Reflecting on all my non-familial personal relationships, it seems like if I don’t reach out to people and actively plan social interactions, those social interactions never happen. Apart from my family, if I don’t message people first, I never hear from them. This happens with everyone I know:
* friends from high school and college (I’d say about 4-6 close-ish friends aged 25-26, mostly men but a couple women)
* people I met through work [30M]
* people I meet through volunteering (various ages, various genders)
I am just sort of doing the math on this, and it seems like this cannot be the typical experience. If everybody acted this way to everybody, nobody would ever socially interact. Are my friends just bad friends? Or are they just not really my friends? Is there something I need to do to make it so people care about me, think about me, and include me in social events? I have a hard time with social cues, and I am having a really hard time understanding why I am such a pariah amongst the people I’ve interacted with.
I brought this up to a therapist before, and she suggested that I talk to my friends about it. I did that with one friend [26F], and they apologized and told me that it would be different in the future, but then some months later we fell back into the old pattern, where I don’t hear from them unless I reach out first. I could keep trying that approach with different people, but it makes me feel really emotionally vulnerable.
Is there something else I should be or could be doing?
3 comments
I think your experience is fairly typical. There is usually someone who keeps groups of friends going by always being the one to call and suggest activities.
Many of us like our friends but let some go from sheer neglect. I would count you in as one of those who keeps friendships going.
I lost one of my best friends from childhood through college in an aircraft accident. She was usually the one who initiated things and after I moved from Washington to California, we lost touch for a few years. I was trying to find her by googling her brother because I knew she’d gotten married. That’s when I saw her obituary. I still kick myself for treating a good friendship so casually.
You are the glue. That’s all. They wouldn’t keep showing up if they didn’t like you or see you as a good friend. It’s their personality. There is always one friend who is the glue of the friend group.
If your friends respond to you whenever you reach out, and if they meet up with you as soon as you suggest it, then you’re obviously not as much a pariah as you maybe think.
I’m not saying your math is wrong, but the conclusions you draw from it probably are.
Your math doesn’t take into account that different people have different demeanours. If you’re the type of person who initiates a lot, then you might naturally attract people who don’t and who need someone exactly like you.
People also tend to get used to having certain roles in certain contexts. If you’ve always initiated everything, then your firends have likely come to regard that as normal and don’t think to initiate anything themselves. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about you, it just means they are used to having you make the first step.