What I mean is, how do you deal with the logical conclusion that no one can ever truly be relied on and that you can always find yourself alone with no support?
Or do you disagree with this conclusion and think that some people can be relied on and that you can know that you won’t end up alone?
And if you are alone, how do you deal with the inherent human yearn for others when you know that you can never truly rely on them?
Edit: To clarify, I am talking about personal relationships and not about professional or paid help.
People ca be relied on up to the point they can handle. You can’t expect someone who is barely getting by on an hourly job for example to take off work for some emergency or for someone living with a roommate to take you in without getting the roommates ok. There are plenty of people that I know that would love to help me in a variety of ways that are just not really feasible. I know there are friends I have had and we live in different states and such that likely remember me fondly as I do them. Heck I even have a brother not to far away and we help each other some but we both are married and our first repsonsibility is to our spouse and family. We do what we can. But yeah in the end we mostly die alone as others go before or after us. If we don’t die alone its usually a pretty horrible thing.
I’m 100% sure some people can be relied upon. But only if it’s a two-way street. IF it works one way, it will only be once.
But think about it, you can never truly know, both for factors outside of their control and factors within their control. For example, they might get sick, they might die, they might get mental health issues that stop them from being a good friend. As well as factors within their control, they might decide to prioritize you less, they might decide that they just don’t want to do it anymore. You can never really be sure, even your best friend, your partner, your parent, your sibling, all of them can one day decide that they don’t want to be there for you, or that it’s not right for them. Even if you never gave up on them and was always there for them, they might not want or feel obligated to, or even if they feel obligated to, they might not act on it.
You are stretching it. T.ex. when someone -as you said- get ill or dies, you just can’t say they are unreliable because being dead is not very supportive to you.
Being reliable isn’t the same as being able to give the desired support. Someone is relieable when they make maximum effort -compared to the situation- to be there and provide whatever support they can.
how do you deal with the logical conclusion that no one can ever truly be relied on and that you can always find yourself alone with no support?
I simply don’t think that is the logical conclusion to come to.
I don’t have an answer and it is the one thing I am truly afraid of. As an autistic man in this society I have come to the conclusion that I will most likely be alone in the future. Developing relationships of any kind is extremely difficult for me. Right now I’m ok because I have family that are still alive and want to care for me. But when they die where will I be? I’ve fully accepted that I may die by suicide in my 50s due to loneliness.
Same here, and it really sucks. I see a lot of people being able to form new relationships relatively easily and maintain multiple relationships and I find myself for the most part incapable of maintaining more than one or two meaningful relationships, and when they end I usually end up being basically alone.
Learning to feel comfortable with yourself and to be grateful to those who are with you in the present.
Everyone gets off the train sooner or later, including ourselves. Don’t worry about it, just enjoy the ride and the company of the moment.
This is generally my approach as well. I only find it problematic when I reach really tough times in my life and I find out that it is hard to just be with yourself.
Try to let your “self” “die” when you can. I have trouble being around my “self” at times, and I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to let the part of you see as that “self” fall away from your mind and just exist. That little “death” can help you to be more in the moment and less in your own head dealing with whatever ruminations are rattling around in there today.
I definitely want to try psychedelics at some point to truly experience ego death/ego loss, but my methods work well enough for me.
Navigating hard times alone was never difficult for me. Finding myself alone during the good times is rough.
I understand that feeling all too well. Do you really have no one by your side for those moments? It can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between perceived loneliness and “real” loneliness.
As an example, when I was a teenager, many of the times I felt lonely, I was actually isolating myself so as not to bother anyone. So, whenever something bad happened to me, I didn’t have anyone to help me.
I’m enough.
I contest that it is not a logical conclusion, and more likely you’re suffering from loneliness and not coming to that conclusion with a clear mind.
You want people to be “truly relied on”? What does that mean? At your beck and call with whatever whims one has? People can be reliable but there are limits. Unless you yourself think it’s acceptable to be everyone else’s gopher.
What’s your standard for being reliable that makes you, through a twisted facsimile of rationality, think you’re going to be alone? Why would someone have to meet that standard to give you company?
I think you are assuming a lot of things.
When I say someone to rely on, I mean someone who would show me that they want to be there for me when I’m going through tough times. I’m not even talking about necessarily being there for me, but knowing that there’s someone who cares and wants to be there for you.
So where’s this “logic” you speak of that no one ever does this for anyone, and it’s a universal trait to not have this experience?
That yoi can never be sure that it will happen, of course that doesn’t mean that it won’t
That’s illogical, binary thinking. Things aren’t so black and white. Some people will have an estimated 98% reliability for emotional support, some might have much lower. It’s circumstantial to the person and the situation.
With your logic, unless something is 100% going to happen, it may as well be 0%. That’s like, almost an inverse of a gambler thinking that even if there’s a miniscule chance of winning the lottery, it’s 100% guaranteed.
I feel like you are taking everything I am saying to the extreme…
The point is that you never know until you need them and they either fail you or not, and even someone that has been there for you everytime for years and you might consider to be 100% reliable, can surprise you and stop being reliable.
It is a fact that no matter your situation, you are not guaranteed to have external support, but obviously for some people it is extremely unlikely to happen and for others it is more likely.
You’re the one who started this thing off by speaking in extremes. Again, you’re taking “sometimes some people don’t support you so you won’t have someone holding your hand 100% of the time” as “it’s logical that you’re going to be alone forever”
I’m gonna stop this here, strawmanning my point is not a good faoth argument.
You join my cult
i don’t know, I’ve never been lonely, alone for sure but that’s often something I desire.
how do you deal with the inherent human yearn for others when you know that you can never truly rely on them?
flip that around, are you someone that can be relied on, they way you write this it seems every relationship is transactional for you?
I dont deal with that because its not a logical conclusion.
If you have no one to rely on its not that that person doesnt exist its that you havent found them and built that trust. Be discontent with loneliness and take it as a sign to go out and find social connection.
A worse scenario is to become content with loneliness
Poetry.
Journaling.
Make songs about the fact of the cruelty of this world of constant betrayals… and sing it alone. Maybe in front of a mirror so you feel like you are looking at a parallel timeline you and wont feel alone.
I have like lyrics written about the concept of secrets and betrayal and there is this one line that I’ve written I want to mention:
“你到底是谁，看不透你的心里
但没办法，生存依靠一起”Translated something like:
“Who the hell really are you, I cannot see through inside your heart [as in: your mind, what you’re really thinking]
But there’s nothing I can do about it, life depends on us [humans] being together”So… just accept it…
Accept the fact that someone can declare their love for you and can totally stab you in the back
And be prepared for it
But try to not be too paranoid and accidentally shoot them first, careful of friendly fire
But at the mean time, enjoy the company of whoever you might have…
I’ve kinda accepted the fact the even my mom who constantly told me she loves me and I remember cuddling with her as a kid, could just totally do “bipolar” stuff that would harm me…
You need to have a shield… to be activated when you feel something isn’t right.
I have struggled with feeling lonely during different times in my life. I found I was attached to preconceived outcomes and some unhappiness I was feeling stemmed from that. When I stopped searching, I learned to find. I stopped trying to plug that hole and I sat uncomfortably in my loneliness. I’m definitely still a work in progress, but now I try to enjoy my time with people, to be more in the moment and less “10 steps ahead”. Now, most of the time, my loneliness doesn’t live on the surface, just in that occasional existential dread of knowing that one day I will have to die. I hope someone I love will be there to hold my hand, and I’m scared to be alone. That’s a heavy weight and I sometimes wish I was too stupid to recognize our mortality so I didn’t have to wrestle with it.
When I was young, I had my parents, grandparents, even great grandparents, and thought I always would. I was friends with a bunch of kids in the neighborhood and at school. I’m down to one parent and a super young and hip grandparent in-law in their 90s. When everyone was sick with Covid and my partner was feeling the stress too, there were times I felt very alone and I really felt the weight of having nobody to lean on in those moments because everyone was just as overwhelmed as me. It’s an uncomfortable part of the human experience. I try not to put all my eggs in one basket, but as an introvert it can be hard to maintain a large circle of support. Hopefully some of that answers the question. I’m curious how others see it.
I personally find the answer is quite simple, I just tend not to interact with people irl. People suck tbh and the most deranged toxic people I have met are irl, online I have my silly gay frens :3
Consider a stack of solo cups. They’re tapered and designed to efficiently nest one inside another for efficient transport and storage. Though they are filled with each other, we still consider them empty. Because though they are designed to nest together, that’s not what they’re for.
You cannot fulfill your own life by filling it with similarly empty people.
Fill it with booze instead.
That’s the neat part: I don’t.
I mean… I’m sure it’s possible that there are people out there that’d make it at least better more than 50% of the time. I don’t know about you, but I live in a low-density area (carless) and have no real viable options to meet… anyone really.
The other half of the story is that I too have a brain that isn’t really wired to do that anyway. I never really made friends in school and probably could live underground and would only go half as crazy as people normally do. Put my brain in something mostly mechanical and it’d probably be hard for most people to notice (especially with people not understanding the difference between robots and cyborgs).
Unlike a lot of people, even the internet isn’t really a social space for me either.
