Category: Journal

I’m a 39 year old man with no friends. My def­i­n­i­tion of friend has reduced itself to: some­one who invites you to spend time with them. I know there are peo­ple who con­sid­er them­selves my friends, but lit­er­al­ly the only time I spend time with peo­ple is if I reach out and arrange it. For years I’ve tried mak­ing friends from every area of my life, but if I’m doing all the work, it isn’t friend­ship.

If I died today (and I have no plans on dying any­time soon), only my mom and my son would care that I died. It would just be a minor incon­ve­nience to every­one else who inter­acts with me.

I’ve been sin­gle about 2.5 years. I’ve been on plen­ty of dates — but no woman wants to be in a rela­tion­ship with me. Occa­sion­al­ly I can find a woman who is will­ing to go on a date with me — some­times they even want to sleep with me — but I can’t find some­one who wants more than that. I’m not inter­est­ed in going on a mil­lion dates and sleep­ing around — I want a part­ner. But I’m a 39 year old man with a kid & women have near­ly unlim­it­ed bet­ter options and can afford to be as picky as they want. They deserve that agency — it just sucks for me.

I’m the com­mon denom­i­na­tor here, so the prob­lem has to be with me, right? I don’t know what it is. Coun­sel­ing has­n’t helped. Fake it until you make does­n’t work. I can’t fig­ure it out, and don’t real­ly have what it takes to try any­more. I feel like I’m a great friend, and a great part­ner. I’ve helped peo­ple through depres­sion & sui­ci­dal thoughts, I ask about peo­ple’s lives and show an inter­est in what mat­ters to them. I’ll drop what I’m doing to help peo­ple when they need it… I don’t know what I could do bet­ter, or dif­fer­ent­ly.

The most pathet­ic part about being a friend­less 39 year old isn’t hav­ing to write about it as your only out­let, or cry­ing your­self to sleep at night, or just being anoth­er depres­sion sta­tis­tic. The most pathet­ic part of being a friend­less 39 year old is slow­ly watch­ing your­self become men­tal­ly unsta­ble from lack of any social sup­port.

I don’t know what soli­tary con­fine­ment is like, but it feels like I’m in a ver­sion of it. I would feel like the man set upon by rob­bers in Luke 10:30 except being beat­en and robbed would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly more atten­tion than I’ve received in my 16 years in Cleve­land with­out hav­ing to wave my arms about & shout for it.

I’m a bot­tle of clawed taran­tu­las.