Hi stieg,

I'm also the big brother in my family. I have one sister who is married and has children. I'm also a loner. I'm not very good around women, either. Earlier this year, I lost a good friendship with a female friend. I'm still not sure what I done (if anything) to cause the break up. All I know for sure is that it still hurts.

I can understand the loneliness being worse around the holidays. To begin with, it was really difficult the closer it came to my birthday. Then I decided that I had two choices. Either give in to the depression or do something about it. So, I treated myself to a movie and a nice restaraunt that I hadn't ate at in a while.

Since I've lost this friendship, I decided to reach out to other people. Was it easy? No and I still have problems with it at times. But reaching out to others has helped me keep her off my mind.

Maybe you could look into volunteering somewhere? Maybe you could enroll in a class or join some kind of group. For me, it was going back to Alcoholics Anonymous. Although I hadn't had a drink in quite some time, I really needed the social support & they are people I have something in common with. There is one guy that I met there that I hang out a lot with.

I do still struggle with loneliness sometimes and the depression that goes along with it.

Dwayne61