Comment on its painful each time (┬┬﹏┬┬)
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months ago
It’s a tightrope walk. Put in too much effort and you risk pushing them away. Not enough effort and they lose interest. That is also why, in my experience, it is a good idea to have multiple friends. If you’re someone who needs a lot of attention, it allows you to have multiple sources of attention without being smothering towards one person.
If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is “smothering” and “risk pushing” you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.
It’s not a tightrope walk, a friendship is built on mutual respect. Feeling left out and lonely because there is no reciprocation whatsoever is normal. Calling this OP’s fault is extremely toxic, holy shit.
If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is “smothering” and “risk pushing” you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.
???
What?
Where in OP’s post was this mentioned?
Are you okay?
It’s not a tightrope walk, a friendship is built on mutual respect. Feeling left out and lonely because there is no reciprocation whatsoever is normal. Calling this OP’s fault is extremely toxic, holy shit. If it’s a tightrope walk, you didn’t wanna be friends from the very beginning and are bad at communicating your intent.
You still have to maintain a middle ground, and blaming the other for a lack of interest like OP’s meme seems to imply, is not the correct way of doing things either. That is also extremely toxic, and it’s the kind of behavior I mainly see people who tend to smother or cling to others engage in. Being smothering or clingy is not even remotely healthy and will absolutely drive people away.
Where in OP’s post was this mentioned?
Nowhere, to be fair. The meme just struck a nerve with a past experience of mine and it hurt. My bad.
On the contrary, as a dude with many friends, none of us put in “tons of effort”. Each of my friendships are casual and relaxed, we “see each other when we see each other”, and that works well for all of us. We have lots of mutual respect, and an intent to have a friendship, but friendship just means different things to different people.
Some people, like it seems maybe yourself and OP, have the energy of a drowning person who will take any person who tries to help them down with them. And also a sense of… justice?.. that’s highly attuned to amplify small slights. I’ve seen it before in some second hand reports of like “I sent him a photo that I really liked and he didn’t respond within 24 hours, and when he did it was just with a 😛. Can you imagine the gall!”, when actually there’s no indignity, he just doesn’t look at his phone much… or he was busy. But it’s a problem when the sender isn’t busy, and is in fact just sitting there fuming for 24h because they have way more energy invested into this.
I want to check in real quick here, none of my tone here is intended to be angry or even mocking. I’ve got a lot of privilege for sure, and it helps combat this. A person suffering with food scarcity is going to react differently to a backyard BBQ than a person without food scarcity, and I’m willing to bet a person suffering from social scarcity would do the same.
My only purpose for writing this is because I’ve met people who feel “desperate”, and people who have a sense of “principles of friendship” that are iron clad, but also not mutual and are inflexible and cause them to push everyone away for not respecting them, meanwhile all the people they pushed away seem to get by just fine. And often it’s easiest to just let these people go because they’re, perhaps through no fault of their own, toxic to non-manic casual friends and friend groups. And I figured I’d give a more “average” perspective of what the other side of this might actually look or feel like.
And I already feel like I’m going to regret it 😛
Also, since we talked about expressing intent upfront, let me say that I’m going to post this and then get out of bed, and I probably won’t look at Lemmy again the rest of the day. I have some errands to run and I’m going to a BBQ with some friends later, and I have notifications turned off because I don’t want Lemmy stuff being a force of push in my life, only pull, so I probably won’t see any replies until maybe tonight when I go to bed, maybe tomorrow morning if I do something else tonight? So I can’t guarantee I’ll want to respond to any replies, but if I haven’t replied in 24h, that isn’t actually emotionally meaningful. I’m not ignoring you, I’m just doing other stuff and literally not thinking about you. 😉
Strange, you wrote a really sane take, yet you’re getting downvoted.
Here is a scenario that actually happened, you’ll be the judge:
Person A is someone who, to their own admission, wanted to be friends. I know them over persons B and C, long-time friends of mine, A is very close to B. I invite A to a BBQ at my place that B and C are attending as well, they leave me on read, but tell C they’ll come, so when speaking to C shortly before the BBQ, I get told that A is coming as well. A then asks if they can come too even tho I already know they planned to come. I brush it off as bad communication.
Next month, pretty much the same situation. I invite A, this time telling them that they should drop a yes/no so I can plan for food. Get left on read again. At the day before the BBQ, I ask again if they’ll come, they say no. Next day A asks if they could come despite saying no, okay well whatever. Anyway B and C arrive first and they know that A is coming too. They were told a week ago, I had no idea. Got me pissed, I text A and ask what the fuck their deal is and now suddenly I am the clingy bad guy. B remains neutral, C takes the side of A telling me, it was my fault that it didn’t work out and that A was simply trying to surprise me.
I think this is super insightful. I have seen what you’re describing as “a sense of justice” play out a few times and it rarely ends well. I’d like to hear more if you’re willing.
My thoughts are that the person feeling slighted is feeling like they are investing more into the friendship than the other and it’s painful to realize- and since it’s probably happened to them before they realize they’re in the cycle OPs image detailed and start to pull back their energy to test the friendship. If the friend stops reaching back then it’s taken as confirmation that it was a one way thing.
The implication of OP’s post is that they are unable to make new friends. Somethingsomethingcommondenominator…
If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is “smothering” and “risk pushing” you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.
Where does OP say that this is what they are doing? The assumption I would get from the meme is that they are trying to have long form conversations over text, which can be exhausting for other people - especially if you just met.
The whole phrasing of the meme puts off huge neediness vibes, which is kind of the joke. *Of course" OP has a hard time making friends, because they are so lonely. Catch 22, remember, was a comedy.
can u be my therapist ?
Well, no. I don’t have the certification to be a therapist, and I sure as hell ain’t paying the money and putting in the time and effort for a job that pays jack shit.
But if you
goofystench@lemy.lol 8 months ago
yea, having many friends sounds fun… but i would like to start with one XD