How to Have Sex and the feeling of being alone in a group

“How to Have Sex” is an absurd name for a movie. I saw a trailer for it in the cinema and the party scenes convinced me to watch it. The movie is about a group of girls going to Malia. They celebrate that they have written their final exams and plan to just party and have fun for a few days. One of the characters never had sex and feels pressured to try it while being there. This leads to her first time being a negative experience.

The movie gives you a lot to think about, but there is one main thing that I want to focus on, because I can relate to it. The emotions of the main character, Tara, are described really well with the vibe of the scenes. She is constantly surrounded by people, which want to be nice to her, none of them are there to hurt her (both physically and mentally), but she seems to feel alone. There are multiple reasons why Tara is not feeling well during the movie, from having her first time be a negative experience to failing her exams and not being sure about her future. A lot of the time, the others don’t know about her situation, but there also isn’t really a good time to talk about it. There are a lot of topics, especially personal ones, which are difficult to discuss, even with good friends. The influence of alcohol on everyone around her also doesn’t really help the situation and one of her friends not really listening to her, but just repeating what her own experiences seem to be (while not really having any problems), discourages Tara even more. This struggle is portrayed very accurately.

This difficulty to talk about topics with others is something that I also experience a lot. I’m really bad at trusting people and moving small talk into deep talk. I mostly just info dump on them, because I have a very hard time to talk about my feelings, so the talk stays very informational. This is a bit better when I’m behind the anonymity of online spaces with my username and avatar, but it’s still not easy. The friends that I usually hang out with are also very similar to me in that regard, so I don’t expect any progress in that direction from them either. This means that I’m kind of stuck in a loop of very fun informational talk, but almost never have a more serious discussion about my own and others’ feelings.

This superficiality in conversations and the fact that it takes a long time for me to find new friends leads to a situation that I had on a class trip during university. During uni, I ended up having one rather good friend, who sadly couldn’t come to the class trip. So I went with a bunch of people, which I knew a bit, but not very well. We went to Hamburg to take a look at the harbour and a few companies there (logistics and more). I stayed at a hostel with another person during the stay and they left by plane on the last evening, so we checked out if the hostel in the morning. I just put my bag in a locker for the day. My original plan was to just get another hostel for the next night, since my train left in the morning.

The evenings were mostly free time, where we went out. On the last day, we ended up at some very large karaoke club, which was absolutely packed. With not much space to move, in a large group, I didn’t feel very comfortable. At some point we got in trouble with security (over some very trivial thing) and I needed a break, so I let the others know, that I’ll go outside to catch a breath and will be back shortly. I left the club and just walked around for a while. I then decided that it was enough for the night and ended up finding the next metro with some of my music on my headphones. I ended up just sitting (and kind of napping away) in a metro, taking it to the last stop and then back to the other last stop, which was the airport. I then slept around an hour at the airport and then went back to the train station to grab some food and take the train in the morning.

Even though, I was with a lot of people, who seemed to care about me, I felt very lonely. The connection with them was very superficial, we were just colleagues. They never reached out to me after this, apparently nobody really wondered where I went. I never heard of them again, since I switched uni right after (although they didn’t know that at the time). The loneliness in this situation was hitting very hard and I was just not in a good place at the time.

In comparison to that, I was just at a cinema screening with an afterparty at a club. I ended up going alone, since all of my friends that would go to an event like that are currently not in Vienna, but didn’t end up feeling lonely. I actually met a colleague from my new uni there and we talked a bit and after they left, I just danced alone on the dancefloor. The afterparty was mostly people chilling outside, so the dancefloor was even completely empty at times (except for me). But I didn’t feel lonely at all. It was more absurd than anything.

I think that loneliness is a feeling that depends a lot on the expectation that you have. There are a few situations where I would love to have some more friends (most of my friends don’t go to clubs for example), but I also manage to enjoy myself alone. I do a lot of things alone, especially since it’s difficult for me to talk to others. Because of that, I’m very used to being alone, which also makes it more enjoyable. Maybe I’ll manage to talk to some strangers when I’m out in the future, but for now I’ll stick to vibing alone, but not lonely.