Can one be too social?
I have spent the majority of my life surrounding myself with people. People I care about, people I love, people I enjoy, and often people I am learning to enjoy. But I wonder if it is too much.
I know in high school a youth retreat I realized for the first time that I have a tendency to put my relationships with people before my relationship with God. This was a revelation to me, the idea that my friendships, though important, could take away from my relationship with my Creator. Thus, I began to see my desire for human relationships as a way in which I sin against God. I have learned more about how to cope with this, remembering that God did create us to be in relationship with other, as well as learning that God can speak to us through others.
But for some reason, try as I might, I have, and fear that I will, always struggle with depending upon other people to make me happy. I have been let down by so many people in my life, often for good, logical reasons. I find such joy in the friendships I have, but with a blink of an eye that moment is often gone. And so in the absence of that joy I search for more opportunities to recreate that joy.
I don't realize that I expect others to make me happy until I am sad or I feel lonely. At first this loneliness doesn't bother me, however, I realize that as I begin to feel more lonely I reach out to others to pull me out. They never can, because no one can physically fill that void. Nevertheless, it seems to be my default coping mechanism. I am getting better at recognizing when I am putting pressure on people I love to fill a need I know they cannot, but I still wish they could.
I wish I could rely more on God to fill the void because He is the one that is actually capable of this, but it has been hard, and I am still learning.
