Last night I had a conversation with someone about friendship expectations and I wanted to hear other people’s opinions on it because his logic made no sense to me at all.
Basically, a few weeks ago, I had an issue with someone that led to us no longer being friends. It was basically a lot of misunderstandings on both sides. I was getting the feeling that he was avoiding me and I tried to talk to him about it. The guy I spoke to last night said that I shouldn’t have done that so I was the cause of the friendship ending. He said that I let my anxiety ruin our friendship. But the thing is, this guy WAS avoiding me. He even admitted to it and to lying to me. So it wasn’t just my “anxiety”; I was right. And the reason he was avoiding me was incredibly stupid.
The guy I spoke to last night, who is a friend of this other guy, said that it doesn’t matter that he lied or that he avoided me because he has the right to do whatever he wants and deal with things in his own way. While that’s true, I don’t see how a friendship can grow with someone if they are lying to you and avoiding you and he kept claiming over and over again that this guy still wanted to be my friend and that I should’ve given him more time.
I said that if two people have an issue, they should be adults and just talk about it instead of playing these weird middle school games. He said that we haven’t known each other long enough to talk, which is definitely the weirdest part of the whole conversation to me. He basically said that some people need to know someone for a long time to be able to communicate with them. How the hell is that supposed to happen is you’re avoiding someone? I said that all is this is just a waste of time. If I’m trying to befriend someone, then I want to know if things aren’t going to work as soon as possible so I don’t keep investing more time and energy than I already have and I want friends that are honest. I can’t know how someone feels if I don’t ask them. But according to this guy, I’ll never be able to make friends this way.
This entire situation could have been avoided and resolved if this guy would’ve just come to me with his problem and talked to me like an adult, but apparently I’m the bad guy for wanting grown adults to be straightforward. Either way, I’m still left with no one while the two people that think lying to someone is okay get to go to the beach.
TL;DR- Is it normal to expect people you’re trying to be friends with to be honest with you, or should I just never ask anyone anything ever?
7 comments
well, at least I expect them to
Trying to be friends arent friends.
I understand your point but I feel like there is a disconnect about how each person weights the whole thing.
The idea of talking about friendship expectations also sound weird to me. Either we are friends or we not, yknow? There is no list of how to stay friends, or how to be more friends.
So you were trying to resolve *why* he was avoiding you? Unless he’s already a close friend there’s really no reason to pursue that. If he isn’t available, he isn’t. Doesn’t really matter why, whether he’s busy or just doesn’t like you for some reason.
Now if it’s a close friend that’s a different story, you might want to know if they’re busy, distracted or have some kind of issue with you, and it would be worth having a conversation about that.
Neither of your final two questions are appropriate, but they are revealing. Basically you’re saying:
-People need to be honest with you and reveal completely the reasons they have a problem with you OR ELSE
-You’re never going to speak to anyone ever again.
This is pretty immature. My answer to you would be, no, people have a right to keep things to themselves whenever they like, they are not required to explain to you why they may have a problem with you, and for you to try and bully them into it just makes you the bad guy.
Just because you don’t yet have the skillset and maturity to figure out why someone doesn’t want to be friends with you doesn’t mean your only recourse is to ignore them..
Your badgering is not going to get you anywhere. You are somewhat annoying in your insistence that people give you reasons for why they do things you don’t like. Guess what? It’s a free country, and you can’t control other people.
It’s normal to expect honesty from friends. It’s not normal to need validation for something that you’ve already decided makes no sense. You know that he’s not right, but you’re questioning it because at the end of the day, the other two are still “friends” and you don’t understand why they consider their interactions normal
You both have different values for what a friendship should be. They want to be closed off from their friends. Their definition of what a friend should be would probably be very different from your own.
Most people have different values for friendship and its the limiter on who you can be friends with.
It’s no one’s fault the friendship didn’t work; there isn’t any blame to assign. Their values aren’t normal, but they are their values. If they’re okay hiding truth from their friends, that’s their perogative.
The only thing you can control is yourself, so if you must look for a fault to learn from, you’re better off analyzing your own behavior. What you’re doing is trying to understand others, an absolutely impossible goal because you can never live their lives and there is no normal experience.
No matter what you do, someone will criticize it as wrong, even if it works for you. It’s best to dismiss one off critics of your personal interactions unless 3 or more completely different unrelated people start telling you the same thing about your behavior. Otherwise, you’ll waste time questioning whether bullshit like being dishonest with your friends is considered “normal”.
But on the other hand, most people won’t bring up issues they have with another person, they’ll usually do a slow fade or complete ghost, which usually aren’t fair to the other person, but they do require the least effort and usually avoids the most conflict. So that part is frequent enough to be normal but really has nothing to do with honesty being owed. They’re not doing it to be dishonest, they’re doing it to avoid conflict. Nobody likes telling other people they don’t want to be friends because the other party usually asks why and tries to have a rational debate about why it’s not fair to them. This can straight up destroy every chance at a future relationship which is another reason people prefer slow-fades or safe answers like “it’s not you, it’s me.” It’s almost 100% you, but they’re trying to take a graceful exit and hoping you get the hint. At the end of the day, nobody owes another person their time and they can avoid you because they don’t like your haircut, but what are you gonna do? Get a new haircut?
First of all I would be like you and ask the question if I thought somebody I thought was a friend had a problem with me because I would want to work on it (if I deemed it an issue) or learn from it and move on. However I know they aren’t always truthful or forthcoming- I feel better knowing I’ve tried to ask because communication IS how friendships get better.
The fact that this guy said the mutual friend wants to be friends and thinks the behaviour displayed is okay feels to me like they are both users rather than friends, they want to benefit from friendships rather than reciprocating- that is not friendship neither is it worth your time.
People do ghost it is a fact and you can usually tell it’s coming by non verbal communication. From your post and replies there were signs that this was coming. I would suggest reading up on non verbal communication