How to learn to draw emotional support from friends?

Post date: 2023-05-09 15:54:38

I'm early-forty-something (nonbinary but superficially dude-coded), and I find it extremely soothing to just talk to my mom about hard things I'm going through. Not for everything, but for enough things. My mother is irreplaceable, and I'm not trying to parentify my friends, but how the heck do I learn to draw a little bit more emotional support from friends?

My parents aren't going to be around forever, and I can only draw so much support from my girlfriend, and I'm incredibly lucky to have all three in my life. How do I learn to draw more emotional support from friends? For some reason, it just feels pointless, and doesn't make me feel better, and I can't figure out what's missing.

Friends do use me for emotional support, and I listen carefully and empathize, and sometimes suggest things, and it's rewarding to be emotionally supportive for other people. But, for some reason, it just doesn't work if I'm the one trying to get support. It doesn't make me feel better, like it would if it were my parents or girlfriend. But I need to branch out a little bit.

Are there some things I can maybe try? More vulnerability? Ask them to reflect things back to me so I can feel more empathized with? Suggestions for experiments to diagnose what's going on?

If you had trouble feeling supported by non-family and non-intimate-partner(s), but now you do feel supported, what did you change?

Possibly important: most of my friends are people who I knew initially online, the majority of whom I've met in person or have video chatted with a decent amount, and I know a lot about their lives and vice versa, but(?) they are spread all over the world. Some of them I could crash on their couch (if I weren't housebound, at the moment---maybe that's important, too), but maybe I'd like a little more ride or die, still with boundaries?

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