Should i not have grown apart from my friend?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s my story. If you feel the need to call me names then try to keep it to a minimum and have your name calling done in a fashion that offers useful, relevant info about this situation.

I met a female friend in college last year. We used to talk pretty much every day via email and every other day via IM. She would tell me about personal stuff, like her dad dying, and I would tell her personal stuff like how my relationship with my family wasn’t as good as I want it to be or how I had a lot or problems a few years ago and am rebuilding my life.

In January, she was telling me that she was in NYC and met a friend who ended up becoming wealthy because of some investments he’d made. He drives a Mercedes Benz and when she was talking to him she said ‘you can have any woman you want’. For some reason that statement made me not want to talk to her about personal info nearly as much. For the next month, emails were sporatic.

I honestly don’t think it was because she was attracted to money that pushed me away from her. I realize that its normal for women to be attracted to money, and I really can’t blame her for wanting money (she has none right now), I think it’s the way she said it. ‘you can have any woman you want’, to me this shows someone who has a very superficial understanding of interpersonal relationships. Its like going to a doctor and all he does is prescribe antibiotics for everything. You expect more depth and understanding than that, a better ability to understand that the world is very complex from someone you are trusting with your health.

Yes I realize I am very anal by being bothered by a sentence structure. But honestly, if she had said something like ‘I love men with money’ or something like that I don’t think it would’ve bothered me. Something about the phrase ‘you can have any woman you want’ shows that this person doesn’t really understand the complexities or variances of the human mind, how not everyone is interested in the same things.

Secondly, her husband is a petty criminal. He tells me stories about how he would steal golf carts and crash them, or shoplift or his friends would go joyriding in stolen cars. She told me she found it exciting. Again, getting your rocks off on someone who doesn’t respect other people’s feelings or property doesn’t strike me as something I’d find desirable in an emotionally bonded friend.

But who am I to judge? I swap MP3’s on the internet. I support president Bush. I am 100% sure I do things people are offended by too. I feel I’m holding people to unrealistic standards.

Once when I was talking to her, I told her maybe I needed to be more assertive with women. She was very enthusiastic and stated ‘yes, women love security’. Which I grant is true, but dammit all if my anality didn’t get the best of me again.

There are obviously biological reasons for what men & women find sexually attractive, but they don’t glamorize them and when people do glamorize them it seems to me like they haven’t really looked at themselves or life in general objectively before. When I see a woman in bicycle shorts I don’t think to myself ‘I’d like to rip her clothes off and fuck her brains out because I love children’. Its true in the sense that that’s why I want to fuck her (because I want kids) but I don’t glamorize it by painting something base and instinctual as something noble. If I had done that, it would make me look like I consider personal maturity based on how well I can blindly follow my biological orders coming out of my reptilian brain (did I mention I can come across as condescending?). If she had said something like ‘women love the idea of being impregnated by men with good genetics so they can give birth to a race of genetically superior supermen’ then I wouldn’t have minded because she would’ve given the impression that she has looked at herself and her gender from an objective, outside, large scale perspective. but she didn’t, she glamorized her basic instincts.

She is getting tired of me growing apart from her, so i told her all this stuff a couple of weeks ago. I am guessing we will probably only talk once a week or so.

As we stand now, we IM maybe 3 times a month, and the info is sterile and non-emotional. Stuff like ‘help me find a cheap hotel’ or ‘what kind of refrigerator are you buying for your new house’? Thats assuming the friendship even survives.

I tend to think I am being unfair and anal as hell, what do you people think?

2

Yeah, I think you’re taking her casual comments way too seriously, and you should probably try to stop analyzing what she says so deeply. I can understand why the stuff about her husband stealing cars and golf carts bothers you…especially if it’s still something he does.

3

And yet, there is no reason you have to be friends with someone you just aren’t as comfortable with anymore. I say don’t over analyze the reasons why you’re drifting apart.

We all have different sets of friends for different stages in our lives (at least based on my life, I would assume it’s fairly common). Sometimes we need different types of support from the people we are open with and the people we once trusted no longer fit the bill.

Bottom line, in my opinion, if it takes an effort to be more than just casual friends, maybe that’s all you should be. And you shouldn’t worry about it.

4

Totally agree!

5

A forced friendship is not much friendship at all. Your instincts tell you that she is shallow and superficial. How someone chooses to respond to those circumstances is a very individual thing. But I sense that you want off the hook.

6

I’ve been in a similar place. Eerily, in fact. A very close friendship with a dude who loves calculus.

Yes, you analyse “too much.” Little statements like that probably do not reflect very much about her. I, for example, agree that most rich men can get any woman they want. They can’t get me, though, and I’m not really thinking about the human mind or relationships when I make that statement. I’m thinking about all the pictures I’ve seen of Donald Trump.

It sounds like you’re a thinker, an analyser, and you put a lot of thought into everything you say. (Much like my calc dude.) She’s probably not like that. She probably thinks hard when she needs to, but does not view a conversation with a friend with an intellectual minefield. (Much like yours truly.) She probably feels a little confused about why you take things that she says in passing to heart so (if she knows about it) and she doesn’t understand the way you think, IMHO. This does not mean that she is stupid or you are smarter or something like that. It means she thinks differently.

What to do about that? Nothing you can do. You’re different people. You think differently. You can either tolerate your differences or get annoyed by them.

As to her husband, he doesn’t sound like someone you’d get along with, either.

Can This Friendship Be Saved? It can, but it will be a lot of work. There isn’t anything wrong with putting a lot of work into a friendship, but if the effort isn’t reciprocated and the other person isn’t doing anything to make it worthwhile, why bother? You are the only person who can decide if she is worth it. If you decide to give it a try, make sure that you don’t make her feel stupid or inferior. And don’t criticise her opinions so that she feels they are petty or superficial. And if you decide not to go for it, never tell her that it is because a comment she made to a third party in your absence showed a “very superficial understanding of interpersonal relationships.”

Where do I stand with my math geek? A little more distant than you two are, but not because of any reasons you outlined in your OP. He did not seem to think that my friendship was worth tolerating the fact that I am not an “Intellectual.”

I really hope this helped. I was trying to let you see it from the other side.

7

I’m worried about the husband. He’s just bad news.