Been depressed lately.

You can't say that, you don't you know what future holds for you, may this may be a wake up call to do something good for you and others, find things that matters most. Please stop dwelling in the negative aspects of you. There is good in everyone. Sometime we failed to see that..

I wish you good, strength, love...

 

Try to find a psychotherapist that is focused on childhood trauma and/or childhood emotional neglect.

I can recommend books such as "Running on empty" or "The emotionally absent mother".

What I believe is going on is that in your early childhood your primary care taker may have failed to provide you with the emotional support, to teach you emotional regulation and, to some extent, take care of emotional needs. You adapted to that through isolating emotionally from your care takers, but this is now screwing up your adult life. I'm not a psychotherapist and I don't know much about your past, but I believe it's worth looking into it.

 

It might be useful to acknowledge that it's quite commonplace for relationships to drastically change after a certain point in time, be that after school years, after uni graduation, marriage, career change, etc.

Most ppl tend to tend to their priorities (even if those priorities may serve nothing at times). Thinking that they're just following their own path and not acting out of ill will might be more useful for us, especially since we don't have access to the actual inner workings of their psyche...

What's more, comparing never really helps, IMHO, unless one uses it to get better and grow and see change in their life by monitoring their progress day by day (that is, comparing results). No use thinking about others' happy circumstances and how they've got it all, while we this and that...(this line of thinking gets me so easily myself though, still training).

We all have our grievances, and also the right to go at our own pace... with supportive ppl of our choosing and towards outcomes that we honestly resonate well with..

 

Would you be ok with sharing more characteristics of your lifestyle so we could maybe help? As in habits, what your goals are, etc.

It’s good that you are here seeking help. We are there for you, please continue talking to us.

 

zxcv I can see there are many common things in our current situation. I realize now how much loneliness has contributed in fapping all those years and even worse how much it sabotages my path to recover.

I'm beginning to realize now that unfortunately this is the rule for how most people behave and form these "groups" according the marital status. I had the specific conversation with one of my, recently married, "ghost friends" and he told me about how his wife faces the same neglect from her married friends that have given birth to children. The married friends will kind of shut out of their social circle their friend that doesn't have a child yet.

I get the same indifference from two of my friends despite the fact that there's also an extra religious/social bond on top, that I explicitly analyzed my state and how much I needed their support on my efforts to socialize more. This ends up that even when I meet with them, the conversation ends up in that weird situation, as in all that time has passed where I've been alone contemplating and going back and forth in my mind that I just have lost track and finally the will to talk about it with them.

I don't now how my opinion about this topic can help you since it is still a work in progress, yet the current outcome for me is anger and bitterness. So for now the path I'm following is the one where I minimize my contact with certain people to the absolute necessary social obligations and, most of all, become as much tolerant to loneliness as I am able to. I understand that this may hurt my progress but I'm trying to compromise with the fact that from now on, I'm gonna be spending more time on my own.