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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:
--- Quote from: Hopalong on February 10, 2016, 05:39:54 PM ---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
--- End quote ---
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.
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