I have a friend with a nasty habit of flaking out on me. Unfortunately, he’s the only friend I have who acutally goes to the movies (we both like movies, even sucky ones, in the theater). Problem?
He keeps just dropping out of contact. The only way to contact him is his cell phone, which does not accept texts and has had a full call messaging queue for the last three years. He stays out very late, then doesn’t get up until 1 or 2 pm. So there is a small window of contact since we don’t ay for evening movies and he’s not free then anyhow. I set things up anywhere from 4-7 days in advance and then he doesn’t respond.
I go to movies mostly because he’s my friend. I enjoy hanging out and yakking with him before and afterward. For reasons I won’t go into (mostly because I don’t understand myself) I’ve always felt very uncomfortable going to the movies by myself.
I know it must be frustrating, but he’s not going to change. How do I know? Because I’m the exact same way. Everyone who knows me knows this is how I operate, so they set their expectations to realistic levels. Now, if I say I’m going to be at a place, I will be there. If you tell me you need to talk to me, I’ll leave my phone on so you can reach me. But I’m not going to make myself available 24/7 just because someone may want to catch a show every blue moon. That’s not how I roll.
If he’s a good friend, you can talk to him about this and the two of you can make some kind of agreement. Maybe set aside one weekend a month for movies together. That way he’ll know he has a standing appointment to at least talk to you. If this doesn’t work, then you just can’t depend on this particular friend and you’ll have to find another.
When I was a wee lad, we had black and white television and 78rpm records.
We also had this thing called the post (nowadays I think it’s known as ‘snail mail’).
I know there really isn’t a solution to the problem. It isn’t going away and things won’t get fixed. It just bugs me, and I felt like pissing and moaning in public so I didn’t have to bottle it up. That is all.
smiling bandit I’m sorry, as I have had such ‘friends’ in my life in the past and it is frustrating. As stated above, you are not going to change them, but you can work on yourself. I have personally found that we normally attract the people and situations we put on others. In my case, in the past I wanted to decide who and when I would see people, so I excluded people, felt resentful when they were included, and in return got excluded by the people I wanted to be with.
Generally when I disappear from a person’s life (and I do so often, or did back when I had people to disappear from), it was because the cost of maintaining the friendship exceed the benefit I received from it. I just didn’t care enough to make any effort to stay friends. I didn’t care enough to spend time thinking about it. I preferred staying home and reading a book. Maybe that’s your friend’s take on it?
Could be he’s just a flake, too. In either case, you might just want to move on.
He comes in and out of contact according to his own weird rythym. Sometimes, he’ll almost vanish for a month, then come back. Sometimes, he’ll just go out of contact for a day. We frequently never know what he’s up to, because he thinks it’s funny not to tell us.
Seriously: I’ve known him for almost a decade, and I still do not know what he does for a living, or if he’s getting a degree. He regards this as hilarious. He has told us, but along with numerous others things he’s emphatically not doing. We have no way of knowing which is which. He does play Magic" The Gathering and is pretty darn good at it, so he sometimes disappears to go to tournaments.
Not trying to be dire or anything, but he might be manic depressive.
During my worst, I “disappeared.” There were days I could just barely maintain and could not make the effort to cultivate or tend social connections. Then everything would change and I’d be available again. I was very mysterious too because I didn’t know how to explain why I’d disappeared. And I was known to my friends and family as having a weird rhythm.
Of course, you friend could just be flake as has been suggested.
