Random stuff about my friendships and contacting folks...

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think I have overly strict expectations about when people in my life should get back in touch with me, given an initial effort by me. I have one old friend who hasn’t returned an e-mail or phone message in literally months (and has done this before, and not just with me), which is annoying given the physical distance between us (also a factor, I acknowledge). Now there’s this one person I hoped would be the start of a new friendship (MUCH more local), but (very) suddenly hasn’t been on the service we usually chatted on for over almost two weeks (after just as much time, if not more, engaging in what I thought was very friendly conversation), and also hasn’t replied to mail/messages.

In both cases, I can see they do have lives and have been online to get said messages (through social networking), so it’s left me unsure whether they chose not to reply, or they figured “ehh, I’ll do it later” or what. Like I said, I think a lot of it is just me and my expectations. I myself wouldn’t let a message sit for very long, if at all, and it’s probably unreasonable of me to expect others to be the same. Still, it annoys me. :stuck_out_tongue:

PS: In neither case do I know of anything I did or said that would have displeased them (and believe me, I’ve gone over it in my head!), though because of my above mentioned tendencies, I try not to be, uh, “overly enthusiastic” in my attempts to contact someone (which I can be if I let my imagination run away with me; I love thinking of worst case scenarios in situations like this).

==end rambling==

2

I think she’s just not that into you. :slight_smile:

Seriously, when I don’t really want to get together with a casual friend, I generally just don’t call them back. It doesn’t mean I hate you or that you did anything to offend me, just that I have my reasons - either I don’t think it’s working, or I think we’re incompatible as friends, or whatever.

I mean would you prefer I wrote you and said all of that?

3

Yep, sounds like both friends aren’t that into you.

I’ve recently had a similar situation with a budding friendship, we used to chat a lot over IM and I invited her over to my house several times, but she hasn’t invited me to hers for a long time and she doesn’t initiate IM chats any more. I’m taking the hint.

I would say, with the long distance friendship, that the expectations for responding to emails is quite a bit longer. I have friends in New Zealand who I might not email for months and months, but when I go home to New Zealand, we fall back into our old friendships and have a great time hanging out.

4

Since you seem to be looking for opinions/advice, I’ll move this to IMHO.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

5

I, for one, go through long periods of my life where I just don’t connect with/respond to friends I like and care for very much. Years and years in some cases. When I’m feeling more social, I’ll get in touch and we’ll often have weeks, months or years with tons of contact. So based on my own craziness I don’t think this is necessarily a sign that your friends don’t really want to be friends… though it could be.

I’m sorry you’re being hurt (or just annoyed) by this. It’s not something I’m proud of doing but I’ve always had some social issues - usually when there is anything going on in my life, too many hours at work or depression or anything taking up a lot of my attention, my energy and time for people I don’t practically live with dwindles to nothing. My close friends are used to me and don’t take it personally.

I also have rather a lot of close friends I’m trying to keep up with at this point, and with all of us being busy adults now and living different places, it’s very difficult for me to keep in touch/spend time with everyone. This could be part of the problem with your friends - I know I would see/talk to certain friends three times as much if there weren’t 15 other people I was also prioritizing. Sometimes I have to make lists of all the calls and emails I have to return, plans I need to make, etc. ><

6

I certainly would. With your method, I spend more time thinking about you when I could have moved on. I know a lot of people think it hurts less, but does it really? Or is it just that, by the time they realize what’s happening, you aren’t around to hear about it?

I get avoiding the situation when you’re afraid someone is going to get upset. I also get procrastination until you forget or until it would be too awkward. I even get avoiding because you’re lazy. I don’t get how not telling someone something so innocuous can possibly be for the other person’s benefit*. No, it’s for yours.

As for the OP: your expectations of your first friend may be unreasonable. You say he does this a lot. He may just be one of those people who goes all into something. Only you know if he’s giving you the brush off. Your expectations on someone you are just now getting to know, however, are definitely not unreasonable. A friendship that is just getting started can’t afford to lapse that quickly. With her, I definitely agree she’s not that into you. While it’s possible there may be a reason, the ball is really in her court. Move on, and she’ll get back in touch with you if it matters.

And, yes, all of this is from my own personal experience. (If you wonder why I’m saying this, then this message is not for you.)

*I do understand that this is a common thing women say, though. And men commonly say the opposite. Maybe it’s just one of those differences.

7

I’m seeing a few common cognitive distortions at work.

The big one here is “should” thinking. Look at this passage from Feeling Good for a better explanation than I can give. Basically, you are spending a lot of energy on what people “should” be doing. Of course they should email you back, right?

Take a minute to break that down. Why “should” they email you back? Because you took the time to email them? That’s really nice of you. But do they really owe you anything? Did they make a promise and break it? Did they tell you that you could count on regular emails? Probably not. So while it’d be really nice if they did email you back, they don’t really owe it to you. They haven’t really done anything wrong- they just have different priorities, which isn’t a moral wrong.

Then you personalize it, thinking that maybe you did something wrong. That may be true, but it probably isn’t. What are some other reasons that they aren’t replying to you? Maybe the fell in love with someone and are having that crazy-in-love time when you don’t really think of anyone else. Maybe their work is really stressful right now. Maybe they are just flighty people. There are a million explanations, and almost none of them have to do with you.

Try to look at it from their perspective. A guy they haven’t really seen for a while sends them an email. The inbox is full, a lot is going on, and it really isn’t the priority. It gets shoved to the side, and eventually lost. They probably think of you now and then, but you aren’t really a presence in your life so it’s hard to get to the top of the list.

See? Nothing is wrong with you, and nothing is wrong with them. They aren’t being “bad” people, they are just living out their lives. Sometimes the conditions are ripe for a friendship to blossom, and sometimes they aren’t.

Your options here are to accept the friendship on the terms that it effectively has, or chose to spend your energy elsewhere. You can’t guilt, shame, fume, or cry your way into a strong bond with someone. People are take-it-or-leave it.

One thing you can do is make an active effort to be the kind of person people want to be friends with (but don’t get caught up in thinking this means people “should” be friends with you. Nobody owes you friendship just because you are cool or you work hard at it) I used to get upset that my friends never invited me out to activities- until I realized I never invited them out to activities. People want to be friends with people who do cool stuff- so I started researching activities in my area, doing more fun stuff, and inviting people along. Rather than a vague and unappealing “yeah, we should hang out some time” I could give them actual invites. Problem solved.

8

Very good points, even. I guess this all just hit me because it was so sudden. It felt literally like one minute we were having good friendly conversation, and then the next, BOOM. Cut off. I did make a specific invite last night for this weekend, but nothing yet. But who knows. As I said, and as you said, I perhaps expect too much instant communication. One of the hazards of modern life, I guess. :slight_smile:

9

Oh, and I forgot to mention: I’m with BigT here.

One of the messages I sent (through a forum we both frequent) had one of those fancy schmancy “return receipt” things on it (indication that the recipient read the message, though it can be ignored). I decided to try it just for the heck of it (hopefully it’s not creepy or anything - but then, I suppose it wouldn’t be a feature if it were generally considered so). Nuttin’ yet, even tho’ this person’s apparently logged onto that account. So I’m not getting my hopes up.

10

Yeah. It’s really fucking creepy. I don’t even like it when people do it at work for business reasons.

This is good advice, which I am actually terrible at. I never throw parties. Rarely do I ever set up shit.

The other thing is that you need to spread yourself out a bit. It can’t be all that interesting IMing with the same person all the time. It puts a lot of pressure on them and can come accross as needy.

11

Uh oh. :stuck_out_tongue: I just didn’t think about it at the time, and didn’t know that it would be visible to the recipient (though I could’ve bothered to check first). I guess if I do get a friendship out of this, it’ll be despite me instead of because of me. As usual. :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, that’s because this person is/was the only person on my Gmail contact list actually on during work. :slight_smile: (Guess I need to make more friends!)

12

FYI, it’s been a month now, so I’m assuming the “worst” on the potential friendship. May send one “last” e-mail just in case, but I’m waiting for the right frame of mind so it’s not full of “why don’t you like meeeeee?!?!?” whining.

Really, I’m just disappointed. I thought we were getting along, and making a new friend was exciting for the vistas that could be opened. Then just… nuttin’. Still can’t help wondering if I did anything wrong (not that what I did after was any help, considering previous replies, but still, that came AFTER the radio silence), but not as much as when I started this thread. Doesn’t help that I tend to stick to the friends I have, rather than put myself out there a lot to make new ones.

Ah well…

13

I see what your are saying. If you send someone an email and within the email you ask them questions…and are generally friendly, but they do not respond…you can begin to doubt yourself and your friendship.

If you can see that your friend has been active on other social media networks and still has not responded to you what else would you think except the worst.

Just remember that what you would do and what you think people should do is not always what people will do. Let it go…don’t let other peoples lack of consideration or self absorption effect you.