exists primarily among undergraduates and lovers. In my experience, even talky academics tend to drop off around the 2 hour mark. In the phase of adulthood you are entering, friendship isn’t everything like it used to be in early adulthood–it’s something important that you have to stuff into the cracks of your normal responsibilities. Also, in normal adult life (outside academia), intimate conversations between friends are less stand-alone events and more something that happens while doing something else–taking a walk, watching kids together, etc. Heck, married adults with children are lucky to have five solid minutes of pleasant conversation a day, hence the popularity of the semi-mythological “date night” (I say semi-mythological because it’s so expensive for most couples with children that it rarely happens). The idea that one of us would make time to have a three hour conversation with a friend is a big nope, unless it was work or we were doing something else at the time as well.

I would encourage having a lot of good friends and keeping in touch with the best of your old ones, without necessarily expecting any of them to be available to you for long stretches of time in person or helpful with regard to every single subject. At the time your life you are right now, the 3-hour conversation ideal is going to burn out or scare off a lot of good prospects.

You have been using this board as therapy, by the way. That makes sense if you can’t afford or get to the the real thing, but it guarantees you’ll get lots of inane and hurtful comments from people who are just tuning in. I realize you may have had some bad experiences in the past with actual therapy, but how much control did you have over your therapy? Were you actually the person funding it, researching and choosing the therapists, or scheduling it for yourself? I think that if you are more proactive going in with interviewing therapists and having them explain their methods up front before they start doing things with your psyche, that you will get much better results.

I also think that as you get older, your friends are going to be have more and more life experience, and they are going to more and more tell you that you are trying to use them as therapy. Because you are.

 

[bsf]

In my humble opinion, a mental health professional knowledgeable in and sympathetic to Catholic doctrine regarding human sexuality would be best. I think a mental health professional antagonistic to mainstream, Christian understanding of human sexuality could be unhelpful, if not incredibly dangerous. I am exiting this thread. God bless.

 

[pianistclare]

Honestly the biggest issue I’ve found is just that people move around so often. A good friendship takes a long time to develop. It’s very hard with the way my life is and the circles I’m in, to give it that time, especially if you’re not seeing each other super often. By and large, there’s only about a year or two between when you meet someone and when one of you moves away. If you’re seeing people once or twice a month, that doesn’t leave much chance to form deeper relationships.

I don’t really want a bunch of casual relationships. What I really want is someone where we can sit down over tea and have a three-hour conversation over theology, and I can know that I won’t be jumped on for accidentally saying something the other person doesn’t like (a rarity unless you know your partner well). Or when my family’s going nuts again, to have people I can actually talk it over without hearing the same inane advice or dismissal that many people give, because sitting around thinking about it just doesn’t help. (And having tried it many many times, therapy does NOT help with this sort of thing - you’re lucky if it doesn’t make it actively worse.)

Again, you can find those kinds of friends at church. Join a ministry.
Like minded people congregate there.

 

[Bataar]

It’s not the lack of meeting people that matters, but the lack of a real connection. You end up with large numbers of relatively shallow, transient relationships. Those don’t affect loneliness for me. I could find someone I could chat with about gaming and pets and other such things just about any time I want. People like me well enough as a person to have around - though generally only so long as I stay upbeat enough all the time. Most people only want to be around others when they’re happy, and will shy away at any hint of something beyond “let’s hang out and have fun together.”

What’s missing are depth and stability. I find myself in a position of having plenty of friendly acquaintances, but those people by and large don’t want to be anything more. The relationships come and go quickly. A friend gets a job in another state and moves away. A young man decides that he can’t get a date if he’s friends with women and pulls back. A woman has her first child and stops talking to her single friends. Another burgeoning relationship vanishes from your life, yet no one notes it or cares because you were just friends. It’s silly to actually be hurt. Most relationships won’t even go that far - most people have their romantic partner and then a few friends they joke around with, but they wouldn’t consider a real connection with anyone else.

If you want someone to go out to the bar and have a few drinks, or spend some time gaming with, that’s easy.

I know this feeling all too well. As many people on this board know, I have Aspergers which makes any kind of social relationships difficult. I’m 36 and have never had any kind of romantic relationship and struggle to make friends. I have acquaintences but no one I’d call a true friend. I’m not a part of any major social groups, mostly because I don’t like doing group things. I see some people at prescheduled events I go to, but 99% of the time, I’m just home alone.

 

[Bataar]

It’s not the lack of meeting people that matters, but the lack of a real connection. You end up with large numbers of relatively shallow, transient relationships. Those don’t affect loneliness for me. I could find someone I could chat with about gaming and pets and other such things just about any time I want. People like me well enough as a person to have around - though generally only so long as I stay upbeat enough all the time. Most people only want to be around others when they’re happy, and will shy away at any hint of something beyond “let’s hang out and have fun together.”

What’s missing are depth and stability. I find myself in a position of having plenty of friendly acquaintances, but those people by and large don’t want to be anything more. The relationships come and go quickly. A friend gets a job in another state and moves away. A young man decides that he can’t get a date if he’s friends with women and pulls back. A woman has her first child and stops talking to her single friends. Another burgeoning relationship vanishes from your life, yet no one notes it or cares because you were just friends. It’s silly to actually be hurt. Most relationships won’t even go that far - most people have their romantic partner and then a few friends they joke around with, but they wouldn’t consider a real connection with anyone else.

If you want someone to go out to the bar and have a few drinks, or spend some time gaming with, that’s easy.

I know exactly how you feel. As many people here know, I suffer from Aspergers which makes socialization very difficult. I’m 36 and have never had a romantic relationship of any kind. I struggle with frienships as well. I have some good acquaintences I do some events with, but no one I’d say is a real friend. I make an effort to keep the acquaintences I do have, but sometimes I feel bad because if it wasn’t for me doing that, if I stopped contacting them, I’d never hear from any of them. I’m always the one to try to put things together. Out side of those few occasions, I’m pretty much home alone 99% of the time.