montebello (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
montebello) wrote2019-09-29 06:04 pm
montebello) wrote2019-09-29 06:04 pm
Entry tags:
How I got here: Single and in my 30s
I've held off on writing this cause a single post can't do it justice. The individual stories are interesting in their own right.
I got a job at 22 in late August after I had graduated from college in May. That job was with a minor satellite office of a defense contractor. The first day of work they immediately took me to a bigger defense contractor and dropped me off as a subcontractor. So much for feeling like I belonged with my company. The bigger place was still just a satellite office though too.
I tried to make friends, and failed miserably. At my company there were only two of us who were 22, the next closest in age were 28 and there were only a few of them. A lot of people were from the area so they already had significant others and pre-established friends. I'd ask someone to go to a movie, and they'd always have an excuse, doing things with their other friends. I asked another guy if he wanted to go to a movie, and he invited me to his church. And I was very anti-religion at that time. Another dude at work was dropped off by his company similar to me, but he was engaged and had therefore had a fiancée and frankly, he was a bit of a dick, I wouldn't have chosen him immediately to be good friends with, but beggars can't be choosers. We hung out a few times but weren't close.
Starved for social interaction, I'd go to every after work event, just like a night at the bar, if I was invited. But I never really fit in. The few younger people didn't go to these typically, and the people who did go, they inevitably talked work, and their history of work, of which I had none. So I struggled to make friends. I jumped ship to the bigger defense contractor that I had basically worked for after a few years cause they treated their employees better.
Time passes, two things happen. I become good friends with Dan, and my old middle school, high school, and college friend Josh comes to work for my first company, due to my influence to get him a job and him not finding any other jobs. However, Josh had always lived at home pretty much his whole life, so the transition was more shocking for him, and he began to resent me for "recruiting" him to the area. Which is incredibly wrong, I almost didn't tell him about the job, but that's a different story. So what should be a good friendship there is strained.
I meet some women along the way, but it's not easy. None of it works out really, things are messy. I survive partially on online friendships. I did meet a girl through match.com and we dated for four-five months, but that ended badly. Josh met a girl through match.com, and he entirely ditched me at that point, I never saw him for a few years, he spent his time with her.
So really it's a sad state of affairs. Bryan at work learns on my 27th birthday that I'm doing absolutely nothing for my birthday so he says we should at least go get dinner and watch a movie and bring another guy from work, Lee, along. So now I make two more friends, but Bryan has lived his entire life here and has a plethora of friends, and Lee is even older and married with a middle school aged kid. So they're frequently unavailable.
I make some more friends a few years later but they're younger than me by this time, straight out of college. Now I have some friends, but I've been burned so bad in the past I'm not super close to any of them, but hey, at least I have friends. No girlfriend though.
I don't want to spend my life waiting on things to happen, so I take matters into my own hands and do things like host a Halloween party every year. It goes well, but every year less and less people come as either they don't enjoy the party or they have kids and then you never see them again. I start talking to strangers more, I just need to find a common ground to start the conversation, hopefully training myself.
I do grow in confidence at my career, and that translates to more confidence in life. But the job, we're just a satellite office, and we do software. Cue 90% of the office being male, and the few women being married already. At some point in there Josh gets divorced and needs my friendship again. He has this habit of latching onto a girl, and then fulfilling his social needs through her and her friends, so he doesn't have to worry about ever making friends or planning things out, his girlfriend, fiancée, or wife instantly gives him a social circle. He comes back to be my friend after each breakup. I tolerate it cause who else am I going to hang out with?
None of my friends help matchmake me. There's incidents where for instance I like a waitress, but everyone is "too busy" with their own lives, so we won't go back to that restaurant/bar for three months. Not easy to establish a rapport with a girl, if we even see her again. I like a few female friends of my friends, but my friends will not assist me in any way, even when I directly ask. (Still unclear to this day as to why). So things go nowhere.
All along off and on I try the online dating, doesn't work. Get the occasional date but not usually, and only the one relationship that ended poorly (and went poorly). Finally I break after yet another rejection from a girl I ask out. I completely fell apart. One too many blows.
I go to therapy as people are considering me a suicide risk. Therapy is weird. It is helpful on a few things, and not other things. To some degree it is just helpful to have someone listen to me for once. But she doesn't understand my loneliness. She tells me things like, "You need to go to events you're invited to" and I'm like, "I have done so for the past 8 years and nothing!" She suggests I take classes in things I'm interested in, that way even if I don't meet someone, I still enjoy the class. "That's what I do with yoga and kickboxing class! And I have friends there, but not friends who meet up with me anywhere outside of those classes!" She then suggests I start doing things on my own, like just go sign up for a bowling league or a sand volleyball tournament. The introvert in me balks at going to such a thing and knowing NO ONE. She says I should go get a master's degree, I'm like, "I'm exhausted after work". She suggests I get a second job, I'm like, "Remember the part about exhaustion?" She agrees my current job is pretty good on benefits and salary and I shouldn't leave it. She gets frustrated with my unwillingness to do these things, but I consider myself justified.
I join a matchmaking service, but the service has one fundamental flaw that makes it unlikely to succeed. I end up with more dates than I've ever had before, which boosts my confidence and comfort with first dates. But nothing long term comes of it.
So here we are. With no relationships. I really don't know what I could have done better. There are four or five Fortune 500 companies in town, I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten hired there instead of a small software satellite office. Those companies have plenty of women, they have HR, finance, training, marketing, customer support, etc so while there is no guarantee of a relationship, there at least is a significantly better ratio of men to women and younger people too.
Bottom line is during my prime "go out on the town years", including college, I didn't have many if any friends (except online ones). Then I just kept getting older, failing each time to get a relationship. Sure, some of them are my fault, like I wasn't interested for whatever reason. But on so many I feel I never had a chance, I finally work up the nerve to talk to a stranger to learn she has a boyfriend and such. I never knew life could make some things so hard.
It's sad because at my job when I was 22, I met some guys who were basically single in their 50s and they had been single their entire adult life and accepted/resigned to it, and I'm like, "I have to avoid being that guy". And yet here I am, right on track.
I got a job at 22 in late August after I had graduated from college in May. That job was with a minor satellite office of a defense contractor. The first day of work they immediately took me to a bigger defense contractor and dropped me off as a subcontractor. So much for feeling like I belonged with my company. The bigger place was still just a satellite office though too.
I tried to make friends, and failed miserably. At my company there were only two of us who were 22, the next closest in age were 28 and there were only a few of them. A lot of people were from the area so they already had significant others and pre-established friends. I'd ask someone to go to a movie, and they'd always have an excuse, doing things with their other friends. I asked another guy if he wanted to go to a movie, and he invited me to his church. And I was very anti-religion at that time. Another dude at work was dropped off by his company similar to me, but he was engaged and had therefore had a fiancée and frankly, he was a bit of a dick, I wouldn't have chosen him immediately to be good friends with, but beggars can't be choosers. We hung out a few times but weren't close.
Starved for social interaction, I'd go to every after work event, just like a night at the bar, if I was invited. But I never really fit in. The few younger people didn't go to these typically, and the people who did go, they inevitably talked work, and their history of work, of which I had none. So I struggled to make friends. I jumped ship to the bigger defense contractor that I had basically worked for after a few years cause they treated their employees better.
Time passes, two things happen. I become good friends with Dan, and my old middle school, high school, and college friend Josh comes to work for my first company, due to my influence to get him a job and him not finding any other jobs. However, Josh had always lived at home pretty much his whole life, so the transition was more shocking for him, and he began to resent me for "recruiting" him to the area. Which is incredibly wrong, I almost didn't tell him about the job, but that's a different story. So what should be a good friendship there is strained.
I meet some women along the way, but it's not easy. None of it works out really, things are messy. I survive partially on online friendships. I did meet a girl through match.com and we dated for four-five months, but that ended badly. Josh met a girl through match.com, and he entirely ditched me at that point, I never saw him for a few years, he spent his time with her.
So really it's a sad state of affairs. Bryan at work learns on my 27th birthday that I'm doing absolutely nothing for my birthday so he says we should at least go get dinner and watch a movie and bring another guy from work, Lee, along. So now I make two more friends, but Bryan has lived his entire life here and has a plethora of friends, and Lee is even older and married with a middle school aged kid. So they're frequently unavailable.
I make some more friends a few years later but they're younger than me by this time, straight out of college. Now I have some friends, but I've been burned so bad in the past I'm not super close to any of them, but hey, at least I have friends. No girlfriend though.
I don't want to spend my life waiting on things to happen, so I take matters into my own hands and do things like host a Halloween party every year. It goes well, but every year less and less people come as either they don't enjoy the party or they have kids and then you never see them again. I start talking to strangers more, I just need to find a common ground to start the conversation, hopefully training myself.
I do grow in confidence at my career, and that translates to more confidence in life. But the job, we're just a satellite office, and we do software. Cue 90% of the office being male, and the few women being married already. At some point in there Josh gets divorced and needs my friendship again. He has this habit of latching onto a girl, and then fulfilling his social needs through her and her friends, so he doesn't have to worry about ever making friends or planning things out, his girlfriend, fiancée, or wife instantly gives him a social circle. He comes back to be my friend after each breakup. I tolerate it cause who else am I going to hang out with?
None of my friends help matchmake me. There's incidents where for instance I like a waitress, but everyone is "too busy" with their own lives, so we won't go back to that restaurant/bar for three months. Not easy to establish a rapport with a girl, if we even see her again. I like a few female friends of my friends, but my friends will not assist me in any way, even when I directly ask. (Still unclear to this day as to why). So things go nowhere.
All along off and on I try the online dating, doesn't work. Get the occasional date but not usually, and only the one relationship that ended poorly (and went poorly). Finally I break after yet another rejection from a girl I ask out. I completely fell apart. One too many blows.
I go to therapy as people are considering me a suicide risk. Therapy is weird. It is helpful on a few things, and not other things. To some degree it is just helpful to have someone listen to me for once. But she doesn't understand my loneliness. She tells me things like, "You need to go to events you're invited to" and I'm like, "I have done so for the past 8 years and nothing!" She suggests I take classes in things I'm interested in, that way even if I don't meet someone, I still enjoy the class. "That's what I do with yoga and kickboxing class! And I have friends there, but not friends who meet up with me anywhere outside of those classes!" She then suggests I start doing things on my own, like just go sign up for a bowling league or a sand volleyball tournament. The introvert in me balks at going to such a thing and knowing NO ONE. She says I should go get a master's degree, I'm like, "I'm exhausted after work". She suggests I get a second job, I'm like, "Remember the part about exhaustion?" She agrees my current job is pretty good on benefits and salary and I shouldn't leave it. She gets frustrated with my unwillingness to do these things, but I consider myself justified.
I join a matchmaking service, but the service has one fundamental flaw that makes it unlikely to succeed. I end up with more dates than I've ever had before, which boosts my confidence and comfort with first dates. But nothing long term comes of it.
So here we are. With no relationships. I really don't know what I could have done better. There are four or five Fortune 500 companies in town, I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten hired there instead of a small software satellite office. Those companies have plenty of women, they have HR, finance, training, marketing, customer support, etc so while there is no guarantee of a relationship, there at least is a significantly better ratio of men to women and younger people too.
Bottom line is during my prime "go out on the town years", including college, I didn't have many if any friends (except online ones). Then I just kept getting older, failing each time to get a relationship. Sure, some of them are my fault, like I wasn't interested for whatever reason. But on so many I feel I never had a chance, I finally work up the nerve to talk to a stranger to learn she has a boyfriend and such. I never knew life could make some things so hard.
It's sad because at my job when I was 22, I met some guys who were basically single in their 50s and they had been single their entire adult life and accepted/resigned to it, and I'm like, "I have to avoid being that guy". And yet here I am, right on track.