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8994556
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20 Feb 2009, 3:07 am

(or: a treatise on excessive analysis of things that should be simple. sorry for how long this all is)

So I have a friend. I’ve known him for about a year, and I’m kind of...well, confused about where we stand with each other (i.e.: whether he sees me as a friend, or as a doormat).

We met through a student club (at the time, we were both officers in it, so we’d both attend the meetings for officers). At first, what friendship was there was a matter of hanging out and talking for 3 or 4 hours a few times per month. I don’t know about him, but I felt really at ease (if that makes sense) around him: most people (even if they’re not trying to) make me feel awkward, like I need to hide myself or play a role to hang around them, but I felt like I could be normal around him. Which made me like him, I guess. It didn’t hurt that he happened to be (at least) conversant on the areas of computer science that I find interesting.

We eventually started doing things outside the context of the student club. We’d eat out, or hang out with each other more frequently, and for longer periods of time. I took this to mean that he liked me, and wanted to be my friend. As it stands, we typically see each other at least a few times per week, cook together, eat out frequently enough together, and hang out for fairly long periods of time (6 or 8 or 10 hours at a time not being uncommon). Sounds like a friend, no? The problem, I guess, is that I’ve never been able to convince myself of that.

He can, at his best, be a fantastic person to be around: he’s considerate, inquisitive, stimulating, fun, and a bunch of other friend-y adjectives. He also seems to put up with my shortcomings. I, for example, am not really comfortable asking friends if they’d like to do stuff with me (at some point in my life, I got it into my head that this was an imposition, clingy, and/or bad to do): as a result, if I do things with friends, it’s almost always because the other person has asked me if I wanted to. Which doesn’t seem to bother him, or stop us from seeing each other fairly (relative to my other friends) frequently. It’s not like we only see each other when we want to go to dinner or see a movie, either: sometimes we’ll just sit around my room watching YouTube for hours on end, saying nothing to each other but still (apparently) being content (I am, anyway). If I were able to tell my brain to stop analyzing these things, I’d probably be able to say “Hey, jerk, you end up seeing each other 4 or 5 days out of the week, and end up hanging out for a decent chunk (12+ hours) of the weekend, usually: he likes you. shut up”, but I can’t.

Sometimes, though, he can be unfriendly, rude, or even downright mean. He, like most people who aren’t me, has many friends. If I see him on campus somewhere with them (e.g.: outside of a classroom, in the student center, etc), it’s a pretty good bet that he won’t even acknowledge me, sometimes to the point of nervously breaking off eye contact if I happen to look at him as I pass. When we’re hanging out together, though, and he sees someone he knows, he’ll stop and acknowledge them, often ignoring me while he talks to them for 5 or 10 minutes. He’s okay with venting to me about even minor inconveniences in his life (and I don’t mind listening, for the record), but if I try to discuss how I feel or what’s bothering me with him, he’ll usually blow it off with a joke or change the topic. Sometimes talking to him isn’t so much talking as listening to him talk about whatever he’s interested in, regardless of whether or not I want to talk about that, or show any signs of interest or understanding: deviations from the topic are shot down, interrupted, or ignored completely (I'm well aware that I do this too, but can usually pick up on it before other people get too terribly bored).

If this were just an “AS(D) guy has problems with his NT friend” thread, you’d probably just say “he doesn’t want to be your friend/is using you/etc”, and maybe you’d be right. The reason I post at all is that I’m not sure it’s that simple.

I’m aware that I’m not really normal. I’m not really comfortable in crowds of people I don’t know well, so I don’t hang out in the computer lab or after class like the other students in my major do. I take a while to get started talking to people, even people I know well. I could go on, but you can probably assume well enough, given the context (WP) of this post. So maybe at least some of what he does is trying to not make me uncomfortable. Some of his friends, for example, make it a point to yell, loudly, “Hi (name)!” whenever they see me walking somewhere in a crowd. I hate that: the last thing I want when I’m in a crowd is for a bunch of strangers to look at me expectantly. On at least one occasion, he’s acknowledged (sympathetically) that that probably makes me really uncomfortable. He’s also aware of the discomfort in general (he calls it social anxiety; no, we’ve not had the AS discussion) Maybe that’s why he doesn’t always start talking to me when he sees me?

Further, I’m not sure that it’s fair to simply lump him (or anyone, but that’s another topic) into the NT category. I guess if you look hard enough, you can probably find AS characteristics in anyone, but he’s certainly got a few notable ones (e.g.: stims, narrowly focused interests, lack of awareness of when the other people he’s talking to don’t share those interests, etc). So maybe he’s not NT. I don’t know what this means, though. Is it possible to explain away the meaner things that he does if I take it as an axiom that he’s not necessarily normal? Should that excuse them?

On the other hand, there’s ample evidence to support the doormat theory.

We’re both college students, and thus in theory both poor, but in practice I end up paying for a lot of what we do together (e.g.: food if we’re cooking, tickets if we see a movie). He'll usually pay for himself if he has money, but he often doesn’t. Which is fine by me: the costs really don’t matter to me, it makes him happy, and it makes me happy to hang out with my friend and make him happy. Aside from that, I also drive him places (he doesn’t drive) fairly frequently: he usually comes to me if he needs a ride to the store or the bank or something, and I usually happily oblige. The cynical part of me wonders if whatever friendship we have (regardless of what it may have been) is simply an affectation meant to keep the gravy train of free food and convenience a rollin’. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that we both enjoy cooking, eating out, and seeing movies, so him wanting to do those things could be (cynically) read as “give me free stuff” or (non-cynically) as “I want to hang out with you while doing x activity that we both like”, with neither interpretation being obviously wrong.

Failing that, it’s also possible that he sees me as a friend of last resort (i.e.: the guy you hang out with when no one that you want to hang out with is around but you still want to hang out with someone), or a sounding board for his frustrations. Which would do a fine job of explaining the fact that I don't seem to exist when other people that he knows are around, and that he's willing to let me play the sounding board for him, but is unwilling to do so in return.

In conclusion/the bit I should have put at the top so you didn't have to read: my friend is inconsistent, seemingly to the point of contradiction in how he relates to me, and I'm at a loss when it comes to forming a coherent model of our friendship, given that.

So this got long. I guess I had two goals when posting this.

1) Vent. Done.
2) A second opinion.

I’ve had a grand total of something like three close friends in my life (this guy included, for the moment), so I figure that my judgement about the nature of such friendships is probably pretty crappy. It’s entirely possible that I’m simply making a big deal that what everyone accepts as a normal, healthy friendship isn’t what my mind thinks an ideal friendship is. If so, I probably need to hear that before I go and f**k it up. It’s also possible that I’m letting my affection for my friend blind me to the fact that he’s using me, and that this is a really unhealthy way for two people to interact. If so, I probably need to hear that too. Or maybe I’m missing something.



lelia
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20 Feb 2009, 4:52 am

You write well.
Honestly, I don't know.
I know it's hard to make friends and having someone you're comfortable with is a huge plus in life. One reason I married my husband was because he was as comfortable as an old shoe. But I wonder if you shouldn't try out other people, join a cooking club, join a movie club, and/or invite other people into your outings.
He may not know he's being a jerk sometimes. What does he do when you call him on it?



outlier
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20 Feb 2009, 6:55 am

It seems there is some lack of respect there for you mixed in with real elements of friendship, resulting in the confusion you feel and the above analysis. He obviously enjoys spending time in your company. But he knows he can take advantage of you to an extent, so I think you need to make it clear that you won't accept it when he disrespects you and that it has consequences. If he persists in disrespecting you, then I guess you have to decide whether you're happy enough to take that kind of treatment, or you want to decrease the amount of time you spend together and concentrate on developing other friendships.



8994556
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21 Feb 2009, 5:20 pm

Quote:
He may not know he's being a jerk sometimes. What does he do when you call him on it?


He'll apologize. Sometimes he'll apologize out of the blue for something that I hadn't ever really thought about, or that I hadn't interpreted as rude or mean or whatever.

Bringing this up with him is probably the best option. I'm guess I'm hesitant to do that because it seems like a really delicate issue.

Thanks for the replies.



warface
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21 Feb 2009, 5:24 pm

The simplest advice i can give is : Be a man about it.


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