Friendship after the Family & in the Family

I posted this on Crossfire but thot it might be interesting to see if any of you guys relate to this too:

Anyone else experience this?--that maybe you've been out of the Family for years, but you have few really deep friends? Lots of acquaintenances, sure, but the deepest friends seem to be other ex-members? I'm a bit of a loner so don't really mind, and I do have a couple good friends in my work, but we never have them over for dinner, never go anywhere together. And it's all work related. I've got a couple brothers and sisters I'm close to but they live quite a ways away.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Why were so many of our deepest friendships in one of the most toxic cults in the world? Is it just that we're still a little shell-shocked from our common experience and are going through some kind of therapy by seeking out other exers who understand?

Or do some of you have oodles of non-exer friends who you really have a rapport with?

The flip side of the coin is, when we were IN the Family, did we have real friends? I think in a few cases the answer was 'yes'. I can think of a couple. But here's the catch: when push came to shove, and shove came to knock'm down, you could always count on even your very closest friends to betray you to leadership. Some little "murmur" you made, some slight "doubt" you expressed, you could always count on either your friend or your wife or husband or lover writing out in their nightly report about what you had said. Now if that doesn't suck bigtime I don't know what does!

It got to be where your sharing partners deliberately tried to probe and pick into your brain after having sex with you. Talk about Matahari type spy-work! I got the verse once, "Put not confidence in her that lieth in thy bosom." These spies could almost write killer reports about you while their sweet words were still ringing in your ears. And I'm sure men have done it to women also.

And the other thing, friends often were sent to another country. So then family members were in the same boat as ex-members, with some of the best friends no longer in the same town.

And then there was being deliberately separated from your wife or lover becuase they saw that you were in love, so they came in with their Gestapo boots and stomped any wicked, evil human love out. Yup! Share your bodies folks! People need love! But don't dare actually develop feelings for that person or ve vill be separating you! Und you cannot speak with her und den you cannot have sex with her, but efferbody else in der Home vill have sex with her but you.

The point being that out here in the real world it may not be the easiest thing to develop deep friendships but at least you don't need to worry that your friends will write reports on you that will get you sent to a hard labor camp called Victor's Camps, or get you separated from your dearest loved ones.