Submitter writes: Developer-anon wandering back in, apropos of a post a day or two ago about an anon who’s breaking off ties with a friend because they constantly need to be comforted. [snipped] I thought the level of contact was appropriate, because they were texting me saying ‘hey, where are you’ when I was out of the house for a day. They were starting conversations and suggesting rp topics about half the time. I was bouncing on them a little more than usual because I’ve been stir-crazy from the winter and more than a little bored, but I… didn’t think I was being too demanding? I try to be careful about that, especially because this is an ex so there’s past emotional history. Hmm. Possible that something changed on their end? I’ve seen cases where an ex stays friendly and in-contact until they start dating, then starts thinking it’s too much contact. Or possibly where the person they’re dating starts fussing. Oh, wait. That's possible. I don't think they've been dating - though I might not be aware - but they did start a new job recently and have been in a different social environment. That may be an influence. Most of our interaction has been RP, lately. Partially because I’ve been bored and too fried from work-related social interaction to seek out a wider friendgroup - I’ve probably been overreliant on this friend. And partially because it feels like any time we talk about something more serious, like history or news or psychology, they either aren’t interested, tell me to go google it when my real purpose was to strike up a conversation, or one of us ends up upset. That sounds to me like it may have been not-okay for a while, but the RP was covering for it because it’s a recreational activity. Yeah, that's probably true. I was hoping it would improve when they just... understood, if I could just explain things well enough, but that's not working. :\ [snipped] I’m definitely easily upset; I have diagnosed major depression and some anxiety issues, and a history of emotional abuse, and I tend to catastrophize social conflict. Minor remarks will make me cry. I’ve told them over and over that this is my issue, it’s not something they need to comfort me about or troubleshoot, and they don’t have to tiptoe around me. I don’t want them to, I know that my reactions are inappropriate and irrational, and having people just give me time to cool off and otherwise ignore my freakouts is probably the best way to work past them. Huh. Sounds almost like mild-BPD, although if it is, you’re doing pretty much exactly the right thing to deal with it, I think. Definitely an irrational fear of abandonment that seems similar, but very little on the other symptoms. (No impulsiveness, stable self-image, no threats of self-harm, no clinginess (swings the other way to 'everyone will want to leave so obviously better to let them without fighting', which is what I'm trying to avoid...), etc.) Obviously hard to self-diagnose, but I'm fairly sure that this is actually detritus from Bad Experiences rather than an ingrown issue. (Please comment if this seems inaccurate!) My current hypothesis is that my mother is kinda BPD of the 'hermit' subtype, and that's introduced some maladaptive behaviors, in combination with other Bad Experiences. It's definitely irrational and inappropriate on my end, though, so... exposure and rational analysis, yay. (Mom likes to undermine my friendships as "not real" or somehow "creepy" - e.g., internet friends are not real friends, being friends with anyone older than you is creepy. The only exceptions are people who she's in contact with more than I am, so she can monitor everything, and a dude she knew was a stalker but she didn't tell me. She's literally told me, as an adult, that she doesn't believe I'm capable of making friends and therefore she has to do it for me. When I was texting a friend who had a non-local area code, as a college student, she decided that I had been lured into an evil drug cult. I wish I were joking.) (She also obsesses over the idea that I think she's stupid and hate her, and becomes histrionic or angry with me, seemingly at random. 'Please don't do inappropriate thing' -> 'I AM THE WORST MOTHER EVER AND WILL NEVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN'. I'm the scary, threatening child, because I read as an intellectual and she's very insecure about her intelligence, and because I assert a need for boundaries.) (Not an excuse for me to act like a jerk, but a reason. Just gotta work through it. And avoid her.) So I’ve been trying to be as forthright and honest about my emotions and motivations as possible, while doing my best to lampshade my biases and continuing to make it clear that my psychological issues are mine and not their problem to deal with. Because I’m not trying to manipulate them, so if they understand what I’m really thinking, they’ll understand that, right? And I promised them years ago that I wouldn’t lie to them, and I… still take that seriously, so when they ask what’s wrong… So that’s where the oversharing comes in, because I guess that was… not right. Intellectualizing interpersonal issues frustrates them, but I can’t do the magic mindreading of mood and intention. The best I can do is gather evidence and compare it against mental models, that’s all I have, I don’t understand body language and when people are lying and all these magic inferences that other people make, no matter how hard I try. Honestly, this sorta feels to me like you’re fine and they’re being a jerk. Like, if two people keep ending up in conflicts because one of them assumes the other is trying to be manipulative, and won’t consider the possibility that they’re not… That’s a bad sign. Especially because the fact that you repeatedly clearly say you don’t want them to do the things that these would be intending to make them do if they were manipulative is pretty good evidence that you are not trying to achieve those goals. It feels like a bad sign. For what it's worth, they have a diagnosed BPD parent, so this may be secondhand brain issues interacting badly. And my emotions sometimes come across wrong - too strong, or just the wrong emotions, because of the body language / tone issues - which may be contributing. But yeah, it feels bad and frustrating that they won't believe me. Also you are definitely sounding at least like you have the social processing things associated with autism, and one of the things might be that if they’re used to you having the “wrong” body language, they might be more distrustful of your claims about motivation than they would be if they didn’t rely so heavily on that. Social processing issues compounded by long-term isolation as a kid - I didn't really have any friends from about six to fourteen, and then that social group was emotionally abusive and exploded. So it's difficult for me to tell if it's an inborn issue or just being behind because of those years with minimal human interaction? That's a chicken or the egg issue with autism though, I think. :P I thought that that required an actual desired outcome, and I don’t have one. I’m just trying to present the facts as logically as I can, so that they can make their own conclusions and course of action, as they see fit. I do tend to present myself in a ‘cute innocent little girl’ role, as a learned stress response to keep people from being mad at me, but we’re both aware of that, and that it’s not really voluntary. That definitely is manipulative, but I’ve been working on it as hard as I can, and it’s hard to override that automatic response. I’d be inclined to sort of dismiss it as not serious enough to worry about in terms of being “manipulative”, too. I think it's also very obvious, e.g., inappropriate apologizing to keep people from being mad at me. But... I hate being manipulative and lying; I don't want to be even mildly manipulative. They’ve said they want to be “casual friends”, but I’m not sure what that entails or what they want from me. I guess it means partially that we should avoid talking too much about Feelings, and talk much less often, but… I don’t know. My neurosis is saying that I should never talk to anyone again because I’m just a burden on everyone, and that we were never really friends and I should never bother them again, and I know that’s not rational. But I don’t know where the middle ground is. And I don’t have a mental model for ‘we used to be close but now we’re deliberately trying to be distant’, as opposed to ‘we’ve grown distant because we haven’t talked in a long time’; I don’t really know what that would look like, without severing ties entirely. I’d rather not do that, both because it contradicts their stated wishes and because this is one of the few friendships I’ve been able to maintain for very long, for various brain and rl reasons. But this strained smalltalk hurts, and I’m not good with smalltalk anyway. I’m not really interested in a relationship that’s just ‘look at this cute picture off tumblr’; intellectual and emotional conversations are pretty much the entire point of friendship for me. Except for the anxiety issues, I’ve had pretty much exactly this problem a couple of times. One of my friends, we actually spent about a month not talking to each other because we’d been pissing each other off so much, but we’re talking again now and it’s working pretty well. ... That's a really good point. That not talking now doesn't have to mean that we'll never talk or be friends again. That helps with the stress a lot. But I think you’d be totally entitled to just say something like: Either I’m an actual friend or I’m not a friend, there isn’t really any middle ground. If I’m an actual friend, that means you’ll accept that when I say I don’t want special attention or comforting when my anxiety makes me freak out, that I really mean it, and just ignore it instead of accusing me of emotional manipulation. If you don’t trust me enough to accept my claims about my motivation, how does it even make sense to say we’re friends? I didn't think I was completely off the mark on 'appropriate behavior for friends to have' but just... really needed another set of eyes again. Thanks. The 'Big Serious Conversations' I try to have with them never end well, which seems itself to be a warning sign. I'm going to give it some time so I can mull over the best way to talk to them some more and give them some space, and... hopefully things will be fixable. If not... well, I needed to find more people to socialize with anyway. Thanks. :)
... Yeah, I would consider her behavior really fucking freaky, and yours sort of characteristic of fleas from that kind of thing. And the "I am the worst mother ever" thing is a classic BPD response. And she's giving herself far too much credit there, I think I know at least a dozen people whose moms are worse. Good luck! And you may find that solving this improves your social spoon supply very significantly, people like that are really tiring.
Yeah, that definitely sounds like BPD-fleas, in both their case and yours. Like, from their end, I kind of see the flea-processing as a reaction to people who DO do that kind of thing - they genuinely don't recognize when something is Just Venting, and the implied response-they-should-give if it's Not Venting is too much for them. So they're pushing you away because they can't genuinely believe in Just Venting, and feel the need to Make Things Right (because they had to do that with BPDmom) and that's gotten overwhelming for them. (That is probably worded badly compared to what the concept in my head is, but hopefully it gets the idea across.) I regularly have a similar problem with my mom, which I refer to her as being Solutions-Focused - she'll try to give me advice on a thing, and I have to stop her and tell her that she needs to not, because that overwhelms me, and I need to just vent and then I'll be okay. She really doesn't get it, and I've noticed other people doing it as well, though not as intensely as she does. I'm pretty sure in her case it comes from her experiences with Early Parent Death and having to take care of her two younger siblings.
This is something I unfortunately do ... taking venting and feeling as if it's implying that I Have To Do Something About It. I think it was something passive-aggressive in the way my family interacted, and to some lesser degree how some British people act; e.g. orders from the boss aren't phrased as orders, they're just suggestions if not just observations said as if nothing was expected.
Yeah, Mom has problems; it's really gratifying to have that confirmed. She's not the worst parent ever, but if we were anything but relatives, I would have cut ties a long time ago. I'd mostly just feel bad for her, since she seems like a pretty unhappy person, but I'm still kinda terrified of her. I'm still working through whether I want any contact with her at all. Unfortunately, I really do like hanging out with my brother and dad, so I'm currently keeping to 'superficial social contact and refusing to be alone with her, and leaving if she's too much of a jerk'. And she does actually own my house, exasperatingly; it used to be my grampa's. I'm moving if there's another serious boundary breach, or if she refuses to sell it to me in a reasonable time period. Hope so! I care a lot about them, but... it's tough to always be second-guessing what you're saying or doing for fear that it will be misinterpreted. Too much like Mom. Now, I just have to convince my irrational thought patterns that I am capable of making friends. Oh, irrationality.
No, that totally makes sense. They strongly dislike talking about their mother, so I don't have a lot of details - and wouldn't feel comfortable sharing if I did, that's personal stuff - but I think it would make a lot of sense. Hurray for the cycle of headbees. :P That's something concrete enough that I can probably work on mitigating it, though. E.g., if venting is one of the big problems, I can avoid venting at them, or try lampshading venting more explicitly. They said that they feel I'm constantly relying on them as a "pillar of strength" to such an extent that it's actually damaging for me which ... seems like an extreme overstatement to me, but a lot like 'required response to Not Venting is overwhelming'. I think that's common to a greater or lesser extent for everybody. It sucks when people feel bad, you want them to feel better! I do it too, to some extent - mostly, feeling like I'm obligated to offer to help when people are doing chores or something, even if I really don't want to. Asking/guessing culture conflict, again, I guess?
Well, bad news, one less friend. Good news, one less really high-stress sort of weird maybe-toxic "friend".
Yeah. I'm not going to completely assume that's their intent yet, because it is possible to hit the wrong button and accidentally do so. But this seems like a strong indicator. ... fuck. You had to do it like that, man? I explicitly told them that if they decided interacting at all was too draining, or if my behavior was causing further problems, to let me know. It's possible that they somehow found out I was talking about them here and got mad, but given that there's nothing personally identifiable discussed, it seems reasonable to discuss, in the interests of improving things. I hope. And possibly paranoid to worry about. Just... fuck. Plus side, been doing the social interaction thing today. And hopefully not being awful. So that's something.
Yeah, I get the impression they were sorta being a jerk, so. Not totally surprised, albeit still a little sad.
Yeah, me neither. Just wish things could have gone differently. I'm going to miss them. But... in a lot of ways, the 'them' they were a few years ago, more than the person they are now. Things have been strained for a while, all around.
I have more than once had the experience of realizing that the person I miss hadn't been seen in months or years. :(
Yeah. I still like this person they've become pretty well, but... we've been growing apart for years. And they've gotten a lot more... jerkish, for lack of a better term. Aggressive, I guess. Social environment changes people. I just... wish they hadn't felt like they had to lie to me. Obviously, data here is limited and biased, but... does it look like there's anything I should have done differently? It would make me feel better to understand the situation better. I'm... going to go poke through Jesse's stucky fluff recs, and avoid retreating into an antisocial ball, I guess. I had a really nice day, other than this; just need to focus on that.
I can't think of anything that you could reasonably have known you should have done differently. I mean, maybe with omniscience, sure.
Sidenote, on the parental front. Is it controlling to 'google stalk' your adult children - e.g., hunting down their online identities and watching them? She's done that in the past, which makes me paranoid about posting anything on non-locked forums. (Reason #134789 that I don't tie my rl identity to my online one.)
Wow, yeah, that's controlling. Of my parents, my mom has the most boundary issues, and she follows and comments on my writing blog and my cooking blog and my Facebook and my Twitter. My stepmom, who is professionally a media person and thus on All The Sites, leaves my blogs alone and hasn't hunted me down anywhere else and just shares things she thinks will amuse me on my Facebook wall, and will very rarely reply to something on my Twitter. My dad will comment on some of my Facebook statuses and read specific of my blog posts if I email them to him but otherwise leaves me alone online. I consider my mom to be pushing the bounds of acceptable involvement and nosiness and tracking of my online activity, and she only interacts with me on my public-facing semi-professional social media that is not locked.
My mom reads and follows some of my media (and is registered here), but I don't think it's controlling-and-stalking, because there's no hunting down involved. And I don't think she pays any attention to my online interactions that I don't point out, mostly?
Yeah, it's not keeping in touch that bothers me, it's the fact that she just completely fails to understand that I might want any privacy at all. She thinks it's obviously a sign that something is Terribly Wrong if I don't share my entire life with her. Thought so. Sigh. Mom has issues. Thanks.
