So fed up with obsessive cycles

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I hate that I keep getting obsessed with people and I have no idea what to do. It's everyone I like- friends (or people I perceive as friends), teachers, people at work, university tutors... I hate it, as soon as someone seems to reciprocate a friendship, I 'latch on' to them and they end up avoiding or ignoring me. It's been going on ever since I can remember and I'm so, so fed up with feeling horrible all the time because someone else I really liked is avoiding me. It happened a few months ago with a woman I worked with and it took a long time to get over it (I'm still really upset about it), and now it's happened with a tutor at uni who I got on really well with. She won't reply to any of my emails and I think she's blocked me :/. I feel really, really horrible and have no idea what to do. If I try to talk to her, it'll make it worse and I have no idea what I've done- she's hardly spoken to me in the last two months and I think she's been avoiding me. I HATE it so much, really hate being so weird and freaking people out. I really don't mean to! It just seems to happen all the time :/ I hate feeling horrible all the time. Atm, i feel physically sick and can't stop shaking. I have no idea what I've done or what to do.

Bubbles, I hear you. When someone is kind to me, talks to me, they are: friend. I really struggle with this, too. Though I probably go the "unlatch" route quite a bit as I get overwhelmed when they do reciprocate - go figure - but, internally, I feel: friend.

I don't know how to advise you, and I wish I could - I'm working on it, myself. I just want to give you my support.

Best as ever, LM

Thank you for your reply. I have no idea how to break the pattern and it's really, really getting to me, I really don't understand! Horrible feeling horrible all the time :/

It's like I'm never going to manage to make a real 'friend' because as soon as someone starts being nice back, I'm obsessing over it and trying to hard not to mess it up that I end up freaking people out :/ hate it so much. I really don't mean to but I get paranoid they don't like me anymore or they're annoyed with me and I end up making it worse.

My "default"is "they don't like me." I am hugely surprised when they actually seem to be glad to see me again, and I am sure it is "just a matter of time." Argh.

Can totally relate to that! That's how I end up making it worse- I try really hard to get people to like me again and it really annoys them. Can't seem to get the balance right :/

I used to have the same problem...until I realized that it wasn't me with the problem...but really them.

It's hard to wrap yourself around their lives. But, if you really look at their perception, and everything going on around them...it's usually a lack of time that drives them away.

Unfortunately the lives we live come with incredible stress. Life, family, work, money...they all add up, and we can only deal with so much at once. I've noticed when a friend starts to get irritated, that it's not necessarily me. They're frustrated because some other stressor in their life is dragging them away, and then it becomes a choice of what time you have available to give to what stresses. If your friendship requires too much time for them to be able to give (i.e, you trying to fix something that wasn't that big of a deal anyway, asking if they like you, saying your sorry, etc, etc), they do what society does in those cases; ignore it! Avoid it at all costs. Get pissed if you have to, just to make it go away.

It's not that they don't want to talk, help, and be your friend...but, more of a case, they can't sacrifice enough time to be that friend that you so need and want. I find that's why relationships with retired folks, unemployed folks, and stoners to be much easier to hold onto...simply for no other reason than they have the time to do so.

My suggestion is to first try to control how you respond to your feelings, rather than trying to control the feelings themselves. For example let's say you meet someone tomorrow and become absolutely infatuated with them and imagine that they're the epitome of perfection and the love of your life. That's all well and good, but in your interactions with that person, do not treat them as such, treat them as you treat typical, everyday people that you interact with. Don't try to contact or talk to them excessively, perhaps even limit contact with the person to prevent any faux pas.

Part of it might be a kind of personnal space issue. If you can figure out what is a 'typical' ammount of contacts, emails, etc, and then use that as kind blueprint to follow, it might decrease the ammount of people prematurely withdrawing from you.

For instance by asking around you might find out that emailing someone daily is considered excessive, and that twice a week is more of the norm. I don't really know what it is btw, cause I have the same problem not knowing instinctively what is too much or too little.

This is very interesting!

I've always found I'm the other way; I immediately un-latch. My pshrink says that my approach is probably due to the issues I have from my adoption, but she's mad and smells of garlic and curtains.

Thank you, that's really good advice. Someone else at uni said something similar- I think this tutor is amazing because she runs marathons (running's my special interest) and has written a book about my other interest, so I always talk to her about running and a girl at uni said that maybe she doesn't want to talk about running all the time. I think it's also obvious that I think she's 'perfect' (in that she's exactly what I'd like to be like when I'm older) so maybe need to avoid her a bit or pretend she doesn't exist unless she contacts me. But I'm scared she won't or she'll forget who I am- she doesn't teach me any more.



Thank you- that's also really helpful. I've made that mistake so many times before- when my 'best [only] friend' from primary school went to a different high school, I called her every night to try to speak to her. In the end, she stopped picking up the phone but I thought she just hadn't heard it so called again- ended up calling 10-12 times a night before another girl who was friends with her told me that it was too much and I should leave her alone for a while. I genuinely didn't realise.

The thing that confuses me is that I don't email her daily or even weekly. I'm not at uni much (I'm part-time so only go every 3-4 weeks) and I only contact her directly when I'm going to uni to see if she wants to catch up. I know when I was at uni, I might have been annoying talking to her too much after lectures, but now I hardly see her. Really don't understand. it doesn't help that recently I had a situation where a [someone I thought was] a close friend started avoiding me and not replying to texts/calls- I ended up emailing her really openly and asking what was going on and explaining that I found it hard to figure out how much to contact people (I'd been calling her 1-2 times a week which she was getting annoyed with but hadn't said, and when she started avoiding me, I tried to contact her more because I felt horrible and didn't know what I'd done which made it worse). Luckily, she emailed back explaining, and now I don't call her and we don't meet up but still text and email every couple of weeks. It feels the same now with my tutor though and I really don't know what to do. I can't exactly email her in the same way coz she's a tutor (uni don't know about AS), but don't want to make it worse.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

I'm not sure how much this will apply, but it is a method I use when messaging someone. After sending a message I do not send another one until I get a response back from them. If a long time passes, I might send a second one to just check to see if something is wrong, but after sending two with no response I stop contacting them. I just figure they are not interested in continuing the contact, respect their privacy and leave it at that.

Well for your tutor, I would recommend treating her as just that, a tutor. If you need to actually be tutored, then feel free to contact her and keep the interaction strictly based on the subject you are being tutored in. But if you just want to contact her to talk or hang out or something, then I'd probably say that's probably not a good idea.

That's what I'm trying to do. It's hard to judge though because I'm not at uni that often and I won't see her at all if I don't contact her.



This is where I'm finding it really tricky. Up til now, if I got on with a tutor/teacher, it was really easy to know where you stand- there's obvious boundaries. Now it's different because she's not actually my tutor any more and at PhD level, it's a more equal relationship. I know a lot of people who meet up with their tutors socially, and I can't work out the boundaries. I don't want to go to the pub with her or anything outside of uni (that would be too much boundary-crossing for me!) but I got on well with her and would like to keep in touch. She's not my tutor and doesn't have anything to do with my PhD and I don't know where to go from here. We have similar interests that I used to talk to her about and would like to keep it on that level, but it's hard because I don't see her at all any more. I'm finding the whole mixed boundary thing confusing atm- not just with her, with the whole PhD student atmosphere where you're supposed to be on a more adult level and it feels really weird. I'm finding it hard with the woman who is my tutor because I don't know her that well and still see her in a 'teacher' way, but she's acting like I'm on her level which is a bit weird and I don't feel totally comfortable with it even though that's how it's supposed to be :/