chimera gives good advice. If two or three people don’t want to be my friends anymore, I look to see what’s going on with them. But if I get that same response from more people, I need to look and see what’s going on with me.
I somewhat understand what you’re talking about, Opal. I had some friends who did something that got me really upset – in my case, they never responded to a party invitation.
The next year, they did it again. Only this time, I was under the impression they had said they were going to attend.
I’ve had no contact with them for a few months. I’m going to send them a holiday card this week, partly as a test: If they reply in any positive way, I’ll assume they want to get back in touch; anything else, and I’ll assume they don’t care one whit about me. (At which point I get on with my life.)
I think part of it was that I was under a lot of stress on both occasions. Another part of it was that I’ve gone through a lot of changes this year, and I decided that the people I was hanging out with were not going to advance my growth. It’s hard to develop a skill when you’re not around anybody who’s good in that skill.
People DO change. Sometimes we can’t tell if it’s for the better.
I have no idea how much hyperbole is used here, but if this is really true, then maybe it is something about you, or your behaviour - this may or may not be linked to you being bipolar, but I’m no expert in that regard, not by a long shot.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put the blame on you here for this specific instance, it’s just that the quoted remark really stood out to me. I mean, people and circumstances change, so it’s only logical that one’s group of friends at 30 is not 100% similar to one’s circle of friends at 10. However, if you’re 30, and none of the friends you have now were your friends when you were, say, 24, I’d say something might be amiss - just IMHO. Various factors would influence this, like moving large distances, et cetera. But the gist of it applies, I think.
Is this particular example an online thing? That might aggravate an otherwise innocent difference of opinions, too.
Is this the first time you got mad at this person? With friends I have known for a long time I know how to respond when they are upset with me, but if a new friend snaps at me for something I might misunderstand and think it was a bigger deal than it is.
If you are used to being able to yell at a friend for something small and then get past it and move on, it might not seem like a big deal to you, but maybe this person is more hurt by the incident than you think.
Does he/she know that you still want to be friends with them? If this was the last time you saw them maybe he is thinking you are still upset with him?
It’s hard to guess without knowing what the incident was about. Maybe it was a sensitive topic for your friend.
I lived with a friend who is bipolar for 2 years, and it took some getting used to. Until I found out she was bipolar (she wasn’t diagnosed until after we had lived together for a year) I was often upset about things she would do and say. I felt like she would go off without provocation and then expect everything to be fine when she was ready to move on. After I learned she was bipolar and what that meant I was able to not take things she did so personally, and I understood that maybe she was just having a bad time and I would be ready to have our spats and move on. Now it is just part of who she is. Does your friend know you are bipolar? Is she/he the type of person who normally lets things go easily or is she sensitive? It could be a lot of things.
I have to admit that I was the “bailer” over a year ago. In my case a lot of things about her pissed me off, and for a month or so I had been looking for an excuse to end the friendship. Yeah I know, it wasn’t very mature of me. 
I’m not 100% clear on what she did - I think she criticised a pair of jeans that I owned, and then criticised my relationship with my boyfriend. It was almost a relief to cut her off, since a lot of resentment had been simmering beneath the surface, and I was (and still am) a lot happier without her.
I’m not saying that your case is the same, but I posted because the one thing that struck me was that she has gone through a lot of friends too. My cousin (her ex) told me that her oldest friend has only known her for a year or so - she can’t keep friends for longer than that.
Ugh. This situation sucks, no two ways about it. I had a very good friend do this to me at one point. I pissed her off (told her I’d call her about a computer problem that night and ended up waiting about 3 weeks before I called - longish story) and she completely cut off all contact with me. I called her several times over the next 2 or 3 months and she never answered her phone, never called back, nothing. I finally got the hint and decided I just had to write her off as a friend. It bothered the hell out of me and still does, years after the fact. This sort of thing never happens to me - I tend to have few friends, and the ones I have are real friends who don’t bail completely over little disagreements, so when this happened it really stung. I still wish I could make things right with her, but it’s been too long and I live too far away now.
I met this person online but developed an offline friendship.
I’m sure it is something about me–it is the only answer. I’ve been told that I’m too intense, for one thing. I want to spend too much time with friends, etc. I’ve never had more than a friend or two at a time, and probably fewer than 15 actual honest-to-god real-life in-the-flesh friends in my entire life. I never had any friends until high school, and I socialized mostly with adults during my childhood.
I think this has pretty much sealed for me that I’m not meant to socialilze. I will probably just stick to online friendships and casual social events (like dopefests) from now on. I do have two other friends that I hope to keep. And I have a friend in Arizona… but since I moved to Virginia I only see her once every couple of years and she is impossible to get ahold of on the phone. I doubt I will pursue any further face-to-face friendships, however.
It’s only recently that I stopped my previous many-year-hiatus from the trying-to-have-friends thing and it was probably a mistake.
This probably sounds whiny… I don’t mean it that way. It’s just how I feel.
I don’t think you sound whiny. You sound genuinely upset, not peevish.
It’s never a mistake to make friends, and we sometimes learn that the people with whom we choose to be friends aren’t compatible with us. Sometimes what one person says or does seems normal or relatively minor to that one person, and to another person it might seem much worse.
I cannot speak to your particular situation, but perhaps if this person is worth having a friend, it’s worth talking to him about the incident. Don’t assume the problem is completely on your end. Perhaps the other person has issues with friendships past as well.
I think it takes an awful lot for a frienship to be completely unsalvagable. Perhaps things aren’t as bleak as they look.
Perhaps the other person in this situation really does think the world of you and is having trouble dealing with what he perceives to be hurt. Perhaps he’s taking it much harder than he ought to - that’s not your fault.
We deal with stressful situations in varying ways; some favor direct approaches, and some choose to simmer into a slow burn, never sure if they’re entitled to be wholly angry or if they’re unintentionally blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
And the more you like someone, the closer you are to them … well, then the more conflicted you can become if you’re frustrated by them, because in this case it’s damn tough to write the person off and damn tough to unquestioningly forgive.
But what do I know? 
I have had very few friends in my life, and virtually none right now.
Opalcat, intensity is not a bad thing (being an intense person myself), but I have discovered there are people who do not know how to handle it, and I have had to learn to hold back. Especially when a new friend pushes a button and I want to snap. I am very good at snapping. Problem is, there’s usually damage done that I have no clue how to heal. And I would love to give you the benefit of that wisdom, but it eludes me.
… with the people who do not have the depth to handle your intensity. Don’t punish yourself by cutting yourself off entirely. For one thing, it is not fair. For another, everybody has to go through a sorting process to determine if this new person will be a friend or an acquaintance, or less. For a third, it is possible that this move will cause you to put undue pressure on your remaining friends, without your awareness of it and without fair warning to them. I am strong for my friends who tell me what’s going on, but I have a record of letting them down when neither of us know how to say that help has been required.
I must admit, I have little to no experience with the ups and downs of bi-polar disorder, and if my reponse to you betrays that, I do apologise. But above all, I wish you peace.
OpalCat, what you’ve been saying in this thread is actually helping ME make sense of MY situation.
I discovered earlier this year that my gift (in the Professor X sense) is an incredible intensity. I’ve always known I was intense, I just only recently discovered (1) how intense, and (2) it’s normal for my type!
Please show up at the MD Renn Fest outing (see the other thread), and we’ll chat over a round of ale. (Or mead. I’ve always wanted to try mead.)
The Ren Fest conflicts with the Six Flags outing, which takes precidence for me. I really want to go to both but it isn’t possible
When I snapped at this person it wasn’t a thought out thing, it was instantaneous and unavoidable. The issue in question was one that is so close to my heart and so integral to who I am that it was impossible not to react.
I shouldn’t have too much trouble, though. I’m a loner by nature and if I don’t make an effort to be otherwise, I will just stay home indefinitely, alone (and not even think about it). I thought I wanted to try something new, but it isn’t worth it. Casual outings with no emotional involvement are the better option for me, and it really shouldn’t have taken me 31 years to figure that out.
I do appreciate the advice here, and I don’t know what I am going to do in this particular situation. I’m rather scared off from the whole thing and given my bipolar nature and the likelyhood of things like this being really emotionally devastating to me it may just be best to let it go.
Something that you ladies should keep in mind is that the dynamic between women friends is very diferent from the dynamic between male friends.
Women use their relationships to bully and intimidate. “Cutting off” a “friend” is their passive agressive way of showing displeasure or jockying for dominance within the group - “I’m sooo pissed at Cheryl. Let’s not call her girls!”.
Guys do not do this. If guys don’t call each other, it’s because they are too busy with work, the kids, their new girlfriend or whatever or they simply don’t feel like it. A typical conversation with a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in 6 months goes something like this:
“Yo”
“yomama…Sup?”
“We’re going to McSorleys later”
“alright…seeya”
Dominance within the group is achieved through sports or good-natured mocking and banter. As a matter of fact, when my guy friends do get into arguments where they don’t call each other or just complain too much, they are generally told to “stop acting like bitches” or “why don’t you ladies quit pulling each other’s pigtails” and other such immasculating comments until they resolve their shit.
Movies like American Pie, Old School, Whipped or Tomcats paint a fairly accurate, if over the top, picture of guy relationships as they get into their 20s and 30s. Guys tend to “bail” on friendships not because of some petty squabble but because adult responsibilities eventually pull them away from their Budweiser commercial lifestyle of hanging out with the boys drinking 4 nights a week.
I would also add that a lot of people don’t want to hang around someone who is too intense. “Intense” people can also be percieved as “volatile”, “quick-tempered”, “stubborn”, “opinionated”, or even “psycho”. Now you maysay “this is how I am, take it or leave it” but if most of your friends are opting to “leave it”, you may want to reexamine your behavior.
Hi Opal …
I must admit that I’ve been on the other side of your problem. I had a friend snap at me for something which was close to her heart, and after long discussions, she refused to apologize for hurting my feelings. (This is after I apologized to her for saying the thing that made her snap at me in the first place)
I don’t know if it’ll help you to hear this, but the reasons you give above are similar to the reasons she cited to me for why she snapped at me - and they’re also the reasons why I started to distance myself from her. We’re basically acquaintances now, although we’re always polite and friendly when we get together as part of a larger group.
See, if she couldn’t change who she was, who was I to ask her to change? If her natural reaction was to snap at me, I had no right to ask her to change her natural reaction - but I also had the right to back away from that person. I’m not one to deal well with people snapping at me, and I can’t change that in my nature either.
So, like I said, I doubt that you’ll be able to take any advise from my story, I just wanted to point out that this may be what’s going through their head. But IANYF (your friend), so who knows. I just know that’s why I limited my contact with the person in my story.
I’d also like to point out that sometimes when one cuts someone out of their lives, they’re not doing it to be rude. I’m not a confrontational person. If a friend of mine upset me, I’m much more likely to just withdraw (after a quick attempt to discuss it in case it’s just a misunderstanding). I know some people think that just cutting someone out of your life is rude, but maybe the person thinks they’re being nice, by not making a big deal out of something. If that makes any sense.
OpalCat, don’t blame yourself, or just resign yourself to being a loner. As others have said, think of the getting-to-know-someone process as a ‘sorting’ of people. Some people can handle friends who are “intense”, or “passionate” (doesn’t that sound better?!:)), and some people can’t. Do you really want a friend around whom you’d have to watch everything you say? That doesn’t sound like fun.
Best of luck to you, I’m searching for a best friend at the moment (my last one moved to Vancouver), and I do feel your pain. Or rather, I feel my pain, which may or may not be similar. I get depressed about it some days, but I have better days too. It’s not easy.
Uh, I know the deal here, and you were not in the wrong. That’s all I will say.
I am doing the best I can. I take medication to help me control my behavior. It isn’t something that is always in my control.
I’m well aware that people think I’m ‘psycho’ and don’t want to hang around with me. Why do you think I’ve had so few friends? Growing up I would sit down at the table at school during lunch and everyone else would get up and move.