How to know if someone doesn't want to be your friend?

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How to know if someone doesn't want to be your friend? How to know if someone doesn't want to talk to you? How to know if someone is avoiding you?

Are you asking "in general?"

I would like to know this, too. I've noticed that a lot of my friends never initiate communications with me. It's awkward always being the one calling or texting or IMing.

I suspect it has something to do with my not-so-great rapport-building skills. I'm really only good at intellectual discussions. But I've been working on this disparity.

I assume they don't unless proved otherwise.

You mean how you can know that an NT person isn't interested in friendship and talking and is trying to avoid you?

That's not easy to explain.

At first, you can see it by their facial expression, which is of course no help if you're not very good at reading facial expression. Here comes the tricky bit of detecting a 'not interested' facial expression. The person will probably smile at you, but the smile is tense. People have different smiles. If someone is really happy and wants to be friends/talk, he or she shows the "Duchenne" smile.

If you look at the eyes, you see wrinkles in the outer corners and under the lower eyelid when someone does the Duchenne smile. A real smile is with both the mouth and the eyes. A person who isn't interested gives a fake smile. Only the mouth smiles. There are no wrinkles around the eyes, the eyes are wide open, and very often the person will look away frequently.

Here's the difference. The women on the left isn't interested. The man on the right wants to talk and be friends.




If you keep talking to someone who isn't interested, but who is too polite to tell you to shut up, he or she will begin to move away from you. Not long after, this person will make some excuse to end the conversation.

Whether a person is avoiding you (over a longer period of time) is more difficult to tell. Honestly, I know to many NT's who mess up in this respect and don't get it either. But in general: the person avoids talking to you, pretends not to see you, literally turns his/her back on you, doesn't return phone calls, never visits and if you keep approaching this person, they'll finally tell you to leave them alone. By then, they are quite annoyed. People try to avoid outright rejection as much as they can and hope that you 'get it' by the way they behave.

Is that what you wanted to know?

Since, generally speaking, people aren't forthcoming with the truth, you have to find the signs. One thing they do is "pass" you off to somebody else, as in, "Find people who can help you with this or that problem." In other words, "leave me the h*** alone!"

Also, generally speaking, people try to weasel out of saying "I don't want to be your friend" by being silent, not responding to emails, or by being so fake it reeks. They then hope you'll get the hint to leave them the h*** alone.

It's fairly obvious to me when a person isn't interested in being friends with me/doesn't want to talk to me. They generally avoid eye contact and make no effort to talk to me or ask any questions about me. I fail to see how anyone could not pick up these signs - they're pretty obvious as the person generally avoids you. They make it very hard going if you attempt to talk to them, giving very short or one word replies to cut the conversation short and their tone of voice is usually cold and unfriendly.

Some people may talk to you but it will be in a general way just to be polite and they will say only as much as they need to say ie the conversation won't flow and be easygoing and enjoyable.

I don't tend to get members of my own gender ie women wanting to be friends with me so I don't really know the specific positive signs to look for from a woman, just the negative signs that shouldn't be there. I suppose the person would show genuine interest in what you had to say, using good eye contact and smiling. They would seek ways to communicate with you by phone or online and might suggest going or meeting up somewhere ie they'd seek you out to talk to and want to see more of you - that's the main sign I'd use as an indication of interest.

If I get this kind of interest off a person it's far more likely to be a man than a woman and then it's probably not strictly just friendship they're after.

They reject me, push me away, never want to be with me, they are always "busy" and have reasons why they can't come or won't talk to me. They ignore me too and never talk to me. That is how I can tell.

They try to get away from me. Simple as that. Their loss.

I'm bad with this, too. I follow people around at school and I can't tell if they are aggravated with me. Also, I want to make friends online, so I will keep messaging them over and over until they respond, and it really hurts me when they don't.