Why on earth didn’t you have her charged Locrian?
She’s been my friend for a few years since I moved out west in '99. She’s generous, but recently she’s nuts, controlling.
This whole thing started because I was supposed to have an opinion on two of our other friends hooking up, then not hooking up, then saying BS about each other. We have a large group of friends, so it works out eventually.
Since she’s been around, everytime another couple has an issue, she expects us to take sides and yell at the other side because we disagree with that side and so on and so on…
I’ll admit that I WAS NOT nice. I’m really an evil Eastcoaster, so I’m used to saying shit and still remaining friends for 20 years, I guess. I’ll also admit that I wanted to see a rise from her, since she wasn’t talking to many others for the same reason.
I deleted my electronic evilness about half an hour before “it” showed up-- the close friend with suddenly grown fangs. She punched me from behind, smacked me hard, she was kicked out and bartender called the popo.
Cops asked me THREE times if I “was sure we never had a romantic relationship.” Huh.
Bottom line, she’s raised her own kid to a good young dude at 16 with a job and his own car insurance, a great mom, so since I sort of planned this, I felt charging her with the Battery report was better just to report and work out later.
We have mutual friends, so it may be awkward, but hopefully a treaty can be signed.
BUT… To prove that at least I haven’t grown up, I blared Metallica’s “Battery” from my car for a week, and I plan to keep doing that whenever I see her car nearby. 
So, Bpelta, are we talking about real friends or just people you have only talked to online but yet call them your “friends”? I’ve been online since 1990 and have never considered people that I had never personally met and spent time with as friends. I realize some people live in this world where they consider those they’ve never actually met as friends but I just don’t see it. Maybe I have a higher standard of what constitutes a “friend”. Then again it takes a lot for me to consider even those I do know personally to be a friend. Friendship to me means a lot more then a FB friend request.
No, people I knew in real life and talked to regularly…One I knew from yeshiva , the other who I met only once in real life but – again – talked to on the phone for hours once a week.
The friends who have deserted you are despicable and reprehensible, and those on this board who blame you for their wretched behavior are vile and loathsome. Everyone needs a good friend. Everyone deserves a good friend. A good friend is someone who gives you unconditional friendship.
I would like to be your friend. I’ll be there for you. I won’t desert you. If you need me to visit in the wee hours of the night to insert my compassion into your void of desperation, I’m your man.
<reading>…wha?..a dude!?!<reading/>
…on second thought…have you considered just getting a cat?
(Sorry for the humor, Bpelta. You do seem like a very nice person worthy of true friends and I hope you find some. I think the advice you’re getting to be less hypersensitive is valid).
I can tell you why everyone thinks you’re a girl - it’s because your name ends with an ‘A’. It seems like that always happens. Malacandra, who is definitely a man, always got mistaken for a woman, and for while had to put it in his sig line.
As to the friends issue, same thing happened to me around the same age. People change interests pretty rapidly and I had to get a whole new set of friends.
The way he focuses so much on omgfeelings and the clinginess come across as very female. Malacandra does sound like a chick name, because I have a cousin named Chandra I think… but Bpelta does not (to me, at least).
It was not at all the name that gave me the impression. 
OP- there’s a ton of good advice above. You’re at an age where most people aren’t in college any more, and are entering careers, relationships/marriages, home-ownership, having children, etc. It is not necessary to have any of these things for fulfillment, but some of your friends are finding fulfillment in them, and have less time to be your Bobbsey Twin.
It is not a judgment on your value as a person or the value of your friendship. They are simply busy living their lives. The transition can feel a bit isolating, but you were kinda supposed to be rehearsing for this all along- from being broken of the pacifier, to neighborhood summer playmate pals having different interests/friends when ELEMENTARY school started back up, etc. etc. fast fwd to 24 years of age.
Find what makes you happy, go do it, and you will meet grown-ups who share that interest and are a potential new base of friends. More importantly, you’ll be HAPPY which is a thousandfold more attractive to EVERYONE (family, employers, friends, dating pool, perfect strangers) than clingy. Clingy is having a tendency to try to stick to things more than normal, which your every post unfortunately reeks of right now.
How many “best friends” do you have, OP? How many people have you told your “deppest, darkest” secrets to? Let me clue you in – all those things are no longer secrets.
Hey Boyo. I had 4. Now 2. I don’t think that’s as abnormal as you might think.
Rachellelogram, your thinking seems fundamentalist to me. Venting your emotions about upsetting situations? You’re a girl! Having a bad week? It’s because you suck! Defending yourself from condescending remarks? You’re defensive!
These are effective rhetorical strategies, but I’m not looking to have an argument. I’m sorry if, having a bad week, in putting up 2 posts which reflected on that…I now get the titles of flaky, clingy, defensive, omgfeelings, etc to your mind. I don’t think those labels apply as easily as you think. I’ll admit to being anxious, sometimes neurotic, sad, slow on the uptake, and socially awkward. I’ll admit that, after 2 years of unemployment with few people to turn to, I was sometimes a bit clingy with some people. I’ll admit that after my old fundamentalist religion, I’ve failed to find any hobby or interest I can relate to people with, nor have I been able to connect and make good local friends…and if anybody has any advice on how to do that, I’d be obliged. But the ideas – put forth either here or in another thread – that I’m generally clingy (and lost my friends because I screwed up in that particular way) or lazy or a flake (because I’m sick…) or being too defensive in defending myself against what are objectively condescending remarks (particularly given the contexts) or that I fit your gender stereotype because I dared to vent, I reject all that. Sorry if you think that’s because of my omgfeelings or I’m overly sensitive or whatever. You’re entitled to your opinion and if the majority of Dopers adopt it – and you are clearly good at painting people into rhetorical corners, I’ll give you that – it’s their opinion too. I reject it.
I think two is too many best friends. You have, at most, one best friend, though you apparently don’t yet know who it is yet.
More defensiveness (with self-pity thrown in for good measure).
Getting advice from strangers on the internet is always a dicey prospect, but there is one thing that it is usually good at - if you post a problem, and most people responding respond the same way, chances are pretty good that they don’t all have their heads up their asses, and there might be something to what they are all saying.
I don’t want to make you feel worse, but our blowing smoke up your ass wouldn’t be doing you any favours, either.
No offense taken. In fact, I agree with all of what you wrote except the first sentence. I appreciate your input.
If you were truly clingy, do you think you’d know?
People often have off-putting personality traits that they don’t realize they have. It’s kind of like having bad body odor. The stinky person is always the last to know,
I don’t have enough information to judge you as clingy, although–as you seem to agree–your posts kind of lean towards that way. I’m just saying I don’t know how much stock you should put in your own self-assessment on this particular subject.
Have you considered online gaming?
LOL, I actually did play SWTOR for a bit…but after beating my storyline, I got really bored with every day doing the same stuff over and over again…“grinding” sounds and feels like work. I tried some alts, but wasn’t really interested in going through all their storylines, I felt they weren’t interesting enough to keep me through 'em all.
People don’t like to be with sad sacks. They suck all the energy out of the room, and sad sacks love to talk, and talk, and talk about their problems. Sad sacks will confide with others to make friends, but in the end the unending river of negativity and self abasing pity will make people flee.
Adults, especially men, only have a limited tolerance for this and persons like this can quickly exhaust other people. They are emotional energy vampires.
Unfortunately for most of the people like this, this is a life long behavioral attribute and not anything they can change or unlearn, it is part of them down to their core.
I think that’s a fair criticism of me. I think I was a mixed bag but often I was a downer. And as for changing, well, might as well try 
(just ftr, I don’t think this is why they ditched me though…they ditched right after I got a job and had told 'em how happy I was…happier than I’d been in a decade)
I lost a very close friend about 10 years ago with no explanation whatsoever. I was 17 and going through all kinds of shit, so I was really self-centered at the time. He never told me there was a problem. He just stopped talking to me. He still hangs out with some of my friends, and basically just ignores me whenever we’re in the same room.
I felt terrible about this for a long time. It really was like coping with a death for me. I spent a long time convinced it was all his fault, then I started to consider that maybe I was not such a great friend at the time, and then I felt guilty. A few years after he ditched me, I betrayed his trust out of spite by telling his friend something I had no business telling him. I was a wreck in college, and not a great person-what astro calls a ‘‘sad sack.’’ I had an unending need for attention and validation. That made me feel even worse.
And finally I’ve gotten to the point of, ''Yes, I was self-centered, yes, he has weird issues with relationships, we were seventeen years old for Christ’s sake and both doing the best we could at the time." As for my betrayal, I was a mess in college, I was in survival mode, and goddamn it, I’m just not perfect. I have to accept that.
That’s really all that can be done, in fact. I can’t go back in time and be a different person. I can’t use psionic powers to change his mind. And I don’t even know if I would want to, because my idealized 17 year old him was my best friend, not the 29 year old stranger he is today.
I have some close friendships today. They tend to be built more on shared positive experiences than pouring out our hearts to one another, though that stuff happens too, from time to time. Early in my life, telling people private things seemed the most important. Now that I’m older, experiencing life with them seems more important.
I guess what I’m saying is, consider that maybe you made a mistake. That’s okay. You can learn from it without beating yourself up. Also consider that he’s not the person you idealized him to be. Accept who he is, accept who you are, work on not making those mistakes by being more attentive to future relationships, and carry on.
ETA: And yes, it hurts. I still grieve at times. But I have literally done everything I can do at this point and I just have to accept that what is done is done.
Give it some time, your brain just finished gelling. Likely the same with your friends.