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Funny is, I use to be a bit calmer in my earlier life. It was early, late elementary, semi beginning middle. [I use school grades to estimate in between ages]. As my freshman year of middle began to ween I found myself getting harder and harder, more rigid and creating more rules and creating a lot of spacial boundaries.

Good, and here are the values of friendship:
* The tendency to desire what is best for the other
* Sympathy and empathy
* Honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart
* Mutual understanding and compassion
* Trust in one another (able to express feelings - including in relation to the other's actions - without the fear of being judged); able to go to each other for emotional support
* Positive reciprocity - a relationship is based on equal give and take between the two parties.

No influence, no suggestion, nor dictating behavior
Control is nowhere. You should investigate every word of the friendship definition. Then try to understand why you mistake control as a part of friendship in the past. Remember words are extremely important.

i am impressed with your contrast here. do you teach any subjects IRL or have a job in training?

Values of friendship:

* The tendency to desire what is best for the other: I never had these desires I only thought about myself

* Sympathy and empathy: It kind of depended on the situation. I was bullied a lot, rarely had friends. And even the kids who were bullied ended up being more popular than me. So I kind of shut this off. After a while I had no sympathy or empathy for them.

* Honesty: I wasn't entirely honest with my friends. I was kind of a pathological liar back then. But neither were they a lot of them manipulated me and I ended up with a lot of emotional scars.

* Mutual understanding and compassion: I tried to help kids who were bullied like me, thinking we shared something in common. And a lot of them left me alone after they made it to the top. So I stopped caring, I stopped having compassion for others. And stopped understanding people.

* Trust in one another: I was bullied a lot, been through a lot of manipulating relationships so I stopped trusting people.

* Positive reciprocity: It was either or. Meaning it was very on the extremes, they got everything and I got nothing. Or I got everything and they got nothing.


Does this help?

Not at all, I remembered what deduction I made when I came through the same problem a long time ago.

it is a cool technique you used. sorry, off-topic. carry on!

Yes because, your past experiences seems to weight a lot if you start a new friendship. And we can see the cycle:
1) Offering your friendship (with the symmetrical perspective of what you give is what you get)
2) Deception and loosing the friend
3) Need for control, for the next relationship to be sure to receive what you give
1) Offering your friendship (with the symmetrical perspective of what you give is what you get)
[...]

So to alter this cycle you need to introduce a new variable rather than changing something
1) Simple contact, evaluation of a potential friend, it means acquaintance and it don't have the same strength and depth as friendship, just be cordial but make your sympathy scarce. Help but don't sacrifice yourself.
2) After a period of time if the acquaintance is controlled as worthy proceed to the friendship level A), if not, keep as acquaintance because it might bring other prospects for friendship, or just drop without deception or regret
1)
2)
[...]
A) Offering your friendship according to what you have learned while the person was just an acquaintance

The new people you meet won't be able to hurt you, you will keep the control part, but just as a subtle and passive checklist. Friend should be a VIP status for you and it take time. Same for love.

Yes. Makes sense. Friendship is the VIP room.