I, personally, grew up with a giant lack of self-confidence. After I turned 25, along with quarantine to truly understand myself, I feel I have gained more confidence/self-worth.
My field is technology, but most of all my friends are not “engineers” and I have felt I have been missing out on some key bonds that are preventing me from sharing my knowledge to grow with them in a mutually beneficial way. I felt most of my friends were of the business kind that “always had an idea” and had a pocket engineer to talk to.
But, recently the past 2 years I have been more “mature” saying no to things or starting to give low-level, instead of high-level, overviews about certain topics. I felt it was in-fact hurting my career, to not talk in-depth so I began to join discords and build up my social vernacular observing/conversing with engineers online. But, whenever an in-real life discussion would start with a topic that I had researched, I would always make sure to “correct it” in case fake observations are brought up and/or decisions were made based on them.
Lately, though I have felt I have lost bonds with almost all of my in real life friends. And I can’t tell if, I am the *sshole, or if I have just “grown?”. I have felt that I was always aware of how I shared my “side of the story” and/or reasoning behind my decisions respectfully. But, I just can’t get it out of my head that I am in the wrong in some way.
not sure if I’m understanding correctly, but you’re telling your friends that you can’t do xyz because your work will be affected? when it comes to friendships in general, if you’re constantly turning down invites for whatever reason, then it just comes off as you don’t want to do anything with that person. at least that’s how I would feel - and then eventually I would stop trying hang out.
also if I had a friend that only talked about one individual subject (tech or otherwise) and I felt like I couldn’t have just normal conversations with them, I don’t know how much effort I’d be willing to put into talking to them. I love talking about games or shows I like with friends, but that’s just a small portion of what we’d talk about
i don’t know if any of that helps, but that’s how I would feel going off of what I understood you to be saying
Yeah all of that is right. I think I also hate giving context, but also expect friends to see things from my perspective and understand where I am coming from. All in all it simply has always been a communication issue with incorrect expectations on my part. But, this definitely helps! This comment and most of the thread made me realize, since I don’t have friends that align with my passions, I don’t get that irl release, in turn forcing it into all conversations. So that second point about the individual subject really fits.
ahhh I’m glad I wasn’t making some wrong assumptions. totally understand how lacking the context probably means people aren’t fully understanding here in the comments. but like you said, might just be the people you’re currently friends with have drifted far enough out of your interest spheres that everything feels forced for you now. I hope you find people you can closer relate to and have plenty of fun conversations in the future. it sucks to feel lonely when you’re surrounded by people