this week I messaged a friend and asked if she might be interested in seeing a play. She said no. I assumed she was busy and it was too much of a trek, not that I am horrible
@CharlotteRumpling it sounds as if you are someone who still uses the “social muscle”. If that was the first time you had contacted anyone to propose doing something for years it may have become magnified in importance in your brain, a bit like it may seem daunting to propose a first date if you are coming out of a 20 year marriage.
I keep coming back to the fact that the only real solution to this is to make sure you keep the social muscle working, even if it’s infrequent.
There are so many posts, on this thread and many others, from people who vastly overthink interactions with other people which could potentially lead to the creation of a friendship or which could fall under the umbrella of friendship forming behaviour. She didn’t message back within three hours: block and delete. She wasn’t free Thursday night: she must be cow. She blew me out because her kid was sick: too much drama.
In the vast majority of cases these things are nothing. They are nobody’s fault, they are just trivial things and not intended as sleights. But people persistently over interpret and interpret negatively.
When people invest too much in any relationship it shows and it’s off putting to be on the receiving end. A lot of people scare potential friends off because they overreact to things like this and behave in frankly mad ways, making themselves look unstable and needy.
Thr social muscle is what keeps your hand in and normalises these things so they don’t assume gargantuan importance in your own head. And the people who retreat from society because of “my little family” (or whatever) lose the muscle.
Use it or lose it.