Need advice

I am new to this forum and so glad I found it. I am 47 yrs old I have been married 3 times. Every one of them failed. During my 3rd marriage I started having major anxiety. It escalated to depression I went thru kidney failure in Oct of 2010 my depression became worse. I quit my job in Nov 2010 due to stress from work and not physically feeling well enough to work anymore. I no longer want to be around people or be in social circles.Always in the past being the social butterfly it is very depressing now. My social skills have gotten worse since then. I don't know if it is the medication I am currently on or if its me. In my early years of school I had many friends. After high school no close friends at all. I can not maintain relationships with men. I have never had a best friend or friends period. It depresses me even more.
I would appreciate some feedback on this. I hate my life and I dont see it getting any better.

Hi Realitysucks,

I'm not the best person to be answering your need for advice. My life isn't filled with social success, either. At least, I can say I may know something about how you feel because I have been socially avoidant since early childhood. My mother's advice was probably as good as it gets, and she told me to force myself to plunge in to situations that I feel uncomfortable about. Her theory was that the best teacher is experience. There was a certain wisdom in that theory. The other side of it is the more you "plunge in" and have a bad experience, the more scarred up your psyche becomes.

Three failed marriages must be discouraging. At least you are appealing enough and socially confident enough to go out and find potential spouses. You've done it three times. I haven't done it once.

Acquiring and keeping friends takes a lot of commitment and a certain amount of work. Friends can be costly, in terms of the attention they require. Maybe for you, as I believe it is for me, the cost seems more than what the friendship offers. I've been analyzing my life. I can see that I don't have a lot of patience for putting up with the demands of people being close to me a lot. So, I am just starting to entertain the idea that part of my aloneness is that I choose to not be real accessible to other people. Frankly, I don't want to be bothered, a lot of the time. So now I'm more at peace with my isolation.

That isn't very helpful to tell you, I suppose. You don't like things the way they are. Also, your health problems take a lot of energy out of you, I'm sure. One thing I would say. Age 47 may not be as old as maybe you think. I have seen some major transformations take place in persons older than that . . . things I would not have thought possible. Determination can do a lot. One pdoc told me I needed to get in the habit of smiling at people. I thought he was nuts. It wasn't like I went around pouting all the time. Years later I took his advice. It's amazing how it works. I've been trying that suggestion out when I go shopping and notice that if I smile warmly at the person in line next to me or the cashier, I can see them change in how they act toward me. Sometimes I think I am being really phoney. But it's kind of fun. You have more control over others than you realize.