Does friendship require action or just talk?

Page 1 of 1 [ 6 posts ] 

banana247
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 5 Mar 2012
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Posts: 247
Location: Wrong Planet

05 Apr 2018, 4:48 pm

I am part of a "group of best friends". One of them even says I'm their best friend ever.

However, literally none of them are really there in the bad times.
Some don't respond at all, others are just busy or hard to get ahold of.
They aren't there in the casual times... I try to keep casual contact or send them funny friendly memes or articles or whatever once in a while, they often don't respond or they just respond with an emoji or something.
They aren't there in the good times.. I feel like they would be nice if i shared some sort of good news, but i would only feel comfortable doing so if it was like EARTH SHATTERING good news. It doesn't feel like the relationship really warrants telling each other things.
They also don't ever need me for anything.. they don't ask for favors, they don't call to vent, they don't share their good news, their casual news, want me for small talk if they're bored, basically NOTHING.
But then, when I see them for christmas or something, or on the off chance that I do get ahold of them, they act like i'm their best friend and tell me how much I'm their best friend and are all over me.

Those occasional times make me feel like i have best friends, and their words definitely sound like i have wonderful best friends, but all the rest of the time, they don't really seem to support their words with action.

Is this normal or has anyone else experience this? It seems to me that they aren't my friends because they don't seem to have a desire to tell me things, ask me things, OR ask me FOR things. We all live far away from each other now, so we see each other for holidays sometimes or weddings. It just seems weird. I wonder if they are like that with each other or if i'm just the odd one out. I wonder if other friends are all talk like this but just get wrapped up in their own lives and the people immediately in their lives.



HistoryGal
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 16 Jan 2017
Age: 60
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,648
Location: Orlando

06 Apr 2018, 8:31 am

Find real friends. These guys are not interested in you.



serpenEncipheror
Hummingbird
Hummingbird

Joined: 18 Jan 2018
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Posts: 24
Location: China

10 Apr 2018, 12:31 am

This is really weird.

Me and my friends talk really a lot. Yeh some of the times I send problems to them and they feel like they can't solve it and they'll ignore me. I do so some of the times too. But most of the times they really help a lot.

I have a friend who has a weird sense of humor which I can't connect to. So I can only send emojis to respond to his jokes. Recently I realized is might be impolite so we had a super long discussion about our different sense of humor, which is pretty fun and I finally start to get his jokes.

Maybe you should ask them? Ask them why they don't respond. And friends get angry towards each others a lot. If you feel angry towards them, express it and start a conflict. Conflicts reveal true problems.

And.. Sometimes people like to declare to be others' "best friends" just because not having best friends makes one seem like a loser.


_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 106 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 107 of 200
You seem to have both neurodiverse and neurotypical traits.

I'm pretty sure about being neurotypical though, since my neurodiverse traits never caused me any trouble and I get along well with other neurotypical people.

Maybe this means I can get along well with neurodiverse people, too? I never get a chance to prove this because in China schools don't enroll students with ASD and therefore I have no neurodiverse people around me.

So I am here!


kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

10 Apr 2018, 9:28 am

I don't believe there should be overt "requirements" for friendship.

It would be nice if a "friend" listened to me when I needed to talk to somebody, though. But it shouldn't be obligatory. I don't care if a friend comes to my funeral; I probably wouldn't see him/her, anyway. I don't think I want to get cremated, though.

I don't like depending on people; and I don't like people depending upon me in an obligatory sense. I want to feel like I'm doing something for someone because I feel like it. And I want the same from the other person.



whatamievendoing
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Aug 2016
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
Location: Finland

10 Apr 2018, 10:08 am

serpenEncipheror wrote:
And friends get angry towards each others a lot.


Or almost not at all. I can't recall a single time my best friend was angry towards me or I was angry towards him.

Of course I don't mean to deny the fact that friends can get angry towards each other. But there are also cases like my best friend and I where anger is a nearly absent emotion when it comes to communication between us.


_________________
“They laugh at me because I'm different; I laugh at them because they're all the same.”
― Kurt Cobain


serpenEncipheror
Hummingbird
Hummingbird

Joined: 18 Jan 2018
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Posts: 24
Location: China

10 Apr 2018, 10:50 am

whatamievendoing wrote:
serpenEncipheror wrote:
And friends get angry towards each others a lot.


Or almost not at all. I can't recall a single time my best friend was angry towards me or I was angry towards him.

Of course I don't mean to deny the fact that friends can get angry towards each other. But there are also cases like my best friend and I where anger is a nearly absent emotion when it comes to communication between us.



Sorry about making the hasty generalization.

I was trying to say it's okay to get into conflicts with friends, and it's normal to feel irritated by one's friends.

Personally, me and my best friend have quite contradicting personalities - she likes being sarcastic while I'm always literal; our emotions and motivations work differently and so on - so we irritate each other constantly. Actually we had a hostile relationship for months when we first met each other in middle school. But then we got along somehow, and we are still buddies now even after we went to different high schools. We haven't had conflicts for months since we possibly had gone through all of them and agreed to accept the differences between us.

It's cool that you can get through things without having a fight! I was being really careless to say friends all get angry towards each other a lot. I was taking the case of me and my best friend as a general case. Sorry about that.


_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 106 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 107 of 200
You seem to have both neurodiverse and neurotypical traits.

I'm pretty sure about being neurotypical though, since my neurodiverse traits never caused me any trouble and I get along well with other neurotypical people.

Maybe this means I can get along well with neurodiverse people, too? I never get a chance to prove this because in China schools don't enroll students with ASD and therefore I have no neurodiverse people around me.

So I am here!