“I will form new friendships. I will seek friendships to enable me to share many of the good things that life had provided. In friendship I can fearlessly reach out to others and embrace them in genuine love because of their sake not because of my hidden pathological needs. I can laugh, love, share etc. … in the certain knowledge that my own aloneness is OK – in knowing that it is my place of being at home.”
Oftentimes we are forced into aloneness because of the loss of someone we loved due to divorce or death. It is in the aftermath of these events that we are not only separated from our lover but from the relationships associated with them.
Divorce is certainly different than death in this regard. In my case, and probably in others, the divorce shifted friendships between us two parties. It was not my friends fault but my own because of natural affinities friends had to either of us. In my case I also moved physically to the other side of the world and lost contact with them.
On returning to the US after eight years in Dubai, I no longer had connections and found it hard to make new friends. My natural shyness and aloofness didn’t foster my making new friends outside of work.
I have tried to be more gregarious and outgoing but it is difficult for me. As I gradually make new friends, I am trying to be more in tune with what friendship really is. As an “older” person, the relationship isn’t so much social as it is when younger. I don’t seek them to satisfy some need other than having people to talk to and grow together.
The relationship is based on my desire to share part of my “experience, strength, and hope” about life. To give more to the relationship, than I expect out of it– which is only honesty, open-mindedness, and a commitment to doing what is right.