I don't have a circle of friends. I am 53 and the people I talk to are my husband and my kids and my grandkids. Also my sister and my mom and dad. But I don't have friends anymore. I actually really enjoy being alone. I went through a period where I realized my friends had moved, gone on to harder drugs, changed partners, or otherwise departed from my list of contacts for reasons unknown.
My family knows almost nothing about me and they are all private, too. In my house there are seven people, three "families" if you will. My son and his wife. My daughter and her husband and their son, not born yet but he will be here soon. Then there is Mom and Dad (us). But we have five bedrooms and everyone spends time alone in his or her bedroom, then together with his or her partner, and occasionally all of us together in the family room or the kitchen.
My daughter in law has her own room and often she retreats to knit or read while her husband (our son) plays video games in his room. They generally sleep together in his room but if she is moody, she can stay in her room by herself and no one bothers her. I spend most of my time in our bedroom. My husband (their dad) watches television in the family room. Our tastes in programming could not be more different, and I think he's going deaf because he watches horrible shows horribly loud. I spend all my time studying or writing or reading and I always have headphones on.
My daughter and her husband share a bedroom and they made the room next to theirs the nursery for my new grandson. They are inseperable and I'm glad my daughter found a man she could really love and he loves her too. They've been married nine years. When the economy took a shit, they moved in. I bought a five bedroom three bathroom right after 9/11 just so I'd have room for as many people as needed to be here. I smoke weed with them when I can smoke but I'm job hunting so I can't smoke now because everywhere drug tests everyone. My daughter and her husband and I have our medical mj cards. My son, his wife, and Dad do not. But we don't smoke in the central area of the house. Common courtesy.
Occasionally I get into a pity party on myself because no one really knows me. But I've learned to force myself out of that line of thinking by changing my room. If I'm alone in my room and start to feel sorry for myself I force myself to go visit someone else in the house.
We live on a corner and the way our house is situated, we only have one house next to us. We pull in and out of our garage and so do the neighbors so I've only talked to them briefly once or twice.
I have found that friendship does not work for me. I know people and have some friendly acquaintances but the more a person knows about you the more he or she can use it against you... and I don't trust people anymore. I've been very deceived by friendly people that were not friendly when push came to shove. I knew friendly people who seemed to really have my back and I believed in them for years, only to have them move to the other side of the country and disappear.
But I saw my sister yesterday. I trust her and she trusts me. The second half of life is when we realized that our friends were not as close to us as we were to each other, and our friends gossiped about us while we were faithful to their secrets. She and I have both realized that the most we have is each other. We are trying to get our mom down for a visit but she's fading fast. We both trust our mom though. She has seen both of us through some horrible shit and never stopped loving either one of us.
Enjoy your group of friends while you are young and cannot handle your families bullshit. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself most comfortable, safe, secure and able to have fun within your family bullshit after 30 or 40 years have passed and your friends are gone.
This is a nice topic for a thread and I'm looking forward to reading about other BLers way of life within the realm of friends or loved ones, or perhaps more than a few will say they don't have a circle of friends and that they live alone and work alone and play alone.
Everybody's different. It will be interesting to see how different. Thank you Maniaz.