When I Realized That I Rely on Others for My Joy

I don’t know about you but being a single guy with friends who are into relationships feels kind of hard. And you realize this sensation of weird dynamic when you hang out with them.

There may be circumstances where your friend is a completely different person in front of their partner, and a completely different personality when they are among friends.

Other circumstances may be that even if you don’t want to admit it, you don’t share common interests anymore. You don’t have anything common to talk about. You just sit there and look at each other, waiting for someone to initiate a conversation topic.

And both of the circumstances mentioned above are even harder when they appear in a combined event. Aren’t they? And that’s when the single friend comes in, trying to be the clown of the group for some fun, laughs, and joy. But without any result, because again… the conditions are settled.

Then you look around. You see groups of friends having more fun than you. Socializing, talking, joking, fooling around. And you start being jealous about it. You realize that you don’t have as many friends as you would like to have, not as many options as you would like to experience.

And the chain continues and you ask yourself

“Why am I doing this to myself?”

Why are you not respecting your desires? Why aren’t you changing things according to your needs?

Why are you afraid to place yourself first instead of the others?

And the thought keeps repeating in your mind over and over, until it becomes a chanting of “I need to change things, I need to change things, I need to change things!”

Then you snap out of it, you become aware of what is going on around you and you want to yell “ENOUGH!”. You step back, you turn around and you think “Enough… I want to change things…”

What does it take to develop such strength of self-awareness? Realizing that relying on others for our own happiness will just bring more desperation and sadness. So, I’ll close this article with a question for you, dear reader.

Is it that hard to prioritize yourself?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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