[sirlone]

It's frustrating to read the average person has (1-2) intimate friends and 15 people they stay in touch with contacting them at least once a month. I'm at 0 intimate friends right now and maybe 3 people I contact once a month where "contact" equals sending 1 or 2 sentences in a text message and getting 1 or 2 sentences back once or twice a month.

I don't consider myself an incel since I know several people who would be with me if I asked but I also know "we" aren't a match so I don't go there.

I also don't really know what to do it fix this issue. I look at meetup.com and I don't really see anything I want to participate in. A large portion of the activities there are limited to younger people, or specific demographics of which I'm not one. The few that are left don't seem inviting or interesting.

What are other good sources of activities?

It doesn't help that I moved 4 years ago away from friends and back semi-near family at their request. The truth is I'm just not that close to them, we've all been apart for 30+ years. At the same time, my friends back where I moved from, while still there, I'm not sure are enough to get me to move back. There's more to it. I'm old and it's another country. Getting a visa to move back would be hard. Getting a job even harder. And, even if I moved back, while it would arguably be better than my current situation, it wouldn't rise to the average listed in the article.

WFH has also made things worse. These last 5 years (including one at home during COVID) have been the worst years of my life in terms of people. I've gone many months seeing around 1 person a month.

There's this post from SLC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...

Which I found interesting in that if loneliness is a health issue, then why doesn't may insurance cover it? Why doesn't my doctor suggest solutions? I suppose this used to be where churches come in but that's no longer a thing for most people.

[thefz]

> WFH has also made things worse. These last 5 years (including one at home during COVID) have been the worst years of my life in terms of people.

I felt way more anxiety and restlessness in my off hours when I was forced to be 10hrs a day in a room with 13 other people. The magnitude of the benefit WFH has given me is so wide that sometimes people I have not met in a while state I have changed and look better.

Your story is not others'.