Am I a problem friend? Honesty welcome

[Mountaingoatling]

I am posting for honest instinctive responses and questions which might help me reflect.

I make friends exceptionally easily.

After a few years, my friends seem to dump me. Never unkindly. More slow fade and boundary setting.

What is wrong with how I am as a friend?

By boundary setting I mean, they don't initiate conversations, say they are too busy to meet and seem to cut conversations short. At which point I obviously don't stay in touch either.

I am passionate, opinionated and always reply to texts as soon as I can. I am often asked for advice by friends.

In the early days of friendship people say things like, "you totally understand me", "I'd be lost without you", "you are amazing".

After a few years they just seem to move on.

I'd really like to keep friends for longer while understanding some will be transitory.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong.

I am a bit lax at birthdays (I don't celebrate my own) but do mark them and attend the events, buy a gift.

Be honest. I can take it.

Creative writing exercise?

Young person bored on school holidays.

Or a demonstration of why the OP finds keeping friendships a challenge ...

I need to know how you make new friends easily with social anxiety it takes me years to warm up to someone so most of my friends are work friends

You sound lovely OP. Don’t look at yourself too hard.

Id suggest really taking a look at your upbringing under supervision. I said for years i had a good upbringing and was happy but as an adult i have textbook trauma response issues. I now realise that although my parents did really try, my childhood was full of violence, abandonment and fear that you wouldnt dream of subjecting children to now . It was always just said i was 'sensitive' back then.

You are exhausting and far too intense. Your “passionate and opinionated” is actually overbearing and rude.

Your ridiculous comments, for example about ice skating, are not funny but tedious.

It would be far too much hard work to be around you. It’s all about you and you’re dismissive of anything you don’t like but attempt—and fail—to make it amusing to try and mask how rude you’re being.

Passionate and opinionated is not lovely. It’s a red flag I would always avoid.

How can you possibly know that, pinkcircus?

@BrozTito

How can you possibly know that, pinkcircus?

From everything OP has told us and how she is in her posts.

You should work for MI5 with those incredible analytical skills.

Good grief, could you be any more judgmental and unpleasant to the OP there, pinkcircus? Talk about taking any opportunity to give someone a good kicking...

OP, one thing to bear in mind is that a lot of people have become quite inwardly focussed on their immediate family over the past 18 months. Some are excited to be out mingling again and seeing friends but for many, not so much. So it might not all be down to you, if that helps.

Do you have any friends where you share a common purpose? Some kind of community group or volunteering for something? Something like that, where you have a shared commitment, might help with staying in touch rather than relying on specialy making plans to do things

Do you go to your friends with your problems as well as then coming to you? Sometimes people cut off if they feel an imbalance in a relationship, like they don't always want to feel like the 'needy' one. Also they may not feel you are relatable if you need seen to have any problems. But honestly, it could be anything! It could just be a natural drifting apart. Don't be too hard on yourself xx

OP I don't know if you're still reading, but for what it's worth I think you sound lovely.

What I think looking back on my friendships that have lasted decades, is that I didn't first meet these people and think, "I want us to be friends". I didn't straightaway become friends with them; it evolved into getting on well with them, then progressed slowly into lasting friendships. We slowly evolved into our friendship, along the way, we got to know each other more and more, and then, after a year or two, the friendships became stronger. Then, we could "read" each other like a book. Because the groundwork had been put in. Does that make sense? I don't need to ask how my friends are - if I meet up with them, I can tell immediately from their face/manner/voice if something is troubling them. I am quite intuitive, but that aside, because I know them really well, it's instinctive.

Sounds to me, that you rush into friendships, you haven't down the slow burn groundwork (a friendship that is meant to happen will evolve, you don't need to put too much effort into it), so you are playing catch up with second guessing them.

Just my thoughts.

Be selective - don't straightaway want to be friends. Be friendly, polite, take it slowly and see what happens. The ones worth having will respond. The ones that don't - well won't. And you'll lose nothing, because you didn't invest too much in the first place.

Good luck OP.

SophieB100 good point, one of my best friends I actually didn't like much at first, she was one of a circle of people I was in. I thought she was a bit of a drip. The impression she projected at a surface level was a bit limp, or so I thought at the time. Then slowly I discovered she had a core of steel but was very measured how much she showed, and she taught me to wind my neck in and not be so forthright. She is everything I am not and I admire so many of her qualities that I wouldn't have a hope in hell of achieving... And likewise. She's my go-to for advice cos she always sees things differently to me, together we can conquer the world.

Exactly @PieceOfString I have a close friend of almost forty years (god, where did those years go?!) and we started off as work colleagues and I found her quite aloof and standoffish - but after awhile I saw the real her. We are very different, but we just click and admire each other. I trust her, she trusts me - we've got each others backs.

Subs lovely. Slow burn is often so much more likely to go the distance. 😊