Understanding People

[Twoapenny]

I've been thinking a bit over the last few days about relationships and how mine don't tend to be very successful and I wondered what, if any, tips others have used to improve their relationships and/or create new, healthy ones?  I'm sort of trying to work out where I go wrong.  It's not that I don't meet people, I meet quite a lot of people, but I don't tend to be massively drawn to others all that often.  I often don't seem to meet many people who initiate contact.  Over the last few years I've tended to make arrangements for the first couple of get togethers and then leave it to the other person to sort out meeting up again.  This is really only because over the years it became apparent that a lot of people I considered friends didn't make any effort to talk or meet up and contact only happened when I initiated it.  I'd like my relationships to be a bit more two way and to have friends who get in touch with me sometimes, not always the other way around.  So when meeting new people I've tended to sort out the first couple of get togethers and then wait and see if they got in touch again - most haven't (and I did make it clear that I'd like to).  I've also got a friend who has been a very good friend over the years and I care about her a lot, but she does tend to blow very hot and cold.  I'll not hear from her for weeks/months at a time, then she'll get back in touch and it's quite intense - daily phone calls, texts and emails as well, lots of wanting to get together and so on.  I find it hard to cope with, I don't want to lose her friendship but I struggle with how drastically things change.  I'm wondering about the difference between boundaries and barriers?  I feel so alone so much of the time that I wonder if I've been too severe with regards to what I want, but at the same time feel that two way relationships and ones that are a bit more consistent work better for me.

I don't know if any of that made sense!  Rambling a bit, sorry.  Just wondered if anyone else has found a way to navigate through it all and make life a bit more people friendly?

[Hopalong]

Hi Tupp,
What a struggle. I can really relate to the fragility you feel around reciprocity and friendships. Been there, have Tshirt.

I'm wondering if the "reciprocity tracking" reflex is suffocating your ability to actually ENJOY people in the present, though. When so much focus is one who called whom when (though I totally, greatly understand why it's a preoccupation to shield yourself from hurt)...but when so much focus is on that, I imagine it's hard to be in the present. And savor people with all their quirks. And laugh genuinely.

And actually enjoy it.

I think once you love yourself all the way through, and become more confident in your right to take up happy space in the world, and learn the emotional confidence to let people come and go as they will, and know that you lose nothing by being happy and loving with a new or old person, and whatever response they have or don't have is THEIR response, and nothing you can manage or predict or control...

Then you'll really know you're okay.

And loveable.

I think it's all about interpreting the coming and going and communication or lack thereof, as a measure of whether you're love-worthy.

You are. You ARE.

Big hugs
Hops

[Twoapenny]

Hi Tupp,
What a struggle. I can really relate to the fragility you feel around reciprocity and friendships. Been there, have Tshirt.

I'm wondering if the "reciprocity tracking" reflex is suffocating your ability to actually ENJOY people in the present, though. When so much focus is one who called whom when (though I totally, greatly understand why it's a preoccupation to shield yourself from hurt)...but when so much focus is on that, I imagine it's hard to be in the present. And savor people with all their quirks. And laugh genuinely.

And actually enjoy it.

I think once you love yourself all the way through, and become more confident in your right to take up happy space in the world, and learn the emotional confidence to let people come and go as they will, and know that you lose nothing by being happy and loving with a new or old person, and whatever response they have or don't have is THEIR response, and nothing you can manage or predict or control...

Then you'll really know you're okay.

And loveable.

I think it's all about interpreting the coming and going and communication or lack thereof, as a measure of whether you're love-worthy.

You are. You ARE.

Big hugs
Hops

Thanks, Hops, and yes, you are right, it does occupy a lot of my thoughts and I do struggle with it and with letting things/people go (or come and go, probably more specifically).  I don't feel love worthy at all and I have really struggled to change that feeling, however much I try to and I'm not quite sure what to do to change that, if that makes sense?  The other problem I find is that my feelings seem to have an automatic off switch so it doesn't take an awful lot for me to genuinely, truly feel nothing for a person if I haven't been around them for a while.  I honestly feel like the only person in my life I couldn't just walk away from is my boy - pretty much anyone else I could just cut out and that would be that.  I know that's not normal!  I really want to feel loving relationships but I suppose that's tied in with feeling vulnerable?  Perhaps that's why I struggle with it, I'm not sure.  I do enjoy other people's company at times but more often than not seeing people feels like more hassle than it's worth.  Hmmm.  I will continue pondering!  Perhaps I just need more practise.  I'm very excited about your new job, though! xx

[Twoapenny]

Something else I've noticed is that when I'm with people, if they say something that I don't agree with or I think is inappropriate or just negative in some way, I freeze up.  I can't verbalise my opinion, disagree with them or in anyway contradict them.  It's like everything in my head just shuts down and I find myself sitting there nodding or just not speaking while in my head I'm feeling shocked and hurt.  Then I find I spend days afterwards feeling angry and resentful, partly at the person who has been unpleasant but mostly at myself for not being able to say what I think when I think it.  Then I find I don't feel any desire to see or speak to that person anymore, everything just shuts down and I just don't have any feelings.  So I think this is something I need to work on, being able to say what I think and not freezing up so much, perhaps that will help things to move along a bit more normally?

[sKePTiKal]

I find that in my head, I have an awful lot of rules about people. Mostly rules for me. What's appropriate, what's not, how to look, act, what to say... etc. All that kinda gets in the way of just being with people and seeing what happens.

I'm pretty weird, in that I truly am very comfortable not having a lot of face to face interaction. I don't need to be "seen"... like in the movie Avatar, "I see you"... a phrase used to mean that warts & all, I see who the other person is (and vice versa) and still want to be with them. But I do need some interaction and it just goes better if I don't set any expectations, rules or scripts about what I want it to be like. What I want the other people to be like. I'd run the other way, if I sensed other people doing that to me.

When it comes to people, I think it's kinda like art -- I don't know if it's a masterpiece or not, but I know what I like when I see it.

And I don't buy the idea that there is a one size fits all formula for how much time a person has to have, interacting with other people and how intimately, to be healthy. Ergo, rules about relationships and people is simply a matter of personal preference. That may vary a LOT, given the big life things that a person goes through.

With people, you kinda have to go with the flow. And with the different levels of friends - the numbers of people who make the commitment to lasting friendships and open up in intimacy - shrinks, the closer you get. And those people may be working different "shifts" too! LOL. So, it's kind of a big group dance and you're changing partners and dancing by yourself and next thing you know, you're in the middle of a conga line... that dissolves into laughter and breathlessness and it fades... until the next time. No rules; no obligations; just people being people.

[Twoapenny]

Thank you, Skep and Hops for your wise advice, as always.  I've been pondering things over the weekend and a friend situation arose that gave me a chance to examine my feelings about things and to try and see the situation objectively and to be a little bit more truthful with myself about my own role in all of it (argh!  I hate that bit!).

So ......... I think a lot of it is tied up in my need to be 'liked' because I am 'nice' and I do what people want.  When my phone doesn't ring it doesn't signal to me that people are busy, or I've outgrown most of my friends, or that I've dropped off of people's radar because I've been so busy with my son for so many years, it shouts 'no-one likes you because you are not nice'.

I also felt that I really had to prove to myself and everyone around me that I had an amazing group of friends who all adored me when I cut off contact with my family and was left suddenly without those close, albeit in an unhealthy way, relationships that I had had all my life.  I think the fact that I have lost this group of friends over the years has felt like my family rejecting me all over again and has made me feel angry and resentful, albeit in a way that wasn't necessarily directed at the right people (and by that I think a lot of it was still to do with the hurt of my family choosing my step-dad over me; in the same way there are friends who have chosen other friends over my company and I think that brought up a lot of unresolved stuff over the years).

If I am brutally honest I don't actually want to spend time with most of the people I know around here.  Most of them are people I became friends with in my teens and I am a very different person now to the person I was then.  I don't particularly enjoy their company and I don't feel I can really talk to them or be myself around them.  I am also aware that it's a very gossip driven area and anything I say or do inevitably ends up doing the rounds and that also makes me feel self-conscious and inhibited most of the time.

I do find my situation with my son makes friendships hard, partly because I don't get a lot of time to be with other people and partly because I find it easier to be around people who also have disabled children as they seem to 'get' my son in a way that others don't.  That said, I have been to a lot of groups for parents with disabled kids over the years and I find most of them aren't really my cup of tea; there does seem to be competition about whose child is the most disabled or who has the most problems to deal with and I've just found most of the people I've met that way just aren't really the sort of people I like to hang out with.

So - with that in mind, and my plans to leave the area looking like they will come good (and keeping everything crossed, this time next month we will be literally days away from the big escape - I am just going to try and focus my mind on spending time with the friends that I do like in the area we are moving to and at least having some new opportunities to meet people.  I think it's really just time for a really big change in my life and I need to just let go of the old stuff and all the bits that go with it.

Thank you, as always, for giving me a bit of a prod in the right direction, it really helps when other people say things as it can help me assess the situation a bit more objectively, I think, and points me in a new direction (which is always good ).

[JustKathy]

Hey Tupp,

I wish I had some advice on this, but I don't. If it makes you feel any better, please know that you're not alone. What you wrote describes my own relationships to a tee. I've never felt worthy of love or friendship, but how can we expect to grow up with the confidence to form relationships when we were raised to believe that we were stupid, ugly, worthless, or whatever poison our NMs fed us. I've dealt with this in therapy for years, and while I may walk out of the Ts office feeling empowered, it doesn't take long for the old feelings to creep back in. I just don't see a way to erase years of brainwashing that took place during the developmental years of childhood.

I do find it interesting that we both feel that we have to initiate contact, and that our friends will often drop off or pull away. That has happened to me many times, which of course validates the feelings of being unworthy. I've always had friends at the office, but when I leave that job, they no longer want contact, which leads me to believe that they were only friendly towards me out of a workplace obligation. It's quite possible that they weren't good people to begin with, but of course, I always blame myself. And like you, I also fail miserably at asserting myself, so if a friendship slips away, I don't pursue it.

Now, just when I think I'm too emotionally messed up to have normal relationships, I'm reminded that it could be much worse. My sister, to my knowledge, has had only one date in her 51 years. Both of my parents laughed at her, and ridiculed her with things like, "You finally got some sucker to take you out." She crawled back into her shell and never dated again, and will most likely die alone. She now spends all of her time with Co-F, having no friends or romantic interests. That's the far end end of the spectrum when it comes to emotional abuse, so maybe our situations aren't all that bad. I know I'm mentally damaged by what my NM did to me, but had I remained in their grasp, I can see how much worse I would have ended up. I imagine that there are many children of Ns out there who live as complete recluses, so maybe our relationships are more normal than we realize, and we just aren't able to recognize that.

I liked what Skeps said about becoming comfortable not having a lot of face to face interaction. Over the years, I've become more comfortable with that as well. I've had more than one therapist tell me that it isn't healthy, but they aren't always right. I think it's a lot more healthy to avoid social interactions than to make an attempt at friendships with the wrong people, only to be rejected and hurt. Everyone is different. I've had co-workers who had 500 guests at their wedding, which would be a level of friends and acquaintances that would make me feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable. I wouldn't want that life.

I may not be making much sense here .... just random thoughts. Hops is right. You ARE love-worthy, and so am I. I think, by nature of our upbringing, we are probably far too thin-skinned and sensitive when it comes to relationships. I know I am. Getting past that is the difficult part. Difficult. Not impossible.

[Twoapenny]

Kathy, all of that makes perfect sense.  I do find very few people put much effort into keeping in contact these days but maybe that is more just about the way the world is now?  I know Hops mentioned something about Facebook being the go to place for communicating now and I know a lot of people that do that and nothing else.  For me that's not enough.  It's a bit like eating junk food instead of a proper meal; it's alright every now and again but I like proper food!  And in the same way I like proper conversation and I LOVE conversation that I haven't had to go out looking for or initiate.  I love it when friends remember that you had a doctor's appointment or some sort of big thing going on and call to ask how it went - it just makes me feel like someone cares enough about me to be aware of what's going on in my life and wants to know about it.  But I am trying very hard to focus on the friends I have who I do have healthy relationships with and not think too much about no-one called or I haven't seen so and so for x number of months.  It does feel like things are changing.  I can't really explain it but things feel like they're shifting and starting to improve.  We're still hoping to move, although there may be a slight delay now as my son needs some more medical 'stuff' and it's easier to sort from here because he's already in the system, but the move will still happen and will only be delayed by a few months at most.  So I'm really hoping that the move is the literal shove I need to help with the emotional shove that seems to be happening as well.  But I do think those early childhood bonding experiences (or lack of them) seem to leave a hole that nothing else seems to fill too easily?

[JustKathy]

Facebook has definitely changed the way people interact with one another. Your junk food analogy is dead on. It's almost like a drug for some people. You really have to know how to use it in moderation or it can be truly addicting. I know people who are on Facebook all day long, and I just can't wrap my head around that ... spending 8+ hours a days interacting with people you have never met, and may never meet.

The plus side of Facebook is that I've been able to reconnect with some actual friends that I had lost touch with, a few from high school, and one childhood friend who I grew up with in Canada. Also, the person who I would consider my best friend right now is someone I met online. We first took an online writing class together at UCLA, then became friends on Facebook before finally meeting in person. Rachel is a transgender woman who also had a really rough time with her parents, so we have a lot in common. She's the one person who is reliably there for me. When she's in my neck of the woods she'll always call me to have lunch, which I love since I so rarely get out. You just can't compare online chat to sitting down and dishing over lunch at a busy diner. Facebook is a great place to connect, but people who spend all day talking to "friends" on Facebook are really living in isolation.

I do hope the move works out for you. I wouldn't worry about the delay. A few months may seem like an eternity when you're in a bad place, but keep focusing on the positive changes in your future, and you'll find it goes quickly.

[Twoapenny]

Facebook has definitely changed the way people interact with one another. Your junk food analogy is dead on. It's almost like a drug for some people. You really have to know how to use it in moderation or it can be truly addicting. I know people who are on Facebook all day long, and I just can't wrap my head around that ... spending 8+ hours a days interacting with people you have never met, and may never meet.

The plus side of Facebook is that I've been able to reconnect with some actual friends that I had lost touch with, a few from high school, and one childhood friend who I grew up with in Canada. Also, the person who I would consider my best friend right now is someone I met online. We first took an online writing class together at UCLA, then became friends on Facebook before finally meeting in person. Rachel is a transgender woman who also had a really rough time with her parents, so we have a lot in common. She's the one person who is reliably there for me. When she's in my neck of the woods she'll always call me to have lunch, which I love since I so rarely get out. You just can't compare online chat to sitting down and dishing over lunch at a busy diner. Facebook is a great place to connect, but people who spend all day talking to "friends" on Facebook are really living in isolation.

I do hope the move works out for you. I wouldn't worry about the delay. A few months may seem like an eternity when you're in a bad place, but keep focusing on the positive changes in your future, and you'll find it goes quickly.

Yes, catching up with people you've lost touch with is great, although for me I was quite quickly reminded with some of them why we'd lost touch   That's lovely that you've got this great new friend, the thing I do love about the internet is that it can bring you wonderful people that you might not have met in the real world (like this place does!).

I think delaying for a few months will actually make moving a little bit easier; a bit more time to save some more money and get more organised, I can get a bit more work done on my van and just do it all at a slightly slower pace which will be nice.  Things seem to be flowing well at the moment which is unusual so I'm trying to enjoy it   I hope you get to have lunch with your friend again soon xx

[sKePTiKal]

Something new is starting to make the rounds, by way of describing some types of people. The category is "Extroverted Introverts". LOL. A paradoxical contradiction in terms. But the description of the kind/style of relationship these types prefer kinda sounds apt.

Cocktail parties or any place that involves superficial chit-chat interactions is sheer hell for this type of person. Too much sensory overload, no attempt to really connect person to person, sort of emotional bumper cars is extremely exhausting... which causes the person to wish to retreat and "recover" back in their safe cocoon world of semi-isolation. The extroverted introvert is looking for a deep conversation, real honest expressions of real self - person to person; a more authentic connection and exploration of the other person. There is less of a need for that dominant-submissive or parent-child; giving-receiving duality in these people. That kind of emotional transaction isn't really necessary (altho can be nice at times)... it's more needing a longer time and bigger space for two people to "be" together, while retaining most of their separate individual selves, with boundaries.

The relationships between 2 people like this require a lot more freedom/flexibility from the "shoulda, woulda, couldas" of what we learn are the rules of relationships as we grow up. If a relationship develops between an E-I, and another type - a lot of times, they'll be described as "very intense" or even "withdrawn"... two opposites on the scale of sharing, you know? I find that 5 minutes of scrolling through my FB newsfeed is hypnotic... my brain goes numb... one more meme and my sarcasm reflex is going to bust from the pressure of trying to hold in my opinion about idiotic most of that stuff really is; it's 10 yr old level maturity (and I mean emotional not intellectual most of the time). But on the other hand, groups of live people in a space really wears out my force field batteries. Too much noise in particular - that is impossible to decipher because it's 30 different conversations - seems to be one clear example. (So noisy restaurants or bars? Thank you no; next time maybe somewhere quieter?)

Unfortunately, I am starting to see a lot of people (mostly under 30) as hungry little birds with their mouths open to be fed (exactly how much, what & when is very precise) some kind of emotional "gold star" just for "being" a special little someone. And when that's not forthcoming, because some of us believe relationships are a two-way street... they turn into the worst kind of spoiled brat. This kind of thing is spreading as society is telling adults to indulge their inner child, and expecting pre-teens to look, think and act like adults. Thankfully there are exceptions to that generalization. Very notable examples of something completely different.

I think we as individuals, have been browbeat by society's struggle with "identity rights" into accepting that there is something wrong with us if we don't accept bad behavior in a relationship or toward ourselves. And it's a conflation or confusion of respect for individuality with being coerced into accepting abuse from other people. I'm not buying that. But then, I've never confused the labels people claim for themselves with the people themselves. Society could use a whole lot more of that awareness, methinks.

Oh, and I'm starting to see what the criteria are for being a "grown up". Finally. At almost 60 - LOL. It's not real solid yet, there are a lot of "mature adults" I know who aren't grown ups... and a lot of kids who already are. But that's another topic and only diagonally is related to this one. Sometimes how grown up a person is, really matters to the type of relationship that can exist.

(Another random musing on a topic with today's fleeting and mutable perspective by the old PR...LOL)

[Twoapenny]

I find I have a thing in my head about wasting time?  I'm not sure if that's the right way to describe it but things like social chit chat - I'm good with that for an hour or so but any longer and I need it to be leading somewhere or I feel like it's just a waste of my time and I could be doing something else I prefer to do (or something that needs doing and is bugging me because I want it finished).  And I wonder if that's where a lot of my problems with this sort of thing come from?  Deep connections are something I crave very deeply but I do find they are few and far between and I find I don't really want 'just a coffee' where I will spend yet another two hours listening to someone talk about things that I'm not interested in and I don't feel like I want to open up to people in situations like that?  So it seems pointless to do it at all.

I am struggling at the moment with a friend who blows hot and cold.  She's a very good friend in a lot of ways and I don't want to lose that friendship; our children are friends as well and I love that, but I do find it difficult to cope with no contact at all for weeks or months at a time and then a flurry of phone calls, emails, texts and requests to get together which all subside again and we go back to no contact.  I find I can't really manage my emotions and if I don't hear from somebody for a long time I find I sort of shut down and find it hard to want to spend time with them again?

Anyway - enough early morning musing!  Time to get up, I think

[Twoapenny]

I'm astounded again at how much about myself I don't notice for years and then suddenly I see it and it's so obvious I don't know how I've missed it.  Nothing about my life is as I want it.  I don't live the way I want to live, I don't spend my days doing what I love to do, I'm not with people I love to be with, I'm not spending time in places that I love to be in, I don't even wear the sort of clothes I really love to wear.  And I can see so clearly - and why it's happened today I don't know - that I've never felt that I deserve those things in my life and so instead I live the life of a drudge, making do and putting up and tolerating and not rocking the boat or upsetting anyone or making any kind of demand or assertion about myself or what I want.  I don't know why I didn't see this before.  Anyway, time to change that.

[lighter]

Tupp:

It IS time for change: )

How will it begin? 

It gives me chills to think about the mindful cultivation of joy in your life. 

It's your time.

::nodding::

Lighter

[Hopalong]

I am feeling great loss of the years when friends talked on the phone for frequent long chats, when letters were exchanged now and then. I remember adapting to email--at first suspicious--then delighted at how satisfying real correspondences were still possible, only faster.

But now even my email Inbox remains mostly empty of anything personal. People are tethered to their devices and even when present, I'm shocked by how many people keep checking their phones. It's disturbing and looks addictive and I loathe it.

Now that almost everyone has migrated to ****ing Facebook, my phone is nearly silent, and if I didn't reach out very deliberately, I could spend days without speaking to another soul. I do have friends and I do host gatherings. But still I just HATE the way social media has taken over. I feel isolated and more alone, yet everything knowledgeable I read about FB says that, with the exception of catching up with far-flung friends (or for the homebound) -- for the rest of most regular users, FB use INCREASES loneliness overall.

And the only reason FB exists is to mine users' data and develop horrifyingly sophisticated algorithms that reduce everyone to a click. A profitable click. Its privacy invasions creep me out and so I have held off. But, I do miss out socially because of that stubbornness.

Anyway, just a rant. Ending!

Hops