u/snowscovered

Getting out of a 6 year abusive relationship (I’m 22) where he cut me off from everyone. I had 0 friends the whole time and even wasted my college years being a recluse bc he wouldn’t let me speak to anyone but him.

I spend all my weekends inside building my brands and working on robots to reduce daily frictions (pointless in theory but lots of fun) / optimizing my life. I also WFH so that’s great... I don’t go out, don’t watch stuff most girls my age do, but I studied fashion and optimized my look for fun, (love shopping) now I’ve been described as a 9/10 so I have the looks thing going for me (I swear if u saw me you would think I have loads of friends, like I rly rly studied how to optimize my makeup, hair, and style. I got cosmetic procedures done, latisse, permanent straightening, nanoblading, Botox etc etc after simulating countless looks on a facial model of my own face and picking the best lol)

I need some girl friends in my life, but idk how to speak to people at all. Idk where to begin. I feel like as a guy it’s more acceptable to go up to random people and talk to them, as a girl it’s just weird.

I have cool hobbies, 6 figure tech job, and goals but this is a HUGE gap in my life. When I get invested in something I get INVESTED, so Ik if I put in the effort and studied this I’d be fine, I just need to ensure I’m putting my effort in the right places. Thanks !

I posted yesterday (now deleted) asking for advice and I got 30 comments. All of the comments said one thing or another but didn’t give advice on changes I could make

If I’m an 8/10 for example why am I not a 10? 5/10, why did you choose that? Nobody elaborated or told me what I can do to change?

Please send me a message if you want to give me an honest rating wit tips for change. I’ll do the same back. thanks!!

I feel like I completely missed out on life and I’ve never been more depressed. I’m turning to Reddit as a last resort because I’ve really never been so lost before

For context, growing up, my parents paid for everything. I went to a nice school, lived in a nice house, and never really had to worry about money. But I never ever fit in. I got labeled as the weird kid early on and it stuck until high school. I would eat lunch alone in the library because I had nobody. Literally nobody. It used to make me so depressed that I remember the exact moment one day where I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt this way so so much that I went numb to it forever in that moment, and “didn’t care” ever since.

During my gap year I started building brands and made a ton of money. in college I kept doing my own thing and literally stayed in my dorm working the entire time besides classes because of the high school trauma. I never learned how to make friends because I had already spent years learning how to survive without people.

Now I’m in my early 20s. I work from home, make over six figures, have around $200k invested, and on paper I’m doing well. But I have almost no social life, no real community, and no idea how adults make friends.

I also have an unspecified psychotic illness that I’ll likely have to manage for the rest of my life with no cure and nobody knows exactly what it is. I fear I could snap one day and it scares me so freaking much that I’ll end up in a home one day or something. My boyfriend knows about it and has stayed with me for years, but our relationship isn’t great. He’s a sweetheart and genuinely cares about me, but he’s financially unstable and even owes me money, has never had a job, and only does Ecom. I know I dont want to be with him, and haven’t for a while. But I know I can’t because if I leave I’ll have nobody. If I literally had just one person close to me I would have left, but because I don’t I’m staying and I hate myself for it.

What triggered all of this was visiting my grandfather recently. He’s elderly and frail now, but he’s surrounded by family and friends. It hit me that those relationships are the reason he’s okay. If he didn’t have them, life would look very different. I realized that if I got old tomorrow or my illness progressed, I don’t really have that. I have money, a job, and investments, but I don’t have people.

The problem is that my 9-5 drains me, I work from home, and socializing feels like work. Texting people has always felt hard and like a chore because I need to be so precise with what I say out of fear of judgement. Group settings feel unnatural. I genuinely don’t know how to build trust or friendships anymore.

Has anyone else realized later in life that they became too comfortable being alone? How did you actually rebuild a social life when you had almost no foundation to start from?

Or even if not, does anyone have advice for me? Genuinely need a heart to heart as I’m really struggling and if it doesn’t get better I will seriously end it. Thank you in advance for reading all of this :(