developing close freinds

developing close freinds
W

willtobecomplete

Registrant
Hey, hope you had a great weekend, and are starting a new week of growth and healing. Something hit me while reading another post from a new guy here that we are of coarse glad to welcome.
I've isolated myself from men. I let myself be respected but that's it. I understand that it is the effects of the abuse that has kept me from allowing myself to be known.
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That summs up how i feel exactly, even with men that i have known for a long while and have proven trustworthy freinds that only want to help me and see me succeed, I still keep them at arms length, not letting them any closer, content to have their respect, I want to open up more and develop a deeper freindship, but when i have the oppertunity to do so I just have so much fear and paranoia that grips me, and causes a restraint. I have been trying the little by little letting people closer technique, but in the end it seems like every step closer I take I end up taking two steps back closing myself off. Is it just easier to take a plunge and just make your self open up no holding back dispite the feelings of fear and terror, the jumping off the high dive approach? What have you found works best for you? What are some of your experiences?

Make it a Great Day!
 
I'm the new guy that wrote the quote. Today instead of asking myself if I trust other men, I asked if I trust myself around other men - do I trust myself to be able to gracefully handle a someone knowing me. I think that's what you are asking yourself too. Who wants to feel fear and paranoia? I don't trust myself either. I also feel an open target if someone knows me. Guys just don't do that with one another...yet some do and have great friendships.

For me there is something I have kept inside for so long: If other men knew who I really was they'd find out that ____ (fill in the blanks). To me, I don't even let other men discrimate and reject me, I do it first and have for so so long. If they really knew me they'd find out that there's nothing there. I'm a sham. Who they think I am has been constructed to survive, to earn a living, to not be lonely, to not be excluded. To be accepted for "who I really am" is a wildly abstract concept to comprehend for me.
 
Ditto on the whole trust thing, but I have to say "healium", you are not a sham with nothing inside.

Will, I don't want to hijack your post, so I say to you and "healium" that you and all of us coming here, and even talking about the unspeakable, I believe we show more courage and realness than many other 'normal' guys. I wonder how they would cope with having some of the burdens and issues that we need to work through (I'm not wishing this stuff on anybody, heaven forbid!). I'm just saying that they don't walk in our shoes. If they did and if they might think of us as shallow and false I'm sure they would change their mind and say that were are some of the gutsiest guys around!

If we need a barrier of safety between us and others, then we should be true to oursleves and give ourselves the permission to have that for as long as we need it.

We've learnt to survive as best we can. Know that we will continue to change and grow, and if we don't like parts of who we are at the moment, that too will change in time.
 
Oh yeah! I am the same way. I have only 1 friend (aside from here ;) . I dunno, I just don't go out of my way to make friends like I did before my rape.
 
I have been fortunate. Even when I went through a phase of total rude and obnoxious behavior to everyone close to me (yes, a phase that should be ending in the next few years, haha), for some reason I have had people in my life who think I am worth getting to know in spite of myself. Not always, not until young adulthood.

I think maybe what made this work for me? Is that at 18, I left my home country and came to this one. So I was 'meeting people' and making friends, TOTALLY from scratch. And even though I never started dealing with the abuse issues or talking of them until the last two years, I allowed what friendships happened to happen on a closer level. Honestly, I am not sure what thought process I may have gone through, I don't recall it.

The two people I am closest to as friends right now are incidentally both survivors as well. We did not know all that about each other when first getting to know each other. But it has created a much more close and open friendship between the three of us. I know that most are not so lucky to find two other survivor friends right in their backyard, people they would choose to be friends with anyway. (I don't want to go 'God' here, but sometime there is proof, to me, that 'he' is at work!)

I wish everyone here luck in making closer friendships. I know that it has truly saved my life, and is something I would never want to live without again.

Leosha
 
I'm so glad I let my darkness out here in this forum. I said that I felt like a sham. Hearing that low deep down self-talk let's me see it for what it is: self-talk. It isn't real. I am many things to many people and "who I am" is always growing and changing. Underneath it all I am a spirit, one that is loving and contributing.

Each time I share my story with someone they either gain respect for me, see something from their own past that has trapped them, or get a chance to show their capacity for compassion and maturity. I forget sometimes that I am not 13 years old living in the suburbs anymore.

Breaking the silence courageously.
 
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