[elptacek]

This is particularly fascinating to me, because I am a deeply and painfully lonely person. My current working hypothesis is that my life experience has caused some level of attachment disorder, resulting in a feeling of loneliness even when I am not alone. The main reason I started going to various roller derby practices and events was to grow my circle of friends (the common sense advice -- clubs, events). This has happened, but I still feel a sense of apartness, which I suspect will take a long time to go away.

I've learned a lot about the mechanism of establishing friendships, though. As niftich points out above, I had the tendency to consider friendly encounters as one-offs; more specifically, "Oh, that happened. How pleasant." And then go through the mental acrobatics of wondering if the person would like to continue being friendly or [s]he was simply being polite. So the idea of "broken fantasy world" works in reverse here: I have a broken core belief where I don't understand the value someone gets out of hanging out with me.

Just a week ago, friends came over to celebrate my birthday and watch the WFTDA champs. Another friend who is not part of that circle remarked on something that hadn't really clicked for me -- I must be a good friend (and loved) because my house was full of people. So the feeling of loneliness, somehow baked into a bunch of erroneous core beliefs, also masks reality and hinders the formation of relationships.

[moredhel]

This is interesting, I have been doing a little reading on it. Nothing particularly technical, but I would be interested to know whether you went to a boarding school. There has been some research on the matter, and I can see the relation (boarding school in several countries from 6+). I have a disturbingly high proportion of the symptoms mentioned on the following page[1]. I'm pretty sure that I have friends, but I don't know if it's true, so I never ask people for anything. I also have a tendency to push people away.

[1] http://www.ibblaw.co.uk/insights/blog/boarding-school-syndro...

[elptacek]

No, no boarding school. Just a seriously crappy childhood.