I’ll have a singular close friend and always end up finding parts about them I don’t like. Even if it’s a group I’ll have someone in the group I can’t stand.
It builds up and I find myself hating every second of talking with them. I don’t want to tell them because it would ruin our friendship. I don’t want to confront them or hurt anyone. After I do manage to get away, a few months or so later the feeling starts to go and I don’t mind anymore the things I disliked about them before.
Currently dealing with this and my friend is heartbroken over it now that she knows. She tells me to get over myself but I can’t. If I stay close to her the hate will only get stronger and it’s already extremely bad. I find myself texting her less than an hour a day when we use to text all day long. I didn’t see this happening with her. I don’t have any other friends right now either and yet I don’t even want to save our friendship atm. I don’t get myself.
This has happened with almost every friend I’ve ever had, otherwise the rest I’ve just drifted from naturally without this feeling. I feel embarassed to type this out and rely on the internet. All in all, I’ve noticed time away from them and having a big bunch of friends help. but I don’t want to deal with this anymore.
30 comments
Look into attachment theory/styles
You should try therapy,
I do this too, I honestly think it’s because I don’t want them to be close to me a level of intimacy. So I subconsciously start to find reasons to push them away
I do this too and found out I had a variant of OCD. You should speak with a professional
Maybe you just need to spend time with friends in small doses.
As an individual, we all have our own morals or ethics. When you start to get close to someone you eventually get to know them on a deeper level compared to when you first get to know someone, you only know them superficially. You cannot expect a person’s beliefs and morals to align completely with yours. Everyone’s different and that’s what makes us an INDIVIDUAL.
When you’re slowly spending a lot of time with someone both of you tend to open up and be comfortable enough to let your guard down, you obviously see sides to them you never thought existed. Even things you might not like, but You’re actually starting to know them personally. As a person who has been through exact situations earlier, I recently discovered I have an avoidant attachment style. You could look into it if you want the deets but to break it down, we push people away when we start feeling comfortable with them or when we start to realise that we love them, just to avoid to getting hurt. We leave them first or try to find things we dislike about them so we could slowly fall apart with them person we love. It’s something that stems out of your past relationships.
Don’t let it get to your head. It’s okay to be vulnerable with your friends and more so if you love them. We all have our son flaws and imperfections and it’s only natural we’re humans afterall. Whenever you don’t like something about your friends, communicate. Tell them what you dislike. Even if a friendship doesn’t work out, it’ll be all alright at the end. People are supposed to flow in and out of our lives. Nothing to get embarassed about. But don’t push someone who genuinely loves you away because who knows? They might turn out to be your lifetime friends.
Therapy works for things like this.
Here is my take followed by my personal experience.
My take: No one is perfect and everyone has problems. If you focus on someone’s problems you will hate them. My mother has a saying that is a little coarse but it is “Use people for their strengths” She is a foreigner but she means to know people’s strengths and count on them for that.
my personal experience. I hired a matchmaker to set me up on dates. After a couple of dates, I would tell the matchmaker what I did not like about the girl. The matchmaker knew I like self-help books and recommended me one. It’s a morbid title but a great book “How not to die alone.” There was a ton of great advice in the book and the reason I bring it up is that the book said after the date to pick 5 things you liked about her. After I did that, it’s what I focused on instead of the bad. Today that girl is my wife.
I believe that we choose what we see in others. From your friends find 5 things you love about each one of them. If you can, next time you see them mention to them that you love the way they…….. and give them one with an example or two.
Expect less
The more you accept yourself, the more you can accept others, and vice versa.
You remind me of my mom. She has that mixture of shame and resentment that comes from hypercritical parents and shitty people in society (pretty traumatic childhood).
Because she is ashamed of herself, she will never freely choose her acquaintances or express herself—she sees her social status as fragile. So she will ignore, hold onto, reverse, internalize, externalize small + big resentments, embarrassments, annoyances, etc.
At the same time, when she meets someone new, she compares herself and so feels self-conscious: old, introverted, fat, sick, crazy, ugly etc. These feelings can be so treacherous that her brain externalizes them onto that person—or a bystander. Essentially her brain scapegoats someone to make her emotional experience easier/bearable. She is distracted by hating that person.
You need to build emotional awareness and take responsibility for those emotions. Often people who struggle with this feel a lot of “should” in their life. “I should keep this friendship” or “I shouldn’t feel this way.” At the same time “that person shouldn’t do that.” Healthy people don’t worry about what “should” happen—it rarely does! And if you judge others on what they should be, you get to say whether or not they deserve good treatment.
Start expressing and acknowledging your emotions, however small. Accept them as they are, and decide how to manage them. Honest appraisal and efforts are always step 1 for improvement.
E.g. Angry at X? Why did what X did make me angry? How angry am I? Is it just bc of what X did? Is it important for me to confront them, or should I just cool off? How can I tell? Is it fair to them for me to get angry? Can I talk to them about it? What outcome do I want? How can I express this?
Well according to every relationship/sex advice subreddit, any time there is the slightest problem with your s/o, leave them immediately. You deserve to have every need and want and desire, no matter how selfish, met unconditionally. Want to cheat but they won’t let you? Leave. /s
But seriously, sounds like some kind of subconscious reasoning looking for excuses to reject intimacy. No one is perfect. Therapy definitely works, and so does identifying these feelings and asking yourself “why” it bothers you.
Do you do any of the things she does that are annoying?
You probably expect your friends to be flawless, and anything they do/say that displeases you makes you angry. If you experience a few years without any friends, maybe then you will learn to appreciate your friends.
I do this too but it usually happens to people I’m dating. I eventually end up becoming annoyed at whatever they do and finding flaws, as if I’m the perfect one (far from it). I don’t know the reasoning behind it. I realize it also happens to roommates or people I have to constantly be with, so I don’t think it’s limited to who I’m dating, but who I have to be around a lot.
I relate to this on a spiritual level
If you spend most your time with just one person, you’re expecting them to fill all of your buckets. Diversify and branch out, hang out with people in smaller doses, and when you feel yourself distancing from friends, try doing something nice for them. I know that sounds counterintuitive but it might help work through some of your intimacy fears. You might be surprised at the results
It’s normal to hate people the closer you get to them. The longer you stay with them, chat with them, interact with them, you start to see their flaws. Everyone has a flaw. It’s a question of whether you can deal with this specific flaws.
This friend of yours, what did you notice that made you say you hate them? Is it something that makes you uncomfortable? Is it physical, verbal, or something else?
Because subconsciously you believe criticism is an okay thing to do to others, and even worse, yourself. Remove that critical voice, this problem will go with it.
Hypnotherapy should be able to remove that pin, and allow yourself to feel, “loveable just because you are you.” Naturally, once you feel this about yourself, you will feel the same about others as well.
Look into avoidant attachment style/avoidant personality disorder, could be useful
You still text her 1 hour a day, which is an absurd amount. I would hate anyone constantly blocking this much time of my day aswell.
Try having less extreme relationships of seeing them all day.
I think you might have what is called “avoidant attachment style” and you can look it up. It might resonate with you. There are books and lots of TikTok vids that you could check out. However, therapy would do wonders to help you. If you can afford it, you should give it a try.
Maybe that’s some form of idealizing people in the beginning and then you devalue them in your head? It may be on a subtler level. I’ve had an issue with this before when I was younger and therapy made it better. It’s not that I wasn’t able to see the flaws, they just didn’t bother me until it reached a certain point. This has led me to rekindling one of my former friendships, though we don’t have much time for each other currently due to life circumstances. The downside is that it’s sometimes harder for me to get as invested in the very beginning as I see the flaws right away, but I’d still say it’s worth it; this might be also due to the fact that I used to meet new friends through my social circle, and now I mostly meet random people+ I have less tolerance for some kinds of BS now.
I truly think that mainly what you notice and dislike in others is a part of yourself you don’t currently or have disliked about yourself at various times. Could it be It’s a form of projection? Therapy may help here to weed out some insecurities here perhaps.
Read through the comments, even OPs responses are selective. Ultimately without a good therapist that can navigate the core of the issue it’s all speculation from strangers and text on a screen.
There’s a few indicators worth noting for reflection.
Attachment styles are definitely relevant but they’re platforms for growth not fixed states of interaction.
I’m wondering if there is alot of projection occurring. The issues or faults in ourselves are so removed we end up processing them through others. For example your worried that your a burden to other, so the attention seeking person in the room really bothers you. Far more than just a normal response.
You cope by avoidance. Rather than reflect on what may be occurring for you and re-evaluating your response. The chosen response is a non-response. A non-response is still an active response. The key in that case is asking, ‘why am I avoiding this? What makes this uncomfortable for me? What’s the core belief behind this action or response?’.
Forms of intimacy as fixed ideas. Are you someone who is aware of what friendship looks like for you? Maybe it’s about acknowledgement of what works for you. As opposed to the standards your told to uphold.
Lastly, all relationships in any capacity are just co-sharing of life. That’s it. The experience of sharing experiences. So share those experiences and appreciate the simplicity of it.
You said this has happened with friends before, were the things you disliked about those other friends the same thing you’re disliking now? Or does it vary person to person? Nobody is perfect.
My approach to friendship generally is that I get to know someone and have to decide whether my warm feelings of being with them make me love/accept their flaws “oh they’re always late? That’s just them!”, or whether this person becomes more of a casual acquaintance/certain topics we don’t get into/certain activities we don’t do. There’s also the option of not being their friend at all, but I’m coming more from a school and work relationship pov where you have to see these people. I do think that having multiple friends with different roles in your life would help, rather than just relying on one friend.
I’m not gonna recommend talk therapy because it’s never worked for me but I definitely think you need to do some reflection. Journaling can be helpful.
It’s also a possibility to say this to your friend (maybe not in so harsh words), ie, “I’m struggling right now and small things you do are annoying me. I know it’s my own problem but maybe we could figure it out together?” I agree with other commenters that it sounds like you want to push away vulnerability/intimacy, and by having a convo with your friend that could invite vulnerability. Full disclosure I went thru this kind of open/vulnerable process in becoming friends with my ex and it was really hard!! But also really worth it. All my friendships since have been better because of it.
Sounds like Borderline Personality Disorder. While it’s typically more someone that will push others away that are close to them, I’m sure this is the feeling that precedes it.
I’m not diagnosing you, only a professional can do that and even then there is no cure, only therapy to ease the symptoms.
Same
I think I’m avoidant attached
You hate them because you hate yourself.
Sounds like you are projecting your own self loathing onto others. Or maybe you just want other people to be perfect, which they will never be. Therapy might help.
You used to text all day long? No wonder you hate this person now. That is very extreme. That’s like saying, ‘I used to love eating cake. I’d eat cake all day long but now I only eat it for an hour a day and it still makes me want to throw up.’ Friends are the cake of life. They are wonderful, and they make life so much sweeter, but you need to spend most of your time focussing on the meat/legumes, carbs and veg of life – ie work/study, exercise, hobbies, self care, self reflection, family relationships, down time etc. Don’t expect to only eat cake and feel good. Of course you’ll end up hating cake.
You mentioned that you used to text all day and now you can only text about an hour. What stands out to me is that perhaps you are forming somewhat of an unhealthy codependent bond with people in the first place? One perhaps with expectations, maybe some enmeshment, and then you inevitably always come to a point where the other person falls from the pedestal you’ve placed them on, becayse theyre human and they are separate from you and you can’t control how they are. It feels then like a let down, a disappointment,.and then they become irritating where they were once amazing in your eyes. So, perhaps you need to look more at how to have relationships with people that entail a very healthy concept of you as a separate being from them, maintaining a healthy sense of self and autonomy, so that their actions won’t end up bothering you so much. You can respect their individuality. If they are bothering you in some way you can take some healthy space sooner so that you can maintain the longevity of the relationship. Being super close to someone can very often lead to those inevitable moments when you will have to take space because you all of a sudden realize you’ve been enmeshed and haven’t maintained your proper sense of self and autonomy and protection of your time and wellbeing. It won’t ever have to feel like a rejection on their end if you never enter into an unhealthy enmeshed dynamic in the first place. Those dynamics are full of unspoken agreements and expectations and someone is always bound to all of a sudden basically dislike or resent the other. This is preventable. You can.better protect your sense of self so that you.dont have to feel like you feel like you eventually.hate everyone you get close to.
Stop wasting peoples time that’s common sense