Lack of friends normal?

Lack of friends normal?
S

serafina

Registrant
My boyfriend, a sexual abuse survivor, came to see me yesterday. We have not seen each other for 4 months after I left him because he had stopped working on his recovery and had resorted to drinking and had been lying to me about it. We have remained close and talked alot, but this is the first time I have seen him. We talked alot about each of our expectations of each other and have decided to continue to be apart and just meet once in awhile to talk and really try to build something healthier. Two things bother me-One is that he has no one close to him in his life except for me, as far as I can tell. He doesn't have any close friends. He said he got rid of most of his friends several years ago when he joined NA and just needed to worry about himself for awhile. He had been fairly well known and popular. I would love to hear from survivors if this is a normal stage to be going through.

My other concern is that my family is completely unsupportive. They say that he hurt me and was dishonest with me and they think I am better off looking for someone stable. Obviously this would be easier and yes, he has hurt me tremendously in the past, but I also know that he has been hurt too and he is just finding a way to deal with his anger and pain and he gets better at that all the time. How do others find their friends and family dealing with their relationships with SA survivors? Just needing to hear some opinions. Thank you!!
 
on the first part, i think surivors often struggle to have close relationships at all. if you get a chance look at the survivor board under a post called intimacy. it describes the struggle we have trusting and opening up to people.

on the second part, and this is just my opinion, someone who has overcome trauma would make a very good partner. if he can truly get his stuff together, he will be self-aware and would have dealt with issues most never do. in my case, i feel i understand things like never before, and like someone who has never before taken a hard look at themselves cant. i am mature, honest and faithful, and i wasnt any of that before i went into therapy, adn sought help. i need to stress IF, because many people who have been abused get stuck and can't get to that point of really being happy.
 
Zadok
How I agree !!

Dave
 
Making friends is very hard for me and I imagine it is similar for other survivors. It takes me a long time to trust people, and I am often moody and argumentative, even once I trust them very much. Few people can put up with that so I usually wind up very alone. :(
 
Darned if I know why, but I don't have another soul other than my wife and 1 son left at home. I spend the working day completly alone. I have 2 older kids that call and visit from time to time, but no one else to call ever, unless it's a solicitation. I have thought about it many times, and there are neighbors and people at my church who know me, and have talked to me, but no one who is willing to interract with me. I can't figure out any reason why other than they must have heard somehow I have been assaulted when I was a child.
I don't know why other people shun a survivor/victim, but I have had to use 3 different counselors, in about as many years, because no one is willing to listen and are repulsed and afraid of this type of issue. They all seem afraid and one even said she could not handle listening to me any longer and told me to leave.
I am still feeling that this site is some sort of fantasy. People from cyber space openly writing in about sexual assault. I simply can't believe I am actually sitting, typing and telling something like this that is actually on my mind. To another human being!! It's all too unreal!! I could not wait to tell my wife when she got home today that I had written to this site and had a correspondence with SICK PUPPY about this chat site, and he was a victim/survivor of sexual abuse too. I can't wait to have more time and learn more about navigation around this site.
It's easy to ramble on, but again, I don't know why, but people who have been victimized continue to be shunned by other people unless someone wants to try to victimize them again. [I get my share of hucksters and phone soliciters every day] You are not a loner by choice if you have been victimized. It's just GOD or some spirit that keeps victims safe from other people and the rest of the world. If he is a victim, he will be a loner.
Tom S.
 
I don't know why, but people who have been victimized continue to be shunned by other people unless someone wants to try to victimize them again.
Click to expand...
Tom, do you really believe this :confused: ? I find that most of the survivors here are very emotionally removed people and cannot handle friendships. This is certainly true for me. I went for a long time thinking that nobody wanted to be my friend and I didn't know why. I would wait and wait for someone to come my way and (only recently did I realize this) that when someone would initiate a friendship I would run the other way. I couldn't handle the emotions. It wasn't until a couple of years ago (before I started recovery) that I made a concious decision to make some friends. These friends have been great and have fully supported me when I disclosed my history. I find that friendships are a two-way street. You have to get out there and participate in it.
Take care,
Mike
 
I have my fair share of friends, but I would not call them close friends. I hang out with them, I have a good time when I'm around them, and no matter how foul a mood I'm in, hanging out with them can distract me from my own pain for awhile.

But close friends, people who know the real me and not the "big lovable guy who'll kick your ass if you fuck with him" facade I present, I have very very few of those.

That is largely because in the back of my mind I always have that doubt, that fear of "if they really knew me, they'd run like hell away from me and I wouldn't be able to blame them."

Eric
 
Tom: Sleepy has it dead on and I agree with him totally.

I would recommend that you tackle the post on intimacy. There you will find a great deal of insight into it and insecurity and lack of self esteem. The Heading is intimacy and I think you can find it by hitting Public Forums and scolling down till you get to it.

Wuamei knows exactly how to do this and I think that Sleepy does too. Both of them really great.

I see you have communicated with Sick Puppy too. He has a lot of valuable insight too and is not afraid to tell it like it is and for that I think everyone here is grateful.
 
OK Mike, I found the post INTIMACY, and tried to follow all those messages, but I am still at a loss. While a lot of the things said there may very well be true, the fact remains that a victim/survivor will still be a loner, espicially one who has not had a chance to explore his inner self with someone else, and people find he can be trusted and come around again. I am 47 May 1'st, and I have no other person other than my son and wife outside my home. I always feel intimate with my wife, and have for well over 20 years now. I also did with my first wife and kids, and I had several friends I worked with and depended on in business. But then about 8 years ago I did an assesment on an inmate who was just beginning a 25 year sentence for things he did to an unrelated female child; the same type of things that had been done to me when I was a small child. It was then that I began to expresss anger related to my sexual assault because I was denied access and assaulted again as an adolescent; and my life along with my family and friends, simply changed. No explanation; one day coping well with family & friends, then a couple years later in therapy without anyone and confused as hl. I did not ask them all to leave nor do I know where they all went.
I love my wife and always thought I was experiencing intamacy with her, but then again, I don't have an appropriate yardstick to gauge by. Please don't make me have to start questioning that. The second time we met 6 days after our first blind date pre-arranged by mutual friends, we began holding hands AND engaging sexually. And we still do both frequently. I have loved and respected her for over 20 years now and together have done very well together with our kids even though 2 of them were not hers. Her career has done well also, and I feel grateful for being a part of that. I think we both feel intimate, but then again maybe not. What is intimacy 'supposed' to be? I think it's a lot individual, that's why there are over 40 responses to that post.
But fellows, the fact still remains, victims have few if any close relationships, even family. You be the judge why. Victims are EASILY re-traumatized and can remain victims. So what few relationships they are able to have MUST be supportive and loyal.
I don't think we need to confuse intimacy with limited relationships. What is about quality vs quantity?
Tom S.
 
Tom:
I hear what you are saying.
For years I pushed people away who tried to be friends. There was a price tag for it I thought. I could not believe that anyone would a) want to be my friend and
B) would put a [price tag on it.

I started to make friendships when I met someone that I just knew was safe to be around. I explained to him the issues I was dealing with and told him that yes I would like to be his friend but could we take it slowly. I guess I am lucky because he willingly agreed. Now I can say that I am intimate with him on a buddy basis. Our respect is mutual and he has helped me immensly to actually let down that concrete wall around me and let people in.

It is not easy I will admit cause you run the risk of getting hurt a lot. But I am 62 years old now and am really glad I tried it.

You know I have had very unpleasant experiences in this regard to but I look on them as their problem not mine.

Hope to see you in chat some time
Your brother Mike

P.S My name really is Mike Church I am not a affiliated to any demonination. I have found that some suspect my tag. I have hidden for so long I am tired of doing it any more.

And you know Tom by being here and interacting with us you are actually developing friendships with all the guys you touch in your posts. We are all brothers here and our goal is to heal

Your brother
Mike
 
Tom,
I am hearing everything you say, but isn't one of the goals to eventually be able to limit the victimization (if not eradicate it)? And part of that process is opening up to others and allowing friendships. I'm not talking sexual itimacy, or even totally encompassing new friends with all the details of our lives, but being able to have friendships where it isn't necessary to re-live everything that has gone before and have moments of the world that are not effected by the abuse?
I have watched the last three years, my survivor retreat from friends. Sometimes he really has to stretch, but he always seems to find some way that a friend can p--- him off so he doesn't have to face the intimacy again (and some of them are really stretches!) Of course,sometimes the friend or acquaintance doesn't understand what is happening and the friendship just disappears, but I have also seen friends just give up, because, they want to be as supportive as possible, but, as outsiders, as it were, they much more easily have the capability of not being co-dependent. They just walk away.
 
the more I recovered, the more I found my smallish circle of friends changing.
Some became very close and supportive but from some I, or they, have drifted away. Nothing said between us and no rumours behind my back or anything, but with some folk I believe I've moved on and changed and I no longer fit their social world. I belive I've improved my way of life and become a better person but they've remained where they are. ( And there's nothing wrong with that at all )

Those I have become closer too are people I believe are also moving forward, like my friend Paul who has survived a horrendous divorce and family break up. He's had to learn new life skills and all manner of things to survive. He has an open mind and a burning desire to live a decent life. We have a lot in common.
Some friends had that open attitude anyway, so we've just stuck together.

My new friends are various and different, some are SA survivors, some not. But all have the willingness to listen, to learn and to think for themselves.

But it's me who's choosing my friends, not by interviewing them for those qualities, but by becoming drawn to that type of person as I change myself.

Dave
 
Wow, so what do you do if you "want" to be one of those friends who tries to stick it out? Stand by and remain silent? Confront? Refuse to be pushed away, or gracefully accept it???

I am at a major impasse here.
 
I have a difficult time following all the messages, and trying to remember who all says exactly what, but be that as it may, my family and previous friends were non-believing aggressive people who did not know how to love themself, let alone anyone else, [intamacy?] and to survivie you had to be aggrerian like them. [law of the jungle] When I finally came to believe that sexual perpetration or sexual union using you with someone else other than the person YOU choose to have as YOUR lifes mate, is W R O N G ! 2 consenting choices between educated individuals with the knowledge of the consequences that sexual union can bring, is the ONLY correct choice. [you gotta have knowledge of the truth, cause only the truth can set you and keep you free]
Once I began to accecpt that fact and began believing that promiscious and sometimes like in my case, perpetrating, behavior was WRONG; did I become alone. Some family ran, some friends simply slipped away as I lost touch. Some [like my mother] I had to confront and throw out of my house.
I know the circle of victimization must be broken, and a change of lifestyle must take place which will include seperation from all those people who keep you from knowing the truth, and rightfully you or them must go from the social circle. A victim who will become a true survivor WILL be without those close relationships that have circled them with deception and sin for so many years. If you were taken as a vicitm as a child, you may NEVER had an opportunity to experience the truth. I was victimized as a toddler by parents who were victims, and only recently after living 40 odd years, while doing an assesmant on a state inmate, did I recieve the revelation and discover the truth that sexual perpetration is wrong and actually punishable by state and even fedaral law.
Once I began to accecpt that, and was unwilling to accecpt anything less other than people who felt the same way, did my world, family and friends incl, begin to change. New friends will only be accecpted based on careful assesment, and likewise the people at church who are not willing to jump out and accecpt me until they learn I am a victim, and NOT a perpetrator like in the previous people in my life.
Am I making any sense to anyone? I hope so, but again, to the gal who started this thread, I can't explain exactly why a victim/survivor is a loner, other than to say he is in transition which includes relationships. He will be a better person if he comes out whole, so you might want to consider hanging on to him. He'll be one of the strongest providers you may ever meet, and it may be worth over looking smaller misgivings for. [pickup with shotgun or yard full of smelly dogs...get the pic?] He could evlove into a strong Christian who could raise a strong Christian family.
A young girl who is in a wholesome family and life style who is abducted and raped, still has the support of wholesome family and friends and church etc. she had to start with.
But what does a person from a wicked back ground have?
Transition from old to new. Thats all, and again ANY relationships MUST be supportive and wholesome. And this includes counselors who can be offbeat with diagnosible agenda of their own. { I have just been liberated from this today by GUY 43 who wrote in at the forum above with some of the same experience and I am still high !!!}
Hope any of this helps, it is helping me. Tom S.
 
Let me add something......
....sorry to be so blonde, but like I said, I am slow at this and sometimes I can't up keep with everything written in and who says what. It's only until I push add reply do I get to go back and look at the big pic.
But, Lloyd [I believe he is an administrator here] has some wonderful testimony and advice. My response above is my personal experiences related to isolation, but to continue the story, Lloyd's post on survivors acquaintance are, well; nothing less than excellent.
The whole process is an evolution from the old man to the new, along with his lifestyle and friends and even family sometimes, irregardless of who those friends or family might be or where they come from. The only one true core commonality between a survivor and anyone else around him will be is the fact that, 'he is NOT a molestor'. Anything else that goes along with that fundamental core is incidental or coincedental, but that one fact is always true among ALL survivors. When victims begin the metamorphisis, they must also learn HOW to recognize potential relationships, as well as the individuals for those relationships.
At this present moment in time I am without the old and just beginning to learn and acquire new. The only thing I carry with me will be my wife, son and 2 older children and our home and personal posessions. Nothing or no one else. Period. All new. And don't think my wife and kids aren't going through the change also. It's going on 5 years now and my oldest is really going through hl with old relationships while on his way to victory. My wife has no permanant friends, they all turn over at work every so often, and her mother is the only survivor of her family blood line. [wife has perp issues and limited family as well. I think that's why people we knew put us together in the first place. we acted the same and people felt sorry for both of us; and I was blessed]
This site has been a MAJOR breakthrough! I have a dozen or more new acquaintance already, not to mention a round-the-clock therapy group like I have been praying for ! ! !
How did we get this far down here, and where is the original writer, Serafina [sp..*and God I hope I got the name right*]
Tom S.
 
Tom

I can't explain exactly why a victim/survivor is a loner, other than to say he is in transition which includes relationships. He will be a better person if he comes out whole,
Click to expand...
I'm positive this is fact, we can't heal without learning, I don't think we can even make the seemingly simple choice of disclosing for the first time without having taken a huge step in learning to trust ourselves a bit, respect ourselves and of course trust someone else. If we couldn't make those steps forward we would remain silent. Although I realise that for many of us the silence was taken away by the abuse being known, the choice of asking for help is the same thing.

We have made a choice, we have taken a huge step forward.
And with every step we become a better person.

Dave
 
Hi Dave, I seem to be following you around the boards tonight... :) not on purpose!

Anyway, I will try to be brief and on point.

I was used and betrayed by my sister when I was young. She taught me that things are not what they seem, and, as I have realised how I was taken advantage of, I have also realized I do not want to be taken advantage of again.

One of the best and easiest ways to avoid being taken advantage of is to avoid relationships of any depth.

We do it so subtly as to think, even to ourselves, that it is not us, it is they who do not trust us or who do not call, come by, reach out.

I have my wife, my child and her family. We have no friends. The ones we have had were inappropriate (that is another thing, while in the full blown phase of acting out and denial, we party and make friends like a mofo, just not the right kind of friends, we make manipulative, 'good time buddy' friends. Or maybe it is just me) and we dropped them.

It has not been easy to make new ones. I do not know what to look for, and remember, I don't trust anyone, not really, even as I just want to be loved and taken care of and to be with people I CAN TRUST. I just love contradictions.

So much for brief, but...hope it helps

Peace,
James
 
Hi - with respect to my SA boyfriend - its funny he often talks about his friends (or his perceived lack thereof) and he gets quite distraught about it - however, I find that indeed does have a lot of friends but for some reason he doesnt see it. I do know that a lot of it is that he is lookign for people to "really connect" with - and also that he just moved to my city 2 years ago and is still building friendships.

I think it must be hard for men to find others to be friends with when one has this matter to deal with. Especially if the abuse was dished at the hands of a man - would make it hard to trust other men, especially with deep secrets like one's sexual abuse. I find that guys in general dont like to hear about abuse or other difficulties. Sort of a catch-22 going on here. However I know other men who have not been abused who also dont have many friends (my dad and brother are two that I can think of - but with them there are other abuse issues to be concerned with).

As far as friends/family advice - my friends are not always supportive of my relationship with my bf - my BF does and says some pretty horrific things (read my post on "is it an excuse or is he working on it") and many of them wouldnt give someone with that kind of emotional baggage the time of day. My family is another case - sometimes I find that they are really urging me to stick with him even if times are really bad (I tend to draw the line and be more "hard" regarding some of the stuff my BF does than they would but then again my family is a codependent/alcoholic family who has put up with my dad's abusive behaviour for decades. I think for them to say to me "dont put up with that crap" would force them to examine what they put up with..

Its a tough line to walk - I find that because of my BF's abuse he is a much more enlightened and sensitive person - but at other times its like a monster has taken him over and he's just cruel and heartless. Its hard to handle sometimes.

soccer
 
Soc'

I find that guys in general dont like to hear about abuse or other difficulties. Sort of a catch-22 going on here.
Click to expand...
I think we get a 'radar' for it eventually, the last few guys I've told have just said something like "f*****g hell, that's bad, you ok with it now ?"
And when I tell them I'm dealing with it we move on to fast cars, strong beer and sport.

And if it comes up in future conversations it's quite normal between us.
But it took a long time for me to be able to gauge the trust I had in these guys, I've known them for 20 years or more and only just been able to trust my own judgement.

Dave
 
" But it took a long time for me to be able to gauge the trust I had in these guys, I've known them for 20 years or more and only just been able to trust my own judgement.
Dave "

Dave;
You are truly fortunate and blessed to actually have such friends, despite the fact it took 20 or more years to have them.
There are people who were close to me that I have known my entire 47 years that I would never be able to mention this to. And this does not even take into account the time since 1973 that I have payed {and only God knows how much I have spent} simply trying to locate someone like a counselor/T to be able to even mention such things to.
Radar? Perhaps that one thing to call it, but once you've been sexualized you get a new way to view not only people, but the entire world they live in. And it depends which world you choose to live in. The one where all those people are including the ones who perpetrated on you or allowed it to happen; or looking for the one where people do not live that way.
Tom S.
 
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