# PerC members/friends keep leaving...



## L (Aug 12, 2011)

When I first arrived to PerC a few years ago there were a number of people I immediately clicked with and now they're almost all gone and the ones that aren't gone are still pretty much gone... 

I've never been good with temporary friends at all. People I met in my first semester of college I also clicked with and really liked, they were never really friends since I only saw them in class but still... when that second semester rolled around I felt like a piece of me was missing. 

The same thing happens every new semester, and it keeps happening here as well. I get that friends and friendships are like a revolving door in a hotel but still... 

Despite having a lot of opportunities for practice at it I'm not really equipped to experience loss... 

Now that I'm at a bigger college and routinely go play basketball at the rec center I get to see a lot of the same people over and over again which I really enjoy but there are some of them that I don't see anymore and it bothers me. Then there are the classes themselves where I never see anyone ever again... 

I'm not very good at forging relationships to begin with so when I do feel closer to someone than I would a stranger it takes its toll on me when they inevitably leave, they always leave. 

How do I deal with this?


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## FakeLefty (Aug 19, 2013)

Well saying goodbyes is a common attribute of life, whether you like it or not. It isn't gonna help you to keep holding on to the past and there's nothing you can do to keep those friends anyway. The best thing you can do is to move on, keep your door open and make new friends. 

You're gonna live for a long, long time and losing many friends is inevitable. But you have to keep in mind that you'll meet many people as well.


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

Live and learn from each engagement when people of all varieties have much to teach us indirectly (sometimes even directly) more about whom we truly are as people and what we'll accept.


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## Jennywocky (Aug 7, 2009)

I'm a survivor of other forums where the same things have happened... and then there is real life, where it happens regularly.

So sometimes (maybe more than not) in my life I have felt like the song in this video:





I do understand now, after all these experiences, that it's natural in life for our paths to intersect with some people for a period of time, and then our paths slowly (or abruptly) diverge again. It has taught me to value and make the most of the time I do have with other people. But it has also taught me how to let go. It's natural for life to cycle -- to wax and to wane again, around and around like the passing seasons.

In the end, basically if you find someone you really really care about, invest and do your best to build that connection. I just will say that you only have a certain amount of energy, so there will only be a handful of those, and even those will wax and wane. The others, it's not like you have lost them forever -- typically when you run into them again, it can be like the last day you saw them, you still do have a connection -- but it's the opportunity for daily connection that has now dwindled. We are finite creatures with only so much energy and time to invest, and it's how life works.

But I have felt what you have stated you are feeling. Sometimes I feel very sad and connection feels futile. Again, it just makes me value that small handful of people in my life who I have had the joy of knowing for a very very long time and not take what I have now for granted.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

Go after private communication with the contacts you find most valuable/feel closest to/want to keep around most. If you got someone's email, skype or whatever mode you prefer, you're both less likely to lose touch.


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## L (Aug 12, 2011)

Flatlander said:


> Go after private communication with the contacts you find most valuable/feel closest to/want to keep around most. If you got someone's email, skype or whatever mode you prefer, you're both less likely to lose touch.


I'm friends with a few of these people on FB but they never really respond. This one person I even have his cell phone number and have tried texting him a few times over just this last year and nothing... he didn't even wish me a happy birthday. None of them have. It's not the same and it never will be. It always seems like I'm the one putting in more effort, like I'm the only one who even cares anymore...

There doesn't even seem to be a point to any of it if they're just going to abandon me in the end. 

They say that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but I feel differently. Loss is a never ending pain that's always there, whispering to you softly. Just enough to remind you of what's no longer there and of what remains in its place.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

As to mediums and their level of personal nature:

FB is more impersonal to a lot of people because you are in competition with all their other friends. Post content gets more attention, I think, than the chats typically do - the site is styled for the social instinct.
Phone is somewhat less impersonal, text chats are a private interface and calls can be intimate but phones are often associated with communication on the go.
One-on-one chat clients are more personal. Skype does probably the best job of being personal as an interface, with things like MSN, AIM, coming in second to it. These force the interaction into an isolated window and it's much easier to get and keep their focus where you want it.

Interface matters. It's like you'd choose carefully your setting for a romantic dinner vs. a night out at the bar. 

What also matters is what you share and offer. People don't all feel your same kind of need here - the world today is full of people and options, so many move on relatively fast and you need to be okay with letting people like that go and keeping only the ones that stay with you for who you are and what you share with them. And you need to accept that people tend to move on by nature anyway, and even the deep ones can have their own reasons for doing so. That being said, I don't know you well enough to judge, but in general you need to share something of significance to/about you with them otherwise people may not even recognize that you care about the friendship. And, of course, don't make my typical error and be hesitant to contact for lack of things to say from your own end - conversation is a fluid, evolving thing that you can make meaning of as it goes, but you have to figure out how to evoke that.


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## pretense (Jan 2, 2013)

I don't do the whole online forum friend thing, but I understand where you're coming from. I miss a couple retirees and perma banees. I read the forums a lot and there are people I find particularly entertaining. All in Twilight got banned a while back. He was hilarious. A bit over the top at times but he was always exceptionally nice to me. Quite few good ones have retired. Actually NK was a good one that went recently. Her complaining about how men aren't man enough for her was pretty funny.

Like most have already said, it is a hard part of life that you can't do much about.


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

That's the nature of forums, it seems. To a degree even more so with typology, but the revolving door phenomenon is standard.


l've only made a handful of internet friends on other sites l've ''taken'' with me, by all means, l'll trade information with someone but we'd have to be...like, the best internet friends to ever exist. l do tend to regard people here as entirely virtual, in essence.

The newcomers being blinded to this cycle repeating itself for the upteenth time, each crowd reminds me a bit of Saved by the Bell: The New Class.


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## cityofcircuits (Nov 8, 2010)

Since 2010, when I first arrived here, I've managed to make a few good friends I still keep in touch with regularly. It helps to get numbers,Skype info,facebook involved etc, but yeah I'm not sure why the people you're dealing with go M.I.A. 
I mean, maybe its a game of numbers really, cuz I've known many from on here and conversed with regularly and it runs its course and then we don't talk anymore, but like I said I've managed to make a 'few' good friends so its been worth all the other losses otherwise imo.


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## CaptSwan (Mar 31, 2013)

I've seen this happen to me in real life. I try to make the most out of every moment I share with this people; because, one second they'll be here, the next one they're gone. Nature of the beast. Experience as much as you can with them, get to know them and give them the best of yourself. After all, the most any of us can aspire to when dealing with people is leaving a mark big and deep enough for them to remember you. That's how I deal with the whole situation... it sucks; but, there's nothing you can do to prevent it, so, why fight it, right?


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## L (Aug 12, 2011)

Why fight it? Why even drag my sorry ass through the entire ordeal in the first fucking place?

Nobody really wants anything to do with me beyond the arena that I meet them in, and once that dissolves so does our imaginary friendship.


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## Frosty (Jul 16, 2010)

(deleted)

...


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## TheOffspring (Jan 3, 2014)

L said:


> There doesn't even seem to be a point to any of it if *they're just going to abandon me in the end.*
> 
> They say that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but I feel differently. Loss is a never ending pain that's always there, whispering to you softly. Just enough to remind you of what's no longer there and of what remains in its place.


The only way to enjoy life is to enjoy the moment, which is incredibly hard to do for some of us. It's like you make friends, you enjoy hanging out and in time they are replaced by new people. The difficult part is staying open to new friendships.. It's completely pointless to stay attached to people who are out of your life. You have to change that attitude from ''they will leave me in the end anyways'' to ''I'll just enjoy hanging out with these people and we'll see what comes next on my path''. It's hard, but it's the only way to live a decent life. Change is inevitable.


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

Always let people know how you feel about them because it does them no good for it to be kept inside and so you can feel like you got to say all you wanted to people before theyre gone ^_^


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## knifey (Jun 25, 2017)

and the person who started this thread has gone... my irony detector is almost at meltdown.


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## Vormir (Apr 28, 2018)

Wellsy said:


> Always let people know how you feel about them because it does them no good for it to be kept inside and so you can feel like you got to say all you wanted to people before theyre gone ^_^


You necropost too much.


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

Vormir said:


> You necropost too much.


Or not enough ^_^


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

I see OP is retired. I suppose they went the way of their friends.


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## knifey (Jun 25, 2017)

dulcinea said:


> I see OP is retired. I suppose they went the way of their friends.


out beyond the rim...

(i'm not sure if anybody here is even old enough to get babylon5 references, but there it is...)


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## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

Wellsy said:


> Always let people know how you feel about them because it does them no good for it to be kept inside and so you can feel like you got to say all you wanted to people before theyre gone ^_^


what if they freak out because of _that_ and leave and fulfill the prophecy :shocked:


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

Red Panda said:


> what if they freak out because of _that_ and leave and fulfill the prophecy :shocked:


hahaha I guess that might be about the approach, generally even those that don't wish to be so emotionally available seem to respond well to sincerity. But then the intensity in which some people express themselves does seem overwhelming.
And I also guess it depends on nature of the relationship, if someone expresses something so intense without their being much of a reciprocated relationship it comes off more in a persons imagination than felt in the significance of the relationship for the person receiving.

Regardless, if they leave they have left and the implications of all that stand XD


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