Friends

[PerkyOchrePeer]

I was chatting with someone the other day who said they prefer to chat by WhatsApp rather than meet up and she said they never asked me to me tap so I said why don't you ask them and she said I can't be bothered and I just wanted to ask is this normal

What?

And again in English please

What I meant was should you always make arrangements to see your friends even if you have a busy life because I think it's important to meet face to face rather than just speak to them on messenger

If a ‘friend’ can’t be bothered to meet up then not much of a friend is she? We are all busy, and can make time if we want to.

I dont understand your reply because when i asked google i got this

friends don't have to meet up to maintain a friendship, but regular interaction, whether online or in person, can help strengthen bonds.

I have friends I’ve known for years that I chat to rarely and see even less.

We always pick up where we left
off though.

My oldest friend is always wassapping me but we rarely meet because we each have our own lives and are different inso far as i make plans and she does everything on the spur of the moment so I can never make plans to meet up with her and the only time I can ever meet up with her is if she calls me on the day and says what you doing today lets go for a coffee ID if I say I'm already doing something how about next week she will say I don't know what I'm doing next week so I said have you got anything planned and she will say I don't make plans the days free but it depends what crops up and if nothing crops up she will say okay I'm not doing anything today let's meet. Got to me doesn't sound like a very good basis for a friendship but as I say we can get on the phone and have a really good laugh so I don't know

The problem is the word friend is used to describe any amiable relationship. A relationship where two people never meet is vastly different to one where people see each other frequently. We need new words.

Why are you googling?
meet up or don’t meet up.
there are no laws about this op.

I live alone so meeting up with people is important if you've got one friend who is waiting for you to ask and then you are waiting for them to ask then you are never going to meet so someone has got to take the initiative

Why not just make some new friends who actually want to see you?

I do and I have done but when you've known a friend for 40 years or so you would hope that you'd want to maintain their friendship by meeting in person because you've got a history together

Don't wait for them to ask you to meet, ask them instead. If they keep making excuses then seek out new friends who actually want to meet in person. Maybe join groups like Meet up as a start.

As i said, I do have people I meet up with but I want to meet up with friends I've known for years just to talk about days gone by and reminisce about the past. I don't need Meetup Groups. I already belong to one local group in my area but I'm talking about the friends I've known since my teenage years and early twenties that I want to meet up with them for them to get off their backside and say let's meet up for a coffee and it's just not happening so maybe I'll stop bothering and make do with the people I know now

My longest friend and I have nothing in common anymore and the only reason we keep in touch is because we've been friends for so long but she is quite critical of me for instance I like to relax at home after a hard day's work and she doesn't she likes to go out and she criticizes me for relaxing at home and she says to me I don't know how you can sit at home I could never do that and some of my closing choices she criticizes like for example I wear leggings and she said to me she hated them because they're like tights and when I wore a checked shirts and she saw me she said to me why are you wearing that and I said why shouldn't I what's wrong with it and she says it looks like my pajama top it's not something you wear out it's something you wear to bed and I'm sick of it I really am

Bumping up this

You want your old friend to make plans to see you and stop criticising you. That's understandable, but you can't make her.

You can only accept her as she is, or give up on her and focus on other friends.

What else can anyone say?

You are correct and I have another friend who I have known for about 12 years and she has never in all the years I've known how criticized me and so with the critical friend I think I'll have to give her up. I had a very critical mother and I'm sorry to say this but when she died I just thought no more criticism and I was free. I put up with it because she was my mother but with a friend you don't have to put up with it so I'm going to call it a day

It's such a shame that it has come to this because we met at college and go to and really well but over the years we've both changed and we no longer have much in common and I've got totally different interests to the interests I had when I was in my teens and Twenties so as I said I think it's time to let go and move on

She also portrays covert racism which is very cleverly disguised but she will come out with statements that really brings it home. The other day we were discussing holidays and I said I'd like to go to Ireland and entry said I hate the Irish because they cause trouble and she said I hate the Scottish too. Ivan said to her there is good and bad in every race and every denomination and you should take people on an individual basis

It is a sad thing to realise, but it sounds like you are right to let that old friendship go.

If you’ve had a highly critical mother then I think you have to be careful not to allow friends to be the same, as you can sometimes unconsciously accept it as familiar.

Yes

Saying ‘I hate the Irish’ is pretty much the reverse of ‘covert’.

Someone should not say I hate the Irish that is horrible and I challenged her on this by saying how would you feel if someone said they hated Jewish because she is Jewish and she said nobody would say that because we are good people and I said that didn't stop the Holocaust from happening so she's a spiteful person and I've dumped her

Yes. My point is that this is overt, not covert.