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Someone told me that my ex-friend has a narcissistic personality. I looked it up and sure enough it was a "match". I am now aware of this and will make wiser choices when it comes to friends.
I do have some close friends that dont put in the efforts I would like BUT for the big stuff I can totally count on them. And as far as not giving as much - they dont mean anything by it, they are jsut truly busy or being taking advantage of by too many ppl and organizations.
I have "friends" that are more like activity partners and I can't count on them really, plus I would feel weird asking if we arent close friends, but it is 50/50 or like 70/30 in my favor. (Some ppl must be around others all.the.time whereas I enjoy my alone time so I dont have quite the same drive to constantly make contact andplans)
The older I get, the less likely I am to accept "high maintenance" friends. I've found that I haven't really needed to do anything to weed these people out other than just stop "maintaining" them. I don't stay on the phone when they want to have lengthy, selfish phone calls. (One former friend used to say, "Hold that thought!" every time I tried to actually converse with her. She just wanted to give a soliloquy and make me listen, apparently. She would become drunker and drunker as the phone call dragged on. Fun!) If a person says, "Hey, let's get together!" and I make plans with them and then they show up late (and it's a consistent thing,) I just stop agreeing to plans with that person. Phases them out. I'm too old to deal with BS anymore.
I usually find that it's the user friend who is the 'needy' one, as they only seem to want to contact me when they need something!
Yep then when it's your turn to need them, they're nowhere to be found. All of a sudden they're mysteriously so busy and have so much going on that they don't have time for you. However when they're in need again, here they come demanding your attention as if you don't have a life and things going on as well. I'm not placing importance on anyone that doesn't put the same value and importance into me.
I've had yo-yo friends before where they drop off the face of the earth, never return calls or texts, don't reach out, and straight blow me off if we have plans, and then after a year or two when they decided they wanted to be friends again they would reappear as if none of that had happened. Generally this is because they get involved in relationships and prefer to spend all their free time with their s/os, ditching their friends (except for their couple friends). When they were single again they wanted to be friends. The thing is they would never actually reach out themselves to re-establish the friendship, but when I would let time go by and then reach out again they would restablish contact and that's how I knew we were friends again.
Honestly though...I have no interest in doing that anymore. One person I was friends with for years was a yo-yo friend and after I moved from my home state she never returned my phone calls. After awhile I just gave up. I doubt she cares since she is the one who stopped talking to me. I have another friend who blew me off all the time and stopped initiating contact altogether, and even though we have been friends for a long long time, I stopped reaching out because it is pretty obvious she doesn't consider us friends anymore. I've realized that it makes you look sad and desperate when you keep pestering people who clearly no longer want to be friends. That sounds harsh, but in my experience looking back at how long I hung onto people who had already moved on throughout college and high school, it is the truth. Additionally, no matter how long it had been since the last time my friends did the yo-yo thing and stopped contacting me, there was always a chance of it happening again, and it always did, which makes it difficult to invest in a friendship when you know you're only friends as long as it's convenient for the other person. I have enough people in my life that do want to be friends...I am no longer interested in wasting energy on people who have moved on from our friendship.
It sounds like you have a great heart and you're a great friend, please don't waste it on people who don't deserve it. You may think you have each other's back for life, I thought that way about my yo yo friends, but apparently they didn't feel the same and it hurts like hell to realize that about someone you thought you could always count on. Anyone who makes you cry is not worth your time.
Yep then when it's your turn to need them, they're nowhere to be found. All of a sudden they're mysteriously so busy and have so much going on that they don't have time for you. However when they're in need again, here they come demanding your attention as if you don't have a life and things going on as well. I'm not placing importance on anyone that doesn't put the same value and importance into me.
Yes, I have experienced this too. It seems we have the same type of friends! There must be a load of these self-centred people around!
Maybe they have 1000 reasons why they cannot invest in the friendship anymore but the fact is if they wanted to make your friendship any priority at all, they would do so.
I guess what I'm saying is I don't expect our relationship to exactly be a priority for them, but I do expect them to invest in it a little bit, which I think is what everyone here is saying.
I don't feel like I'm cutting off my friends forever. I just feel that it's their turn to make the effort now. My little feelers might be some hurt, but if they were to get in touch with me, I'd be here to welcome then.
By the way, getting your ducks in order about something like this also works well for relatives in your family that treat you the same way. My father and I never got along. The last time I was home, I tried everything I could do to talk to him or have some sort of communication with him. Mostly he just turned his back or refused to talk to me. So I just shrugged and figured I'd be there if and when he decided to come 'round. Meantime, I was satisfied in my own mind that I had done everything possible to breach the gap. Now it was up to him to make the next move.
He never did and died without us ever speaking again, but I found out that doing what I did kept me from feeling angry and guilty. What I did feel was sorry for him. He missed out having a great relationship with his daughter and that was his loss. When it takes two and the other person refuses to contribute, sometimes you just have to turn the faucet off, even though it hurts to do so.
I sometimes come to a point in a relationship/friendship where I think to myself:
Shall I continue to let the other person use me or shall I retain my dignity and leave them?
I know it sounds bad but the relief I feel when I've dumped a user is better than the cr@p they made me feel when they were using me.
This. I came to that point with my father. But it wasn't so much about retaining my dignity as regaining my serenity. I wanted my father, (who divorced my mom when I was an infant) all my life, but he didn't want me back. I was a good kid. A very good kid, graduated from honors with college, good career in the medical field, a kid any parent would be (or should be) very proud of. But he is just a flaky jerk. Despite having a PhD in Petroleum Engineering, he has no clue about how to be a good father. For years, I had an email relationship, an occasional phone call, with the rare lunch date. He lived all over the world and didn't invite me to join him to visit. And I wondered why. I cried, told him I missed him, etc, etc. When he didn't come to my college graduation and made a lame excuse instead, that was the beginning of the end of our relationship on my end. But I still had hopes. Daughters need their fathers even when they're grown up.
Last year, something changed in him. He turned 70 and mellowed, I guess. He emailed me, we visited for the first time in three years, I offered him time to explain himself, but nothing had changed. He missed my birthday again (after I remembered his), then sent me another email telling me he loved me and I was still his firstborn daughter. I decided enough was enough. I didn't deserve this treatment. So I didn't, and won't respond. Because no, I'm not his firstborn daughter anymore. I WAS his firstborn daughter. His neglect and broken promises destroyed that relationship. And I'll be OK. I always was.
^ It seems that some of us (myself included) come from dysfunctional families and seem to attract other dysfunctional relationships as a result. It looks like we didn't have very good role models to start off in life.
I would say though, that a lot of people on this forum should be proud of themselves, in how they have turned out as a person and of their achievements in life.
Maybe in some twisted logic, these dysfunctional people have helped to make us into stronger people.
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