My Friend Never Contacts Me First?

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I have this friend, let's call him Larry for privacy. He is in my area and has a lot of my interests such as shiny hunting in Pokemon Sword, or watching funny videos on YouTube. There is just one issue, he barely ever responds to me. I got to hang out with him before my birthday and it was fun, but when he said he was going to come over Yesterday he never set the time. I waited from 11am to 2PM EST and he goes and says "I can come over at 7". He also says stuff like he is "super busy". I find myself waiting around for this guy a lot, and even though it is fun to hang out with him, he is almost never available. He also sometimes simply ghosts me for long periods of time, and never really contacts me first. Is he a good friend? Please LMK.

I would remain on friendly terms if we should come into contact, but I would not be inclined to initiate contact.

I'd say he's not really a friend. He takes you for granted and probably doesn't think of you as a friend. You should just let him go unless he actively seeks to see you. You can forget about him and find a friend that deserves you.

You could try to work on being assertive with him and say to him

"I really feel like you tell me you want to get together but don't really give me a said time or date."

My feeling is that he is not a close friend but he is still a friend. He could be saying the truth that he is genuinely busy as sometimes peoples lives can be like that especially if he has a job, but even without a job things can happen.

Best thing is to give him space and time. Wait for him to get in touch. He may leave it a month or two and then get in touch. Give a message after a few months if he does not get in touch asking if he is ok. Let him reply. If he does not reply you will know he is not then a real friend.

I know that sometimes we can seem to be overbearing because we soo desire friendship and have so few friends that we can be a bit too much of an energy drain and seem "Needy" of friendship.

Most people have lots of friends so they don't tire others out as they swap from friend to friend. I have only a few friends and it took me a lifetime to get this far! I try not to give them too much attention because I have found that if I do I can easily overstay my welcome without realizing it so I have learned to distance myself just incase I am too friendly. That way I can keep friends with those people. The issue I get is that I can miss obvious hints. I just think "Why did he say that?"

"simply ghosts me for long periods of time"?

How long is too long?

Some people are just like that

You don't want to be "scorekeeping". However you also don't want a "one sided relationship"

There is something wrong with everything

Nobody is perfect

You have a lot of life experience Shortbaldiguy!

I've got/had two friends like that lately.

1. She wouldn't contact me for months, then she'd suddenly text me demanding to do something (like have coffee) right that minute. At first I didn't have any other friends, so I was happy to be the one contacting her all the time but it got annoying and she was always disagreeing with me. So I just stopped contacting her and never heard from her again.
2. A neighbour whose mother died and I sent her a sympathy card. Her mother was horrible to her and mine is too, so we bonded over cruel mothers. We had coffee every month for a couple of years, then last autumn she started cancelling our coffees because her son was always ill, then she just said 'let's have coffee sometime, I'll check my shift pattern'. And that was that, I haven't heard from her for 2 months now. She has lots of other friends, she is very popular, she knows everyone, she is the life and soul of the village.

Anyway, that was my experience with the type of friend you have, Mitchell M. My advice is, just let them do their own thing and copy their pattern. If Larry contacts you once a month, you contact him once a month. If he contacts you once a year, you contact him once a year.

I learned that is called Reciprocity, kind of like 'do as you would be done by.' It keeps relationships evenly balanced.

I do have like 4-6 friends like that. When I message them, they are always happy to talk to me. I think what is most important is that if they are willing to be talked to by me and I stay appreciative of them. If I was in his position, and a person that I like message me, I would definitely reply to that person and talk to whatever he/she is talking about. If that person doesn't want me to be messaged by me, that person will block me or just simply ghost me. After the 3rd or 4th attempt, I would just leave that person alone. Although, it is not super perfect, I try to consider if they lose their account or whatever. I've been in that situation before. I switched to a new phone and didn't log in to that social media account so therefore I didn't communicate with that person. It doesn't necessarily mean I do not want to talk to them. It can also mean that I have no interest in talking to that person about that certain subject. There can be lots of explanations to that. I can be in the wrong about continue having them in my life but it seems that they do not have a problem with that. I am the one to message them first and they never message me first. When I message them, they will always reply back. I do not hold it against them if they miss some messages.

I would stop making contact and see how he reacts, but this person is not treating you very kindly (my 2 cents).

As soon I have moved to this country two "nice" people offered to be friends with me. I was younger and had more energy to invest in this. Everything was new: new country, new manners, I was quite lost, of course. One of them was my husband´s ex girlfriend who would say and do offensive things when meeting us in person.I said goodbye to the lady and she did not come back.
The other one was very chaotic and also very self centered (also my husband´s friend) and started to ignore me suddenly. Once in a while he would appear out of nowhere. Without entering into horrible details, this damaged me very much. Later I talked about that with a therapist and she pointed this last person having probably clinical narcissism. I didn´t know what that was at the time.
During one of his hoovering manouvers, I told him what I thought he had and he confirmed it, and I should not tell anyone. Well... it seems I am a sort of airport for toxic individuals, afterall. I became more alert of that and remain on the safer side of remaining recluse.

I think it´s much worse for people with autism to have contact with narcissists because we already think that we do many things wrong socially and those people are so callous.

It sounds like "Larry" could have ADHD. Is he also on the autism spectrum? It's possible he does really like you and want to hang out but he finds social interaction quite mentally exhausting and so waits for you to invite him, rather than initiating it himself. I dunno, I could be totally wrong about that. Either way, it's no fun to be ghosted and ignored. It certainly sounds like he's not too good at honestly communicating his feelings to you, whatever they are. Do you think you could ask him outright?

I hope you can figure out where you are with this person. It's not much information given here, so we cannot have a good idea how the situation is.
Anyway, only you can know how you feel and what you have tried with this friend, if you are not insecure, and many other things. It could be anything with him or between you ( abilities or the lack of them to connect). But, please, just never be too good to people who don't put the same effort. Don't allow yourself to get hurt trying too hard to connect with someone.

Wishing you the best here.