Close communication is an integral element of the healthy mental life of every person. Therefore, when there is no family, intimate interaction, friends always help out and the question of what to do if you are lonely and have no friends becomes more relevant than the lack of family life. With friendly communication, a person feels that he belongs to a certain society, a group of people, which ultimately gives a feeling of social and biological security, which was consolidated throughout the course of evolution, since the human individual is physically weak to survive on its own.
For any age, the problem of the lack of friendly interaction is relevant, despite the fact that the factors provoking the absence of this are completely different situations. There are quite a lot of positive aspects of friendship - these people help to cope with various life problems, share common values and interests (these people can be chosen by closeness of spirit, and not by blood commitment).
What is unique is that friendships are close interactions without everyday life, which is comparable to almost eternal love. Perhaps, because friends usually rarely live in the same territory, and if they do, they clearly share household and daily responsibilities, giving each other a high degree of freedom, such relationships last much longer than love ones. We can choose friends based solely on our spiritual preferences, and that is why they become closer than relatives, and sometimes closer than a spouse, because there are no demands and obligations. In childhood, having friends is extremely important for developing social skills and maintaining personality. Its further development.
Reasons for lack of friends
If there are no good friends, what to do about it, how to look for them, or options for developing existing relationships will depend on the individual reasons for the lack of a sufficient level of friendship.
You can consider the main reasons for the lack of friends, and they will be characteristic both for age-related crises of changing one’s own worldview, and for social situations. For example, quite often there are periods of absence of friends at turning points in life, age-related crises. This is due to the fact that the personality itself changes, its aspirations, goals, priorities and semantic loads for each life phenomenon. It is quite rare for personalities to change in the same direction as they go through the stages of growing up and development, and those who are so lucky can boast of stories of friendship from kindergarten to retirement age.
Unfortunately, initially equal people, going through the stages of their own experience and development, learn different lessons and set different priorities, as a result, what previously united two people can separate them.
Changing the place of work or study, moving to another city, getting married and having children leads to a change in the social situation and cleanses up situational friends, i.e. those who could more be classified as comrades or colleagues.
Age plays an important role in the absence of friends, because the experience gained makes an older person less sensitive to sincere friendships. Children are more open and approximately equal to each other, their goals and desires often coincide, whereas adults judge by their field of activity and material level. By a certain age, the baggage of disappointment in friends accumulates and a person cannot easily trust new acquaintances or is constantly looking for a catch in his interactions with others.
The general social situation also affects the natural, evolutionary mechanisms of friendship, which become no longer relevant. So, if previously a person’s chances of survival directly depended on the size of the community to which he belongs and his place in this hierarchy, now survival is quite possible alone. There is no need to find options for friendly interaction for the sake of survival and you can openly express your hostility, break off ties that are somehow traumatic to the psyche or do not coincide in interests. Now friendship has a completely different meaning at the social level - it is a more spiritual process, excluding any self-interest and the need to conform, which means that it is difficult to find truly like-minded people, and as a result, the number of friendships is falling.
The family system also affects the ability to make friends. So, when a child is brought up in a very strict manner, does not have the right to gain experience through his own mistakes, but only through criticism from his parents, who constantly protect him from troubles, then the ability to be independent decreases. You cannot choose who to study for and what section to go to, but also with whom to interact. For the children around him, such a child is not interesting, since his parents will constantly interfere in their children's world with their protections and instructions, and the child himself is not able to present himself.
This is an important quality for further distinguishing oneself from the rest of the crowd, but not everyone raised by strict parents has this trait and can present themselves, especially in a way that is interesting to their peers. They try to avoid such people and not establish close relationships on the simple grounds of safety, because it is not clear who will be nearby. Such children have problems with what to do if there are no friends at school, because at home the social circle is made up of children of the same parents, but in a children's living society, the selection of friends occurs according to completely different laws with which they are not familiar.
A closed image and any obsession, be it work, personal relationships, hobbies or one’s own health, are becoming very popular in the era of social networks and the fast pace of life. As a result, in such a schedule there is simply no time left for leisurely communication about anything, because a person is constantly busy resolving some issues. The choice of entertainment around your home, limited to social feeds, watching movies and reading books, leads to the loss of the skill of live communication, and communication in general. People simply forget how to communicate, and as a result, friendship is lost, the basis of which is live communication.
Psychological reasons also cannot be ignored, since the level of self-esteem is decisive when constructing the concept of interaction. If self-esteem is inadequately high, then others will not want to communicate with such a person, constantly feeling nagging, humiliation and a condescending attitude on his part. With low self-esteem and complexities, a person is not able to take initiative, maintain dialogue and respond adequately. Such isolation and timidity also bores other people; they are not happy to constantly initiate communication and pastime.
There were three main findings
Evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa (London School of Economics) and Norman Lee (Singapore Management University) came to several conclusions. First, people living in densely populated areas feel less satisfied with life. Secondly, to feel happiness, most of us strive for constant communication and close connections with friends and like-minded people. And the more points of contact between people, the livelier the topics of conversation, the more complete the satisfaction. And there is nothing extraordinary about this.
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Scientists were struck only by the third conclusion. It turns out that people with high intelligence are the exception to the second rule. An intelligent person does not need constant communication with friends, colleagues and like-minded people. Intellectuals report less satisfaction with life when they are too socially active.
Advice from psychologists on how to make friends
When there are no friends at all, psychologists can suggest what to do about this regarding the correction and development of one’s own personality, as well as options for manipulative techniques, the impact on the individual’s consciousness and the development of one’s own charismatic data and communication skills.
Before you engage in serious measures to change your own personality, you need to try simple methods. Perhaps there are no friends because the place of residence has changed and then there is no point in working on increasing self-esteem and undergoing numerous trainings, but it is better to focus on finding places where people with similar interests gather. Such meetings can be found using social networks, where they not only post planned events, but you can also organize them or join a ready-made group, where meetings will be held periodically, which the general public does not know about, because there is no full-scale announcement.
Friends are in places where you feel personally interested, so signing up for several sections that satisfy your personal interests is the best option. A pleasant time is guaranteed, in addition, the place itself and its specifics will select people in advance, and there will be those who have something in common with you, at least an interest in yoga, dancing or cooking (it all depends on the choice of courses) . You don’t have to register anywhere, but spend more time with your pets, just replace single walks with places where dog lovers gather or attend meetings and joint walks of ferrets, rat pups, cats and other animals, and perhaps participate in exhibitions.
Try to diversify your life with travel, because the lack of friends in your region or area may be due to the fact that there are no people who will support your interests or have similar views on the world. It will be difficult for a Buddhist at heart to get along with the alcoholic public of some rural outback of the post-Soviet space; this will cause a feeling of his own otherness and expulsion from society. But as soon as such a person goes on a trip to the corresponding country, everything around him becomes familiar and understandable, because it corresponds to his inner sensations.
If you have no friends at all, it’s unclear what to do, and the listed methods have been tried, then you can start monitoring your own contribution to the interaction. Analyze your relationships with friends or just pleasant people. Note how often they call you and offer to meet and how often the initiative comes from you, what they offer you (treats, pick up, spend the night, visit the dacha), and what you offer (meet while running at lunch break, take money before payday and pour out their difficulties).
Keep track of what and in what quantities you give and receive - the exchange should be equal. This is not only when you don’t call a person, expecting something from him, but also when you constantly call people, come without an invitation, shower them with gifts and pictures in messages - intrusiveness can sometimes scare off much more seriously than coldness.
Most geniuses are loners
It is difficult to get along with a person who places too high demands on others. This is why most geniuses are loners. Only a select few are given the opportunity to accept and understand all their amazing features. In addition, for an intelligent person the topic of communication is more important than having a friend. He will never pursue quantity at the expense of quality and feels great, even if no one in the whole world understands him.
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Why we make friends easily at a young age
When we just come to work, or study at the institute, our social circle is so large that it is much easier to do this there. We meet more often at “parties”, go through all kinds of training and make acquaintances more easily.
We are confronted by different circumstances, we are more trusting and more easily agree on some common interests. But with age, we become more picky, there is less trust between us, especially if there was a negative experience.
Here’s an example: a woman was talking with a friend, and nothing seemed to prevent them from getting closer, but one day, the friend allowed herself to speak out, “Why should you live better than me?” What kind of friendship are we talking about here? The person becomes more closed and less sociable.
Let there be few friends. But imagine a situation where you are moving to another city or another country, old friends are far away, and it’s not at all easy to make new ones.
My closest friend moved to live in another country, a big plus for technology is that you can communicate by phone thanks to the Internet. And that's a fact!
With such changes in life and growing up, we find it difficult to find new friends, and there are three main reasons for this:
- Intimacy takes time
- Trust also requires time and situations in which trust is formed.
- Events that require someone's help and advice
