*hugs *its okay hunny n.n you have friends here and im pretty sure youll make friends

It's just so sad how lonely I feel right now... I haven't felt this way before, and it's sickening. I'm not socially inept, I'm not ugly, I try to get out, and yet I fail to make meaningful connections with people. :\

Maybe i should come back to cali for a little while and we could hang out and i could take you around so you can meet peoples *is overly social*

Lol. That would be nice.

As cliche as it sounds, hit the nearest navy bar, and take it from there. (and ffs, don't get wasted!)

Oh hon......*hugs* I'm sorry I haven't been on aim to chat as of late. With my job and all is hard. However if I could make it to cali I would. I would be utterly shocked to see you show up. *tackleglomps* The thing with you is.......most peoples aren't married your age. You have a job, a family, and kids. You are far more mature than people your age. Nothing wrong with that.

I'm the same way. I hardly ever talk in person, i become isolated and feel like I hardly have any friends. If you ever want to chat on IM I'm usually always on. My emails are on my profile. I don't use MSN anymore because it decided to hate me.

But as for meeting people IRL... I'm not sure what to suggest. Sorry ^^;

I'm only a month awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! <3

Thanks guys... *Sniff.* Just seeing this show of support has lifted my spirits a little bit. :3 I miss being a kid... And having firends, and being happy... Gosh it's been so long since I've been happy. :( *Hugs Tigsie.* Love you Cynth. :\ You're an EYE btw.

Random thought here but perhaps it's time to take a more aggressive stance on making friends. Go out to parties by yourself, stop at a bar and have a drink, find someone that interests you and make friends with them instead of waiting for it to happen to you. I preach to myself here, but one can't simply wait for a friend to knock on the door all your life. Sometimes you have to make the first move.

I think a lot of us on here go through the same things you're experiencing. I know that I sure wouldn't care to repeat the first couple years of high school for much the same reason, and yet the very reason I began to involve myself in the Furry Fandom is that the loneliness of growing up as something of a social isolate (due to social anxiety) drove me to find a community to reach out to. And in hindsight, the Furry Fandom was a logical choice. When you boil it down, the Fandom is just an easily-accessible online community where the people are so easy-going and inviting that they've taken the rather whimsical measure to represent themselves as anthropomorphic furry animals online.

Unlike the Road Rovers fandom, the greater Fandom is really just a group of people of all ages and walks with a common interest in a genre of fantasy, and unconstrained by a particular story universe at that, which makes it even easier to get involved without needing to master a game or watch entire seasons of a particular show in order to understand what's going on. At the same time, for me, there's enough of a disconnect between people provided by the electronic medium that I'm less keenly aware of the consequences of failure in this social context, so I'm more able to build relationships without fear of creating an awkward situation. I suppose it should be no surprise that in my first few years as a single guy entering the working world after college, I've found myself partaking more in the things and influences of the Fandom. My 'gateway drug' was an online game called "Skyrates" (http://www.skyrates.net/), which appealed to my past familiarity with furrydom because the character avatars are furries.

Another community that I have some involvement in is a group of folks who design and build their own high-fidelity loudspeakers and other audio equipment. I graduated from an engineering college in 2008, and I love to listen to music in my alone time, so I'm a perfect fit for the audio hobby. Recently, groups of audio hobbyists have begun meeting in houses and in hotel conference facilities to show off their projects to one another and discuss concepts and experiences related to the world of audiophiles. I've attended a few of these gatherings, and it's nice to be able to talk with other people who have the very same interests that I do, and who I've already introduced myself to online. Some of the hi-fi loudspeakers I've built have been garnering some accolades and even a few formal awards. Perhaps attending a smaller furry convention in your area would offer a similar experience for you. You've already demonstrated that you're a talented artist, and if you began drawing commission sketches at a booth at one of these conventions, I have no doubt there'd be people lining up to make requests, and meet the artist face-to-face in the process. (All that being said, I've never been to a furry convention, so I can't guarantee anything, but your spouse might be happier with you being there if he knew it was in service to your hobby, rather than just to be there, and your art is already a great conversation-starter.)

The thing that can make all the difference is finding one or two friends who are somewhat local, who you can meet for lunch every two weeks or so. It's not as easy as saying "Well, you live on the West Coast, and lots of other furries live out there, so just go find one of them" - and I'm not trying to say that. It may be that you're not even looking necessarily for another 'furry' pal - if you're like me, you just tend to make a few very close friends. I feel very alone in big rooms filled with 400 strangers, since I tend to do best around people I already know. I'm most at ease around the few friends I've met through serving on the technical team at my church. The person who used to be in charge of the technical production is also into designing his own speakers, and brought me over to his house to show me some of his projects, and since then we've been meeting every few weeks to have lunch, discuss ideas, and talk about life in general.

Think about the people in your life who can be your link to other social circles. In another recent post, you mentioned you were celebrating an anniversary of marriage. Are you able to go with your husband to various gatherings and social events, and make conversation with the people there? That's just another miscellaneous thought on the matter.

If all else fails, psychiatry may hold the answer. I've personally found that a bit hard to accept, since my personal pride wants me to think that I can make it on my own, without any help from drugs or counseling that's intended for 'broken' people. I don't want to feel like I'm messed-up somehow. But it's stuck in my head as a last resort, and that helps give me a bit of security, like I'm not simply staring down into an incurable abyss whenever I feel lonely. If my efforts to deal with my anxiety through non-medicinal means should utterly fail, I at least know there's a "Plan D".

Ultimately, FrisbeeRolf has it right. Being a spectator or people-watcher won't introduce you to those people, and you and I both have to go out of our way to introduce ourselves to others. Another thing I've had a bit of trouble with in the past is remembering that nobody is 'obligated' to be your friend through some circumstance (such as working or taking a class together). But if you become the one throwing the party, you get to invite who you want. So the best way to make friends if you're surrounded by people might just be to throw a party.

I'm always available to IM in the evenings, from 7 PM to 12 PM EST (I'm in Indiana). My screen name is TarlachSkylancer, and my PC runs 24/7, so even if I happen to not be online, I'll still get the messages you leave.

I should mention: Something like 70 percent of people over the age of 30 have zero friends - that is, in a survey, 70 percent of people over 30 said they have nobody outside their family or spouse that they talk to about personal issues with any sort of regularity. That's six years away for me, but sometimes I feel like I'm ahead of the curve there. It seems like the older you get, the harder and harder it becomes to stay in community with other people. I kind of briefly mentioned my church in the above post (Yeah, I'm a churchie who views FurAffinity through the mature art filter), and for me, that's the best opportunity I have to come in contact with a large number of people at a time, but I realize that might not work for you. Still, look for groups that meet regularly...maybe a dance class or a book club. And while you might not like everybody at work, maybe there are one or two people you wouldn't mind hanging out with. If you naturally gravitate toward someone, keep gravitating. The people who have ended up being my best friends throughout high school, college, and into the present day used to think I was a bit annoying. :P

(*looks back, weeks after the fact*) Wow, that's a lot of advice, or miscellaneous rambling posing as advice...even though I was trying to be helpful or practical, I think I came off as insensitive. ("Book club"? I must be more out-of-touch than I think I am. That's advice I wouldn't take myself, since I hardly ever discipline myself to finish an entire book at a time.) So enough with the practicality -- if I were even the least bit perceptive, I'd have realized that the problem probably isn't a shortage of advice, which goofs like myself love to dispense, but something on an emotional level that I struggle to find the words to discuss.

One thing not to miss out of everything up there is that when it comes to feeling lonely or isolated, I've been there, and felt things that I think are at least similar to what you're feeling. Having my first apartment by myself without roommates, I'm actually 'there' right now. I think just about everybody feels this stuff at some point...though some have more difficulty than others in overcoming loneliness, and I personally have a lot of trouble putting any of the above advice into practice. I know what I ought to do when I feel lonely, but even the most well-meaning advice seems more easily said than done. Loneliness is probably the #2 defining struggle of my own life. (We can talk about #1 some other time if you're around/interested.) The best I can do is try to reassure you that you aren't alone in this. I'd love to say that "this too shall pass", but for me, experience doesn't bear that out...it keeps coming up, usually whenever I've run out of things I can do by myself to pass the time. I don't know what it's like to be married, either -- maybe having a spouse isn't the 'magic bullet' for loneliness that I'd once envisioned it to be. (You probably ought to let him know that you're feeling this, though...us guys will usually try to help however we can, though as you saw above that doesn't always mean we're the most helpful.) For my part, you sound like the kind of person I'd love to meet for lunch sometime, just to get to know you better and talk about random stuff. But then again, I happen to find gas turbine engines interesting. (That's gotta be an awesome job, one I'd love to have.)

The other thing I think you might be bumping up against, and I agree completely from my own experience, is that online friendships can't replace real-life friendships, even though we're real people, because we can't have the same emotional connection that you can have with someone over a cup of coffee, or even over the phone. We need real friendships to get by - but (referencing the above statistic about adults with no friends outside the family) finding them is a real challenge, especially for someone like me that has trouble reaching out to others when they're feeling lonely. The best we can do, I think, is the real-life communities we already find ourselves in. For me, I've only got work and church, but the latter has been huge for me since the former is composed mostly of people who are just as self-absorbed in their own lives as I am. I'm getting to know my brother better these days, but I still can't really relate to any of his friends, or my sister's friends. For the most part, I feel like I'm lone-wolfing it. And I still haven't found a good way to get past my own social anxiety -- the only thing worse than reliably creating awkward situations is also having a fear of awkward situations. The fear is the hardest part for me, because I know I'm the one putting up the wall between myself and other people, though from the sound of it, you may not have this issue.

I don't have the easiest time delving into my emotions - they just 'are', and I spend a lot if time trying to think of schemes to overcome them, or marginalize them. But emotions color our lives, and we ignore them at our own peril because they let us know when something's wrong. The sheer volume of text I've sprayed out here should be a testament to just how much I feel like I've experienced when it comes to loneliness, and I just want to be as supportive and available as I can to help you however I can so you won't be embittered by what would otherwise be a temporary thing, because I know loneliness has usually been the root cause of my attitudes of bitterness whenever I have them, because it gives way to feelings of unwantedness (whether or not that's actually true - usually not). It's been about a month since you posted this journal entry...I genuinely hope things have been working themselves out for you in the intervening time. And if not, I'd like the chance to talk with you about this.

I dont know. It does suck I tell you that. No nearby friends for me right now and that sucks... O well, must keep on living. I live in Cali if that helps?