So, I just posted this on my blog, because it's been eating away at me for a little bit, and I'm honestly not sure if I'm being too harsh, or if this is fair.
Spoilers because it's kinda long:
I’m actually kind of extremely upset about this, and it’s been on my mind since yesterday, but, well, breakup kinda pushed everything else out.
If you are my friend, or if you consider us friends, PLEASE initiate a conversation with me every once in a while. Because right now, I’m going to be honest, only one or two of you REGULARLY do that. And that’s ******* sad.
You wanna know the quickest way to stop being my friend? Don’t initiate a conversation with me. For awhile, I’ll be happy with initiating. Eventually, though, I’ll start feeling like I’m just bugging you, and so I’ll stop, and if you don’t initiate, that’s honestly gonna be the end of it right there.
Like, I’m not asking you to initiate every single conversation but just can we try and make this more even? I get that a lot of you have your own ****, or have social anxiety. I do too. And I don’t think it’s fair that I, who is super stressed, depressed, and has and has always had major social anxiety (something I think I’ve made pretty clear to most of you) am expected (or I feel like that.) to initiate every conversation we have.
I guess it just makes me feel like there’s no reciprocation. Like I’m putting all the effort into our friendship, and you just go “Oh, hey, it’s that person” whenever I initiate. And that’s a ****ing horrible feeling, honestly. I don’t want all my friends to just be acquaintances. Especially right now.
I’ve lost a LOT of friends this way. I’m SICK of losing friends this way. I’m sick of the friendship dying because I feel like you guys think of me as an annoyance. So to the friends that I still do have, if you honestly want to remain my friend, or if you enjoy talking to me, TAKE THE INITIATIVE SOMETIME. Just a simple “hi” on skype or in my inbox or texted, for those of you who have my number is FINE.
I feel like I’m being a total ***** here, but I also feel like it’s not fair that I’ve had to initiate 99% of the conversations in 99% of the friendships I’ve had.
There are a lot of you who I probably won’t initiate with again (at least, if you don’t initiate at all.), because I’ve reached this point, and I kinda feel like a lot of you don’t really give a **** about me anyway. Which is perfectly fine. But if you come to me a month down the road with some “We never talk, what happened to you” bull****, I’m going to link you to this post because this is probably why.
tl;dr:
Most of my "friends" never bother to initiate conversations with me, and eventually we stop being friends because I end up feeling like I'm pestering them. I'm kinda upset that this has happened consistently throughout my life, so I made a post about it.
EDIT: Noticed some language remained. Edited it out manually.
When you say 'initiate conversations with you', what exactly do you mean?
Over the internet?
Through skype or some chat program?
Through texts/phone calls?
In actual conversations?
Regardless, a passive aggressive blog post is a really bad way of handling this. I get the temptation to be able to just write what you feel without actually having to direct it at anyone in particular, but it'd be a lot more productive if you brought up your feelings to your friends.
I've got a few friends I hang out with regularly who are terrible at communication, and unless I organize something they will rarely hang out. There are a whole lot of reasons why, but the coordination of group activities usually falls to me. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. But I also know and like my friends, so it's worth the effort on my part.
Also, are you really the only one who would ever initiate a conversation, or do you get impatient are the one always initiating first?
It's never good to bottle up your emotions and if you really feel this way then it's a good thing to share it with them. Sometimes people you think are your friends are really just acquaintances because you both don't really know the depth of the other person. It can be hard to keep good friends around. Also, Jivanmutka has a point, if these are live face to face friends, then you should talk to them face to face. If they're internet friends, then a blog is fine (pending that they read it). Just don't blow up IRL and rage in their face. I don't think they'd like that.
The thing with the relationships we have with others is that we really in the end only have control over what we do. We cant change the other people in our lives, no matter how important they are to us, or how deeply they may effect us. But what we can do is try to look at ourselves in a way that may help us to interact better with the people in our lives.
This may come with the feeling of "if its not fair in the first place, then why do I need to put in the work?" Which you are absolutely right to feel. Many parts of life aren't fair, and in the end its less about the unfairness of it all, but what we do with these feelings of unfairness to try and improve ourselves. Relationships are not walls, they are mirrors, where they reflect both parts of the other person as well as ourselves. Maybe ask them for feedback on how you come off if you feel safe/close enough with someone to do that. Is it that they aren't initiating conversations, or is that they just miss the mark when they do? If you are seeing a psychotherapist, maybe ask them to help you explore your relationships with others, how you interact with them even, as the therapy room is yet another place where we interact with others. It often times may be that the ways we interact with others repeat over time, and becoming aware of these repeating patterns is often the first step to asking yourself if there are things you would like to change about your life.
My hope is that you start to wonder more about these questions. Take this time of frustration as motivation to try to make changes. This process of trying to understand and see these things about ourselves can often be frightening and ego depleting, but extremely rewarding and freeing in the end.
Not reading your blog post but I define a friend as someone who initiates conversations and activities themselves. You can tell that someone is not a real friend if when left alone they never speak to you again. There's no need to test people by artificially silencing yourself and seeing how they respond, but if you get a feeling that someone doesn't care about you it's probably because they don't. I'm not going to say you deserve good people in your life because I don't know you and I think the internet is full enough of blind reassurance which ultimately leads to reinforcement of dysfunctional behavior, but know this: it's so much better to have friends that care about you. It's a night and day difference. If your so called friends are making you feel bad because they neglect you, you're not just experiencing something bad, you're missing out on a positive, fulfilling experience, one that is common among healthy people, and if you miss out on it long enough you will feel out of touch and bitter.
I agree with all that has been said by the other members, but I would just add some of my own experience and a little of what I think.
One of my friends I've know for like 10+ years, I always have to call him, to get him to have a drink, to go cycling, and some such. He seldom contacts me, and when he has problem, I almost have to pry his mouth with a woodstick to talk. I was pissed, at some point, but I finally understand that some people in the world, well, a not-so-small-number of people just aren't comfortable with actively making connection with people. Hey guess what, I ain't one of them! So I take up the initiation.
I guess* (hey, I ain't a 100% right, okay?) it sometimes comes down to whether or not we understand ourselves, and do we accept who we are. As a person who always takes up the initiation, I would say it can be very tiring and frustrating, especially when our lives isn't going well, or when a couple of friends just turn away from my invitation in a row. It will be really good for someone to come and pick us up for once, instead of us always picking someone up. But, if there is really nobody around, then I guess we need to pick ourselves up then.
Another thing I sometimes notice, is that we tend to make friends that are somewhat of similar types. That seems natural. It has nothing to do with whether this "type" of friends is good for us and our social life. It's just that, whether we know it or not, we choose friends base on a somewhat similar standard. It has a lot to do with our own personality too. Certain personality attracts certain kinds of people. So it is also natural, that when we start to change in our lives, we will lose some of the friends we kept. It's a pity, but hey, what can you do.
I would suggest, maybe you should let yourself take a break, enjoy some solitude. Allow yourself to think about who you wanna keep being friends, because life is busy, and keeping friends cost you time, cost you strength, even cost you money sometimes (you do go out with them sometimes, right?). There really is not right or wrong, for with real friends, I never think "fairness" is required. Have faith, for our willingness to interact with others is a blessing, not a curse.
Please forgive my terrible English, it's not my first language. I wish you a happy and joyful life~
I have a similar problem. Few friends and none of them really want to talk to me. I'm pretty sure if I ended up dead in my house the only person who would notice is my boss.
Not sure how to solve the problem because the more I try to initiate contact with my friends the more they want to stay away from me.
At some point you really do have to decide how much time & effort you want to invest in a friendship, & how much of a return you're expecting to see on it.
It's important to make those expectations clear to your friends in a way that's constructive, not accusatory or passive-aggressive.
(((ie.
"When you don't initiate conversations with me, it makes me feel like I'm not a priority to you & that I'm annoying you. I'm sure that isn't true but it bothers me that I feel this way about our friendship. Can we try to meet each other halfway so that I don't have to feel this way, or can you please help me understand why it is this way?"
---& DEFINITELY NOT---
"You don't love me because you never talk to me. I can't be your friend anymore if you don't start making an effort.")))
Think carefully about their answers to your concerns & consider whether they're in line with what you would consider a reciprocal friendship, if there's a balance between them lacking in one area that's important to you & making it up in another way, etc. It's fine to have an unbalanced friendship if both people are okay with it, it's fine for people to need someone to lean on, but given that you're at the point of publicly dramatic frustration over this you should really take the time to consider whether some of these friendships are a constant drain on your resources. It's fine to give anything you're comfortable with (time, advice, moral support, emotional support, physical presence, anything) because that's what being a friend is about, but constantly giving more than you're capable of is a problem... even more so if you're giving to someone who is not willing to give back.
Not all friendships are "real". In fact, there are actually very few friendships of substance in anyone's life just because the time to cultivate and maintain such friendship takes a lot of work. If you have 1000 Facebook friends, I highly doubt all 1000 are people you could actually count on as a "real" friend. Don't mistake "acquaintances" for "friends".
Eh, friendships are by nature uneven and this is just something I have come to accept. I have friends where they initiate almost every single conversation and there are friends where I initiate almost every conversation. I think there has only been like two or three friendships where we initiated conversations 50-50 for me.
As a person that sits on both sides of the fence, my perspective from when I don't initiate conversations are because 1/it doesn't feel "right" even when I'm waiting on your message, 2/ you're horrible about returning texts/messages, 3/ we talk too much, and 4/ I just don't like you that much.
For 2/, you should make yourself more easily accessible. Don't expect your friends to message you a lot if you only respond to texts 9 - 5 on weekdays.
3/ usually means that I may eventually contact you if you cease contact for long enough. I just don't have the energy to deal with you at that frequency or maybe we just have nothing to talk about. Don't appear too desperate for social interaction even if you are, OP. It may be taxing for the other person
For 4/, you should consider why your friends may dislike you. Is it your appearance? Your personality? Socioecononic differences? Popularity kind of ends in high school but people never actually stop judging you even if its on a personal level.
I guess 1/ is the hardest to explain. Usually the reason I don't engage the conversation even though I like them is because I have a deep seated, subconscious issue I have with the friend. It's like I like 90% of them but I really dislike 10% of them. Usually, they play on my insecurities so it's not an issue I want to tackle and it's not like 4/ where I dislike the friend and I clearly know why.
Some examples of insecurities may be "He/she's too good for me", "The friendship doesn't feel balanced", "He/she is too nice (insincere)", "He/she doesn't really like/care for me", and "I am very expendable to the person so I don't want to get attached".
Spoilers because it's kinda long:
If you are my friend, or if you consider us friends, PLEASE initiate a conversation with me every once in a while. Because right now, I’m going to be honest, only one or two of you REGULARLY do that. And that’s ******* sad.
You wanna know the quickest way to stop being my friend? Don’t initiate a conversation with me. For awhile, I’ll be happy with initiating. Eventually, though, I’ll start feeling like I’m just bugging you, and so I’ll stop, and if you don’t initiate, that’s honestly gonna be the end of it right there.
Like, I’m not asking you to initiate every single conversation but just can we try and make this more even? I get that a lot of you have your own ****, or have social anxiety. I do too. And I don’t think it’s fair that I, who is super stressed, depressed, and has and has always had major social anxiety (something I think I’ve made pretty clear to most of you) am expected (or I feel like that.) to initiate every conversation we have.
I guess it just makes me feel like there’s no reciprocation. Like I’m putting all the effort into our friendship, and you just go “Oh, hey, it’s that person” whenever I initiate. And that’s a ****ing horrible feeling, honestly. I don’t want all my friends to just be acquaintances. Especially right now.
I’ve lost a LOT of friends this way. I’m SICK of losing friends this way. I’m sick of the friendship dying because I feel like you guys think of me as an annoyance. So to the friends that I still do have, if you honestly want to remain my friend, or if you enjoy talking to me, TAKE THE INITIATIVE SOMETIME. Just a simple “hi” on skype or in my inbox or texted, for those of you who have my number is FINE.
I feel like I’m being a total ***** here, but I also feel like it’s not fair that I’ve had to initiate 99% of the conversations in 99% of the friendships I’ve had.
There are a lot of you who I probably won’t initiate with again (at least, if you don’t initiate at all.), because I’ve reached this point, and I kinda feel like a lot of you don’t really give a **** about me anyway. Which is perfectly fine. But if you come to me a month down the road with some “We never talk, what happened to you” bull****, I’m going to link you to this post because this is probably why.
tl;dr:
Most of my "friends" never bother to initiate conversations with me, and eventually we stop being friends because I end up feeling like I'm pestering them. I'm kinda upset that this has happened consistently throughout my life, so I made a post about it.
EDIT: Noticed some language remained. Edited it out manually.
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Over the internet?
Through skype or some chat program?
Through texts/phone calls?
In actual conversations?
Regardless, a passive aggressive blog post is a really bad way of handling this. I get the temptation to be able to just write what you feel without actually having to direct it at anyone in particular, but it'd be a lot more productive if you brought up your feelings to your friends.
I've got a few friends I hang out with regularly who are terrible at communication, and unless I organize something they will rarely hang out. There are a whole lot of reasons why, but the coordination of group activities usually falls to me. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. But I also know and like my friends, so it's worth the effort on my part.
Also, are you really the only one who would ever initiate a conversation, or do you get impatient are the one always initiating first?
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This may come with the feeling of "if its not fair in the first place, then why do I need to put in the work?" Which you are absolutely right to feel. Many parts of life aren't fair, and in the end its less about the unfairness of it all, but what we do with these feelings of unfairness to try and improve ourselves. Relationships are not walls, they are mirrors, where they reflect both parts of the other person as well as ourselves. Maybe ask them for feedback on how you come off if you feel safe/close enough with someone to do that. Is it that they aren't initiating conversations, or is that they just miss the mark when they do? If you are seeing a psychotherapist, maybe ask them to help you explore your relationships with others, how you interact with them even, as the therapy room is yet another place where we interact with others. It often times may be that the ways we interact with others repeat over time, and becoming aware of these repeating patterns is often the first step to asking yourself if there are things you would like to change about your life.
My hope is that you start to wonder more about these questions. Take this time of frustration as motivation to try to make changes. This process of trying to understand and see these things about ourselves can often be frightening and ego depleting, but extremely rewarding and freeing in the end.
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One of my friends I've know for like 10+ years, I always have to call him, to get him to have a drink, to go cycling, and some such. He seldom contacts me, and when he has problem, I almost have to pry his mouth with a woodstick to talk. I was pissed, at some point, but I finally understand that some people in the world, well, a not-so-small-number of people just aren't comfortable with actively making connection with people. Hey guess what, I ain't one of them! So I take up the initiation.
I guess* (hey, I ain't a 100% right, okay?) it sometimes comes down to whether or not we understand ourselves, and do we accept who we are. As a person who always takes up the initiation, I would say it can be very tiring and frustrating, especially when our lives isn't going well, or when a couple of friends just turn away from my invitation in a row. It will be really good for someone to come and pick us up for once, instead of us always picking someone up. But, if there is really nobody around, then I guess we need to pick ourselves up then.
Another thing I sometimes notice, is that we tend to make friends that are somewhat of similar types. That seems natural. It has nothing to do with whether this "type" of friends is good for us and our social life. It's just that, whether we know it or not, we choose friends base on a somewhat similar standard. It has a lot to do with our own personality too. Certain personality attracts certain kinds of people. So it is also natural, that when we start to change in our lives, we will lose some of the friends we kept. It's a pity, but hey, what can you do.
I would suggest, maybe you should let yourself take a break, enjoy some solitude. Allow yourself to think about who you wanna keep being friends, because life is busy, and keeping friends cost you time, cost you strength, even cost you money sometimes (you do go out with them sometimes, right?). There really is not right or wrong, for with real friends, I never think "fairness" is required. Have faith, for our willingness to interact with others is a blessing, not a curse.
Please forgive my terrible English, it's not my first language. I wish you a happy and joyful life~
Not sure how to solve the problem because the more I try to initiate contact with my friends the more they want to stay away from me.
It's important to make those expectations clear to your friends in a way that's constructive, not accusatory or passive-aggressive.
(((ie.
"When you don't initiate conversations with me, it makes me feel like I'm not a priority to you & that I'm annoying you. I'm sure that isn't true but it bothers me that I feel this way about our friendship. Can we try to meet each other halfway so that I don't have to feel this way, or can you please help me understand why it is this way?"
---& DEFINITELY NOT---
"You don't love me because you never talk to me. I can't be your friend anymore if you don't start making an effort.")))
Think carefully about their answers to your concerns & consider whether they're in line with what you would consider a reciprocal friendship, if there's a balance between them lacking in one area that's important to you & making it up in another way, etc. It's fine to have an unbalanced friendship if both people are okay with it, it's fine for people to need someone to lean on, but given that you're at the point of publicly dramatic frustration over this you should really take the time to consider whether some of these friendships are a constant drain on your resources. It's fine to give anything you're comfortable with (time, advice, moral support, emotional support, physical presence, anything) because that's what being a friend is about, but constantly giving more than you're capable of is a problem... even more so if you're giving to someone who is not willing to give back.
As a person that sits on both sides of the fence, my perspective from when I don't initiate conversations are because 1/it doesn't feel "right" even when I'm waiting on your message, 2/ you're horrible about returning texts/messages, 3/ we talk too much, and 4/ I just don't like you that much.
For 2/, you should make yourself more easily accessible. Don't expect your friends to message you a lot if you only respond to texts 9 - 5 on weekdays.
3/ usually means that I may eventually contact you if you cease contact for long enough. I just don't have the energy to deal with you at that frequency or maybe we just have nothing to talk about. Don't appear too desperate for social interaction even if you are, OP. It may be taxing for the other person
For 4/, you should consider why your friends may dislike you. Is it your appearance? Your personality? Socioecononic differences? Popularity kind of ends in high school but people never actually stop judging you even if its on a personal level.
I guess 1/ is the hardest to explain. Usually the reason I don't engage the conversation even though I like them is because I have a deep seated, subconscious issue I have with the friend. It's like I like 90% of them but I really dislike 10% of them. Usually, they play on my insecurities so it's not an issue I want to tackle and it's not like 4/ where I dislike the friend and I clearly know why.
Some examples of insecurities may be "He/she's too good for me", "The friendship doesn't feel balanced", "He/she is too nice (insincere)", "He/she doesn't really like/care for me", and "I am very expendable to the person so I don't want to get attached".