Making friends

I've pushed a lot of my friends away to, partly because I hate to be dissapointed and they usually backstab you and also because I hated it when they lectured me about my eating habits. But then I found out that those ones are the most valuable cause they actually cared about me.

I think that making friends is really tricky, but you always have to open yourself to new posibilities, there is where you find the best people, if you don't give others the chance then you will stay alone. I don't know if it is good advice or not but I've grown a thick skin so if someone ends up not being what I expected it won't hurt me as much, but I am also working in not expecting a lot from others, if you idealize people is there where you go wrong.

OK sorry I am just babling, breifly I think you have to put yourself out there, why don't you start by people from work or school or neighbours, maybe just start by talking and try to find common ground and from there you can start building a relationship...

You are not alone I am here if you need anythign

Phoexix,

Welcome to this site.
Do you know/understand why you 'push people away'???

Do you have any hobbies, interests,? that could bring you into contact with or to meet new people. View strangers as friends you haven't got to know yet.
What was home life like?  Mum & Dad? Bothers and Sisters? Loving or arguing family?

I'm an only child, but with parents from large families. There were arguements on my mothers side of the family growing up and my mother started argueing against my fathers family, which led to a split in family relationships. All of this put me off families, relationships, people. So I became a loner for many decades..............

My story is one I now repeat to new people/friends I make  on an almost daily basis. My Life has been transformed. 

Phoenix..... I could point you to the best selling book in the world ever for advice on living a super abundant life.

But as a starter, try reading Dale Carnegie's 'How to win friends and influence people'

I've read it ...and its not as cheezie as the title sounds.... 

Thank you Aria, I find making acquaintances fairly easily, but it's the next step that I find the most difficult, I am really bad with rejection and the past few times that I've worked up the courage to arrange things with an acquaintance that I seem to get on well with they've cancelled at the last minute, or just not shown up. This has had a massive impact on my confidence. I don't think I'm very good at reading people. I know I need to "get back out there", it's just getting the nerve to do it again I guess.

Thank you freedom for your advice. My family life when growing up was rather ... broken is probably the best way to describe it. My Mum and dad divorced and my dad was very bitter about it. My mum had a nervous breakdown in my teens and it wasn't handled very well by the rest of my family. I then made the awful mistake of getting into an abusive relationship, which I escaped from a couple of years ago, but it's all had a really big impact on my self esteem and I have difficulty trusting people; I shut myself away in my mind to protect me from getting hurt again. This has improved in the last two years, it's just getting over the final hurdle which I'm really struggling with.

I'll certainly give the book a try though, and it's really nice to hear from people that have managed to push past this and move on.

Sorry to read that Phoenix. Divorce is a tragic thing. I always feel for children who suffer and go through divorce. The heart wrenching pain of hearing and watching your parents arguing and fighting, really is debilitating for children. My parents never divorced, but they did argue a LOT when I was in my early pre and teens and it seemed to go on for years.
They would shout and fight in front of me as I used to play with my lego in the living room. It would go on for hours. They would shout and argue at relatives homes and even when we went away on 'holiday'. I can remember feeling the pain of listening to it and probably crying and shouting at them both to stop fighting. It was always my mother who instigated it and it always seemed to be aimed at my fathers family.  
  Children need a strong, stable, loving, environment in which to grow up in. They need an appropriate love, with affirmation, hugs, kisses, words of affirmation. So often 'love' can be shown in the wrong way. [I always tell my daughter I love her. I have always cuddled and kissed her. I tell her she looks gorgeous, not only when she's in her best clothes with make up on and I spend as much time as I possibly can with her.]

  If we don't get this when we are little and growing up, we can learn not to trust people. we can build a brick wall around our emotional self, to prevent any others coming in and potentially hurting us again. Its a sort of self-fullfilling prophesy. 

  Someone once wrote. Hurt people, hurt people. Loved people, love people.   Read that a few times and let it sink in.

If we don't receive what we need growing up, we can go on to medicate our pain or seek love in inappropriate ways. I stumbled
across book years ago called 'The 5 Love languages of children'. I must admit, that I did cry a bit skip reading through it. 

We need to know Who we are, Who loves us and How much we are loved and know that deep down and believe it with all our heart, all our mind and put that Rock of Surety in ourselves, we can weather any storms that come against us.