What can you do when you've outgrown old friends?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Several months back, I was contacted out of the blue by an old friend from childhood, who in turn gave my address to another old friend from childhood. At first, this was fine, as I hadn’t spoken to either of them in ages. One is not likely to turn on his computer this month, or maybe even next, so I don’t have to worry about him. As for the other guy, it’s apparent, at least to me, that we have so severely grown apart from each other, that all we have in common is that we used to know each other.

I looked at the complete transcript of our IM chats. He didn’t write any sentences that were longer than nine words. Most sentences had no verbs, or even tenses. None of them had any punctuation or capitalization. A good 90% of the words he did write were misspelled. A lot of the times, I had to guess what he was writing. It was near impossible to draw him into a conversation - he has no powers of description. This guy hasn’t grown in any appreciable way since the mid-'70s. He’s on his third marriage. To someone thirteen years younger than his oldest daughter.

The other night, he was expounding, in very short bursts of words, on his philosophies. They were so deep, you’d risk getting damp if you fell into them. What I was reading was so unbelievable, that by the end I was openly mocking him. “Dude, that’s so deep! Stop it! You’re freaking me out!” Not ony didn’t he get it, he was taking it as encouragement. “fuck man I shoud wite a book”

To say that he’d have to study to become a moron doesn’t adequately describe it. I can’t think of anything further to say to him. I guess what I’m wondering is, how do you put someone like this down without it getting nasty? I don’t hate him. I barely even know him now. What I’ve seen of him, he’s somebody I don’t want to get to know. So what do I do? Block him on IM and send his e-mails to the spam box? I don’t want to have to confront him or tell him he’s not my cup of tea anymore. Yeah, I’m a chicken. I don’t want to hurt him, and I don’t want him to hate me. I just want it to go back to like it was before he found me.

What would you do?

(This is a poll. But if a mod thinks it’s too M&P for this forum, feel free to move it.)

2

I’m a chicken, too. What do you think would happen if you just backed way off? If you didn’t always answer his IMs or emails? If you just kind of quit getting involved in the conversations, would he pretty much give up? He doesn’t seem like the type to put a lot of effort into it if he isn’t getting much back.

3

I don’t really like confrontations, so I’d probably suffer through it too. Maybe you can just start keeping your distance and hope he gets the message, however unlikely that may be what with him ranking below Moron and all.

I’m interested to hear some of his “philosophies.”

4

Start asking for pics of his wife.

5

It happens. I have some old friends that, when we got in contact with each other again, I found that I simply no longer had anything in common with them.

The hardest part was the feeling similar to an obligation to keep this friendship going, as if you owed the past something. Sure, you two may have had lots of fun and things in common in the past, but that was then and this is now.
In my experience, there’s been a few instances where I tried to keep in touch. A friend or two from a school summer organization, a couple of friends in high school. After a few “Hey, remember when” moments, I just kind of realized that while the past was fun, I didn’t have anything in common with them now. We were both slowly forgetting the past and constantly using it as the bond or usual topic starter just seemed to cheapen the experience.

I slowly just stopped talking to them. I didn’t go out of my way to contact them; I figured that if they wanted to really keep in touch, they would contact me (I was always the one who was keeping one-sided friendships together).

I would say the best thing you could do is try distancing yourself from him, cease contact, etc. It’s not your fault you no longer have anything in common with him, don’t feel obligated to keep in touch with someone just for “old times sake”.

6

I have an old friend like that. Unless he loses my address, I will get a Christmas card from him in a year or two which I will read, think good thoughts for him and leave in my inbox for a few weeks before throwing away. I have thought about calling him to see how he is doing, but I have also helped people avoid him when he was pretty much stalking them (in a polite friendly manner and with the best of intentions, but so what?)

I don’t instant message, so I’m not sure what you can do about his IM’ing you. Does blocking someone make it look to them like you’re offline?

7

I’m guessing that the guy recognizes your superiority and is trying to impress you, why not make an attempt to flatter him while at the same time educating him a bit. Suggest that his msgs. are difficult to read and he should try to use some caps. and punctuation. Encourage him to get a spell check program, tell him that his ideas will have more impact if they’re easier to read. Engage his ideas and gently guide him toward more logical and traditional thought processes.
Wouldn’t you feel better about helping him instead of writing him off and putting him down?
It will probably leave him admiring you more and, perhaps telling others that you once knew, what a great guy you’ve become.
And, if it doesn’t work, it will probably discourage him and cause him to move on to someone who agrees w/ his ideas. Either way, you win.

8

What about putting this guy on invisible on IM all the time. I have used this with a very few people I regretted giving my IM, to good results.

9

I don’t IM but I was stupid enough to join classmates.com a few years back. I let my subscription lapse after a year but active members are still able to email me. I ignore them; the people I hear from have probably never been out of Dallas County a day in their lives. Some of them apparently have never been out of our hometown. My sister was, in her words, stupid enough to attend a high school reunion a few years back; she told me she was talking to a guy she used to date. He asked where she was living; she told him and he said he had never heard of it: She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. The guy in question is a college educated, law school graduate, practicing attorney–my sister said she honestly didn’t think the guy was joking.

10

All I can offer is something that happened to me not so long ago.

One of my three or four best friends in high school left our home town to go to Atlanta after college and I came to Tennessee. He was an usher in my wedding and came to visit a few times in the 60’s and 70’s. I saw him a few times when I was visiting my parents and he his.

But we grew apart and I guess the last time I had had any contact of any kind with him would have been in the 80’s.

Suddenly, in 2004, he called me to see if I was planning on attending my high school class reunion, the 45th if you must know, and I told him no. He offered to pay for my motel room if I would go, but I repeated that I didn’t want to see all those people. He tried one or two more ways of persuasion and I just told him I wasn’t interested. I’m certain he was at least annoyed, and maybe full-blown pissed off with me. But I didn’t want to go and I saw no reason to change that for his sake.

The sad part is that a year or so later, I learned that he had had a stroke and his wife called to say he would like to see me. But I have yet to make it to Atlanta for that purpose.

If this strikes you as cold and cruel, I can understand that. But it doesn’t affect my intentions.

Whether this is helpful or not, you’ll have to judge for yourself. But it did happen to me and I’m not sweating it.

11

I don’t get the joke. I’ve never heard of St. Petersburg, Florida and not only do I have a graduate degree, I travel extensively. Why should someone in Dallas Texas, a city of 1.2 million people, know the fourth largest city in Florida? Or was in Floriday he was unfamiliar with :eek:?

Quite frankly I’m a little confused by the hostile attitute I’m hearing. It’s almost like “How dare you contact me!! I have nothing in common with you anymore!” Are you so well connected that you couldn’t use an extra person to network with? And if you do have that many friends and acquaintances, then you should be too busy to sweat some guy you haven’t talked to in years.
As a guy, I generally don’t “break up” with friends. First of all, why cut people out of your life unless they’ve done something specific to offend you? Second, it just makes me look like a prick. If I don’t like you, I’ll just not go out of my way to socialize with you. Even with people I don’t care for, an email or IM once a year doesn’t hurt anyone.
It’s kind of like people who hate going back to high school reunions. Why would you have going back and hanging out with the people you grew up with? Are you so successful now that they are undeserving to bask in your shadow?

12

Thanks for the suggestions and other information.

msmith537, I don’t know whose post you were reading to find hostility and apparently that I have a sense of superiority, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me that you did, and have.

I get the impression that he thinks we’ve rekindled our friendship, when all I did was to answer the IM I got one day. You’d think that with all these years having passed, we’d have something to talk about. Well, that was fine for the first couple of days. After that, it was obvious that he is so lacking in communication skills and life experience, I don’t really know how to talk to him. I’ll type out a paragraph and send it, and get back six misspelled words and have to figure out how they relate to what I sent him.

It has taken me four months to finally convince him that he’s on dialup internet. “no man it hi speed” “I know they market it to you as high speed, but if you’re not connected to a cable modem, you do not have high speed internet. If you did, it wouldn’t take 7 hours for me to send you a 3 MB file.” “it say hi speed” As it turns out, he defaulted on a cell phone plan from the only company that also supplies cable internet in his area. But they are the stupid fuckers who ruined his life. He can’t get cable internet because he owes then two grand. It’s not his fault, see, they’re all stupid bastards who will never see a dime from him. That’s the kind of thinking you might expect from a 15-year-old, not a 50-year-old. I have a strong suspicion that he has married a nineteen-year-old girl because any woman his age would see the things in him that I see, that are unattractive. It doesn’t offend me personally that he married someone thirty years his junior, but I have to admit to it being off-putting. Geez, dude, you aren’t trying hard enough, and it seems more than a little skeevy.

I’ve seen pictures of his wife. She’s…a girl.

Do I have so many friends that I don’t need one more to network with? No. If I’m ever 1500 miles away across the border and I need the frame of a machine welded, he’s the guy. But I’ll never be there or need any welding done. So it’s not as though I want to cut him out of my life in that final kind of way, it’s just that I miss the distant memory he used to be.

13

Life’s too short, **fish **- it ain’t worth the trouble. Let him know you appreciated the contact and have to get back to whatever you are doing and move on - over time, he will get the message.

14

Far from it. It’s because we’ve all changed so much that they’re no longer the people I knew. The BMOC is no longer the BMO Anything, and you can tell, in spite of his trying to convince you he still is. The kid who blew a great jazz trumpet in music class hasn’t touched the instrument in twenty years, and the pretty cheerleaders who complained how their parents worried too much are now mothers worrying about their own teenage daughters. And while it’s nice to see that some did well for themselves–I know that among my old high school classmates, there are lawyers, doctors, and university professors–some have had some very bad luck. One of my old friends is currently wasting away thanks to MS; another had severe depression and ended up blowing his brains out. There have been other deaths, some messy divorces, and a few business failures. The people to whom these successes and failures occurred are not the kids I went to high school with; they are adults I no longer know.

I don’t see it as a question of success; rather, I see it as a question of time. Time passes, and we change; more time passes, and we change some more. Eventually, we change so much that left to our own devices, we wouldn’t be friends at all.

I did stay in touch with the good friends I made at high school, but the rest of my classmates? I wish them all the best, but if I never see them again, it won’t bother me. That’s why I don’t go to high school reunions–because we’ve all changed so much that we’re no longer the kids who went to high school together. We’re adults who have had vastly different life experiences in the years since.

I suspect this is what fishbicycle is finding–that he’s changed so much that he has very little in common with his old friend. He’s moved past those high school days. He’s learned a lot, done a lot, and seen a lot of things that his old friend hasn’t. I’m sure the same holds for his friend, but each has learned, done, and seen very different things. They no longer have much in common. All they do have is their shared experience in high school. Which, given the amount of time that has passed, doesn’t amount to a lot of the time in one’s life.

Fishbicycle, I agree that you don’t want to hurt him, but you have to wean him away somehow. If you can adjust your IM so that it shows you’re not online to him, do so. I’d suggest that you respond infrequently to his e-mails, and when you do, keep them brief and make the point that you’re always busy somehow. The distance between him and you will help; he is unlikely to hop in the car and drive over if he can’t get you on IM, say. But eventually, I’m sure that the less he hears from you, the less he will keep trying. Good luck!

15

I fucking dread phone calls/e-mails from old friends. If I had still wanted to be friends, don’t you think I would have contacted you at some point in the last 15-20 years? People change, their interests & lives change- move on!! No I don’t care what a fellow bagboy at Kroger in 1987 is doing now- we weren’t that close anyway!

16

I think about contacting old friends at times. Have even gone so far as to look 'em up via the internet. But then I think…what am I looking for from them? How likely am I to get whatever that is? How much more likely to find we have nothing to say to one another and nothing in common? So I don’t contact them.

17

I agree to a certain point. I could look up old high school friends on MySpace (if there were more than 10 of them), but what would be the point? My GF responded to an old friend from school and now BOTH of us are sucked into her crazy drama. (Although we did meet some new people through a social group she runs.)

I always like running into people I knew from HS or college, but to what extent do you continue the relationship with them? To what extent CAN you continue a relationship? If they live in New York and enjoy a beer, I could hang out with them from time to time, or maybe when I go home to visit my folks if they’re still in my home town. But a relationship needs to move forward. Eventually you can’t just keep reminiscing about the past. You need to find new things in common to share. If people aren’t actually part of your life, it’s tough to keep the friendship going.

18

Oooh, I had an ugly situation about a year and a half ago, and even though I may get nailed for “having a hostile attitude”, so be it.

I got a call from an old friend from elementary into mid-high school, who I could deal w/, up until that point, and then I distanced myself. I had to…it was a matter of sanity, and possibly legal record, in the direction she was heading…she ended up married while still in school, and went traversing the country w/ her husband, for over 20 yrs.

The call came out of the blue, and in talking to her, they were splitting up, and she needed to talk. I’m not a heartless person, by any means, so I did my best…the calls started coming on a nightly basis, w/ multiples on weekends, and because they were still living together, but ready to kill each other, became more and more bizarre as the weeks, then months, went on…I had to hear details on the sex life she was creating in order to drive him crazy, and frankly, couldn’t stand it. The worst part was the realization that she hadn’t made it mentally out of high school, and the ranting became impossible to listen to.

I try to block the conversation that finally made me almost throw my phone out the window, but then I hit the wall…started letting the machine pick up…a month later, doesn’t she show up ON MY DOORSTEP, and by now, my reservoir of compassion has dried up…gone, w/ no restoration forthcoming.

Well, I had to try and tell her I couldn’t deal w/ her sucking the life out of me anymore, basically, and unsurprisingly, she still didn’t get it…she became fixated on the fact that I was probably depressed…I jumped on that bandwagon, and told her she was probably right…totally forgetting that she is the biggest gossip I’ve ever met, and that she will undoubtably spill that to whoever she happens to run into from our town…oh well, c’est la vie.

I had one more surprise “on my doorstep” visit, then it stopped. All I can say is…if you haven’t been in this situation, don’t judge. I’ve never in my life had to deal w/ a situation like this, and wish I hadn’t had to to begin w/…

Bottom line, to the OP, is…yeah, I wish I could go back to before it happened as well…ain’t happening, and I don’t intend to waste more time dwelling on it.

People like this just don’t get subtleties… :frowning:

19

This thread is somewhat reassuring for me - my friend and I of over ten years have grown apart (she had kids, I didn’t), and our friendship has certainly waned. I feel a little bad about it sometimes, but people do grow apart, no matter how nice they are or how much they like each other. She spends every socializing hour with other mothers and other couples with children; I’m not in that circle, so I have fallen by the wayside. (I socialize with other childless by choice couples now, mostly.)

So my point, fishbicycle, is don’t worry too much about not socializing with someone you don’t want to socialize with. I’d go the making yourself invisible to him route, and answering the very occasional IM. You don’t owe him anything except basic human dignity, and I think you fulfill that by not telling him how much you dislike him.

20

If this entire tirade is directed at me then you read a lot more into my post than I intended. If you haven’t heard of St. Petersburg, Florida then I have to suppose that you’ve seldom read a newspaper, that you’ve never watched the weather channel, that you are tremendously insular, and that you’ve never taken either a history class or a geography class at any level; if you are not a native born citizen of the USA, then those criticisms don’t apply.
Frankly, I don’t have anything in common with the vast majority of my childhood friends; most of them have stayed in one small town their entire lives, most of them have never made the slightest attempt to broaden their horizons, most of them wouldn’t eat “foreign” food if they were payed to do so, and most of them are born and bred Southern Baptists.
My networking (I’ve always despised this expression) days are over and done; I am not so successful that I have no room for friends but I do prefer friends with whom I can discuss things other than things that happened when we were ten years old.
The childhood friends in question live well over a thousand miles from me and I haven’t seen any of them personally in over fifty years. And, I wouldn’t attend a high school reunion with any of them simply because the reunion would take place in Texas and I have sworn a blood oath to never return to that hell hole of a place unless it is absolutely necessary.