While I prefer being alone, I’m not a lousy friend but will drop you like a rock if you are. My last friend said I was an enabler. I guess I was. I enabled her to leave an awful job she hated, get her alcoholism and prescription drug abuse under control, start an exercise program, manage her dogs and develop a better relationship with her mother. After all that, she was angry with me because I didn’t want to buy stuff from her MLM scheme she started on the side once she had all of the above under control. Oh and the Atheism. Buhbye!

I have always been good with my own company. It works for me and I live my life on my terms.

I have tended to have one good friend, serially, all my life. Now I am in my 80s and in a new place, I don't think I can be bothered. I enjoy my own company and very few people share my interests, so what's the point. Like you, I perform perfectly normally in public, so that acquaintances are surprised that I don't want to go to social events.

@Killtheskyfairy IF a person is my friend, I will also be the rock. I have friends in California whom I have not seen in years, but they are still my "sisters." In Missouri, I meet few people with whom I jibe. When I used to reach on campus, some instructors and I used to hang out, but when I went all online, we drifted away.

I shared in another thread how I hooked up with one of them after many years. She believes the moon is hollow and that's where the aliens who seeded life on earth have their base. Even worse, though she is gay and pagan, she thinks that Trump is end-all. I have not spoken to her since she revealed her Trump worship.

Me being a "lousy" friend is usually due to people who are needy. I can't deal with clingy people or those who need constant emotional support. I term them "psychic vampires" and they tend to love me. If I could meet some liberal independent women--or men--in person, I would have "friends." However, being reclusive, I don't go to places where I would meet such people. Also, with men, I have found that the vast majority think that being "friends" will lead into "friends with benefits." Nope.

I broke off with my last friend who was a male not because of the "benefits" issue as he understood early on that was not going to happen. I shared this when it happened and won't you bore you with the details!

@Betty I did not realize how much of a loner I was until I lived alone for the first time in my early 50s. I would "put up" with people because I feared being alone. I will be 72 next month, and I have found that "alone" does not equate with "lonely." However, if my son and his family did not live just down the road (two grandkids), it might be different.

@CeliaVL bingo! Few people share my interests here in Missouri. I am a liberal pagan atheist and the vast majority of people are conservative Xtians. I will be 72 next months and have less in common with women my age than I do younger women. Men want more than friendship. I do have pagan friends in MO, but they are not local any longer and so, we do not get together. One with whom I was the closest died a few years back. And so it goes . . .