I have no real friends – why can’t I get close to anyone?

DEAR BEL

I FEEL confused and disappointed with my social circle, as if real friends have passed me by and I can’t seem to navigate the waters of friendship.

I do have people to call friends but always seem to find fault with them after a brief honeymoon period and keep them at arm’s length, never opening up enough for a true friendship to blossom, and being critical of them when talking to family members.

I try to pinpoint why I’m like this, as I’m not as cautious in romantic or family relationships. As a child we moved house for two years, then moved back again. During those two years, aged 9-11, I made the best friendships I’d ever had and felt popular and sociable.

The move back broke the friendships apart — I cried so much about it and feel I’ve never been able to make friends like that since.

Now I’m nearly 30 and have no friends since school days — and only one left from university. This has mostly been the result of naturally drifting apart or moving away, but I’ve also actively cut people out if I felt we didn’t have anything in common any more.

Should I feel bad about this? I see people with friends they’ve had for over 20 years and can’t help feeling I’ve missed out.

The f riendships I ’ ve made since moving to a new city a f ew years ago are oft en temporary or superficial — people great for a night out but not for deeper friendships. When I do get a bit closer to people than usual or people try to initiate a friendship, I proceed with great care and try to maintain an ‘easy come, easy go’ attitude — so that I won’t be that bothered if ever they are no longer in my life any more.

One girl recently told me that my actions towards her really hurt her, as she thought we were close friends.

What happened was I went a bit quiet on her for a few weeks after she got very upset and confided in me about an issue she had — which was all a bit much and not something I’m used to.

Part of me feels bad and like a rubbish friend, but I didn’t act like that out of nastiness — something else was going on i n my head that I don’t really understand.

Am I doing it all wrong? I’m not desperate to have hundreds of friends, but a few quality ones would be a start.

Many years ago a sweetly- soppy chum sent me a card that said: ‘a true friend is one who knows al l about you and loves you just the same.’

arguably t he s t atement is n’ t entirely true (what if you discovered your f ri end guilty of a hideous cr i me?) , but it was meant af fectionately and contains a truth: t hat r eal li s t ening and sharing and tolerance is the essence of friendship.

It’s clear — and very sad — that you’ve never learned this, but since you are still only 30 there is time. ‘Hope’ is the thought with which I end today’s second letter. How can we live without it?

your question, ‘am I doing it all wrong?’ is clearly rhetorical, because the answer is so obviously ‘yes’.

I suggest i t’s not so much that friendship has passed you by, but that you have turned your back on its infinite possibilities — and you must see how you condemn yourself within this email.

So the more interesting question to ask is: ‘Why?’

In a golden glow, you remember a

time of friendship when you were nine ( a crucial age i n terms of development). It ended at the age of 1 1 ; because of a parental decision you were torn from fun with precious pals.

I suspect that, just as you could never trust your parents never to do t hat t o you again, so you withdrew from the risk involved in making friends. Trust anybody and you run the risk of being hurt — and that’s what terrifies you.

Yet allowing that fear (one most people experience at some stage) to dominate your life is a form of neurosis, as defined by the great psychotherapist Rollo May. This is an inability to ‘affirm’ relationships; instead, other people are regarded ‘with basic suspicion and hostility’. May associates this with essential insecurity — which could, in your case, be traced back to that dislocation before adolescence.

I’d like you to think hard about these points. Then consider what C.S. Lewis writes in his interesting essay on Friendship. He imagines people who are friends standing side by side, their eyes l ooking ahead. This takes us back to that crucial idea of sharing.

Then he goes on: ‘That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any’ — because instead of shared thoughts and activities, ‘there would be nothing for the friendship to be about.’

It occurs to me that this is like the men and women who write to me wanting ‘a relationship’. The joys of friendship and love alike take work.

This is where we find you: wanting fr i e nds and feeling sorry for yourself because your friendships don’ t last, yet unwilling to give enough of yourself even to listen to a friend’s troubles without running away.

You say ‘something else was going on’ in your head, and now your task i s to do some self- analysis and think hard about what that is.

Perhaps what I’ve said here might help you. You won’t make lasting friends unless you are prepared to give of yourself, so maybe you should start by considering that self worth giving.