I just dont "get" some people...

Dunroamin

Felicity wrote: »

I am not sure that is what the OP wants to hear right now. Shame on you really if that is the only comment you can make on her post .... why bother?

What's the point in only telling the OP things that she wants to hear rather than telling her the truth? How is that going to help her?

RedBern

. I was walking along a busy high street, I opened my mouth to say I hi, she ducked her head and kept walking. Maybe she didn't see me, maybe she did ....... TBH I think I have huge issues around rejection and this is part of my downward spiral - I get into negative thinking/rumination which confirms my own hypothsis and this dragged up a lot of things for me. I am going to put this relationship/friendship to bed and look into psychotherapy again. I thought I had worked hard enough on my confidence/emotional management to have go there but clearly not. Any constructive (and I dont mean it as in stuff that only agrees with what I say/think) comments/suggestions are welcome.

For what it's worth, I'm really short sighted Nd without my glasses seriously can't recognise faces from further than arms length. Many's the time I've ignored someone in town, and my friend who I've been with has been horrified and said "that's so and so, across the road waving, you've ignored them" but I really haven't done it on purpose.

Don't be so sensitive, give the friendship another go. Text your friend and say, I'm in town tomorrow, you around to meet for coffee.? And see what response you get.

jaqui59

OP ... You obviously have fairly high expectations of people, but I also feel there is quite a strong controlling side to you, whether you know it or not.

Im guessing that as a relationship grows, this controlling side of your nature starts to rear its ugly head and pushes people away.

You also mention you do not deal with rejection .... How does rejection make you feel? From reading your posts, i'm guessing it would make you feel angry rather than sad.

Can you remember how life was with friends when you were just a child?

flossyblog

I totally get how you feel but unfortunately there isn;t much you can do about it. If so called friends do not want to be accommodating to your needs then you only have 2 solutions, put up with it or not.

A lot of what you are feeling is really down to your lack of confidence and it is this area I feel you should be concentratiing on.

I think you should challenge yourself in another way, instead of trying to make friends, try meeting people through something you enjoy doing for fun, voluntary work etc.

Have you ever thought of getting a job (couple of evenings or weekend) in a cafe bar or restuarant, this can help with just interacting with people.

irrationalactor

top_drawer wrote: »

The other girl said that she would prefer that their room was just for them. My friend didnt/would expand on the why she felt like this. After much agonising and talking to my friend I cancelled my booking. Admittedly I was quite angry that this girl who I never met had put a spanner in the works over something I felt was quite petty (and I kind of suspect my friend would have agreed if this girl hadn't been her friend for a long time).

I totally understand where you are coming from with this OP. If it was a big group with everyone making their own arrangements then booking rooms separately would make sense, but with just three of you going on the holiday surely everyone needs to book together.

I can understand exactly how this situation arose but it was very unfair on you. Asking you along just so that you can be the third wheel is awful.

Had you met the other friend before the holiday plans? Was she aware that you had been invited? It sounds like this other friend was planning on a holiday with just the two of them, and wasn't willing to change her plans once you were invited.

As for your not-so-close friend, I wouldn't worry. Go do something new with some new people and be brilliant on your own. :j

londonsurrey

Even if the other girl wasn't being very accommodating, she'd booked the holiday first, so she does get first dibs on choosing whether or not to share the room.

I do agree that she wasn't being very sociable, but I'd rather someone said up front that they didn't want to share(a bit selfish, but assertive), rather than allow it to happen, and then make the third person uncomfortable (outwardly friendly and sharing but actually passive aggressive).

saterkey

I read in a book and have kept this as a quote:

people walking away from you are not turning their back, it just means they are following a different path and their part in your life story is over.

I think if you cant say hello on the street to someone then people shouldnt have them as facebook friends.

im often in a world of my own in the street, or even just busy and dont want to talk to anyone at all.

If invited on holiday i would have ascertained the details beforehand to know where i stood before saying yes to anything, this would have been better than agreeing and then backing out.

Maybe she was embarassed by the whole situation and she deals with it by avoiding you, as that is easier than facing up to things sometimes and we have all done that im sure.

For instance, someone has contacted me to meet up and because im unemployed at the moment, i dont want to talk about that, jobs, old job etc etc, i know if we meet up i shall do, and dont look forward to it so dont contact her back, so it might not be you but it might be what shes going through if you get what i mean.

Put a smiley face on, try spiceUK maybe for socials (paid though), and chill out a bit, ive found if you try too hard when we are older people back off, ive done it myself if people are too negative when they are talking as i want to be cheered up not brought down.

good luck, love yourself, treat yourself to a massage, a coffee out somewhere nice, an art class maybe, volunteer for a group with a common cause, you may never have a best friend again as such you could have some really good friends.

Sambucus_Nigra

londonsurrey wrote: »

Even if the other girl wasn't being very accommodating, she'd booked the holiday first, so she does get first dibs on choosing whether or not to share the room.

I do agree that she wasn't being very sociable, but I'd rather someone said up front that they didn't want to share(a bit selfish, but assertive), rather than allow it to happen, and then make the third person uncomfortable (outwardly friendly and sharing but actually passive aggressive).

We don't know if she wasn't being sociable; she could have issues just as much as the OP has issues. We don't know anything about her! If it was a two bed room, and other beds were available at the hostel, I'd also be 'no, why doesn't she just sleep in the hostel bed - that's what they are there for!'

JCP

Regarding the holiday situation, I think the OP needs to take a deep breath, step back and look at this from the point of view of the other participants.

The girl she didn't know might have perfectly valid reasons for not wanting to share a room with a complete stranger (cos let's face it, despite knowing her friend, that's what you are). One of my friends has severe body image issues and will not share a room with anyone but very close friends on hols. If there was a suggestion that anyone else would crash in the room it would be very firmly knocked on the head. There wouldn't be an explanation because she views that as private and none of anyone else's business.

Unsurprisingly you are looking at this from your own point of view - we all do it - but I think if you were to look at this neutrally, you would see that you had over-reacted.

heretolearn_2

Hi OP

I do feel that you over-reacted, and that she did want to be your friend, but I also sympathise as I've never been all that good at making friends either. I have problems at the point of acquaintances becoming friends, how to tell whether someone really likes me and wants to be my friend or not, so I know I've asked too much of people in the past and then been hurt by the knock back.

I've got better at it now but it took a bit of thought and effort to work out where I was going wrong. At one point in life I basically had no friends at all and probably scared off anyone who I zoned in on. Too needy.

I too had a need for 'best friend' - but once I overcame that idea and realised that friendship comes in all sizes and shapes, and sometimes what people can offer isn't always what you'd ideally want, things got a lot better and I have quite a lot of friends now. Some closer than others. And that's ok.

I think there were two lessons I really had to learn (and I learned them hard but I'm glad I did).

I had to ask myself what sort of friend am I to other people, really? I can be a bit flakey and selfish if I don't watch myself, too much thinking only of what I need and not about what my friends need from me - whether it's help, spending time together even if I don't initially feel like it, or giving them some space. You can only have a good friendship if you are a good friend yourself. This is something I'm still working on and I don't always get it right, but I'm trying, and it makes a huge difference. It doesn't mean I'm at their beck and call or let them call all the shots, but it's more of an equal effort, which I failed at sometimes in the past.

Then the other thing I've already mentioned. You have to accept that a friendship may not always be exactly on your terms, and that people have their own lives, and other friends. Be happy with the level of friendship someone can offer. I know that the person who is my best friend, well, I'm not her best friend. She has a group of people she's known a lot longer than me and while I'm sometimes included in their activities and they all seem happy with that when I am, sometimes I'm not. They are all going on holiday soon and I wasn't invited, and while the thought that I wished I'd been invited flashed across my mind, I accept that I'm not and I'm genuinely wishing them a great time. I'd love to be truly part of that group but I'm not, and never will be, and there's no point getting jealous about that. It doesn't matter if she has other people she is a bit closer to. She is still a terrific friend to me and the level of involvement I have with her (and the others) is something I value. Again, I used to have a close friend years ago and we sort of drifted apart and that was probably my fault. I still have some contact, and we have some mutual friends, but no where near as close as we were. She got married this year and I was a little hurt to not be invited, but understood. Numbers have to be limited and we are no longer close enough. Then I got a late invitation (several months after other people we knew). So I was a B list invitee. Was I offended or upset? No, I was happy to go to her wedding after all, had a lovely time, and appreciated that once she got to the point of being able to squeeze another invitation in, I got it. There are other people we know she wasn't able to invite at all and I know she felt a bit bad about it. It's made me realise that it's down to me to pick things up again now if I want us to move back towards the friendship we had.

You can't be jealous of your friends other friends. If they are closer, there is a reason for it. In the first case I mentioned, the reason is simply that they have a very long history together that I don't share, it isn't personal. In the second case I mentioned, the reason is that I did not maintain the friendship at that level myself.

With the holiday with your friend, they'd already booked up, and then your friend decided she wanted to include you as well. Were you a bit miffed you weren't included right from the start, instead of being happy to now be invited along a bit further down the line? This isn't really fair on her. You needed to fit in with their existing plan if you wanted to go, not ask them to change all their plans to fit with yours. The other person did not want to change their booking to share a room with you. You said yourself the only available rooms were large shared ones, and she didn't fancy that any more than you did. As their room was already booked, you had a choice, go and share a larger dorm, or not go at all. You can't really blame them if your choice was to not go. And there is nothing to suggest they would have excluded you from meals or activities from them, this is you imagining things because you wanted to feel excluded/hurt. Yes, you did. You built this up into far more than simply having to have a separate room from them because you were joining the holiday after theirs had already been booked.

She didn't have to invite you at all. But she did. So she wanted you there. she also extended the hand of friendship with the chat and the invitation to go over. But then you got the hump because she happened to be out when you wanted to pop in. That's the whole thinking of what you want and not what the other person wants thing. Was she supposed to sit indoors waiting for you for weeks until you decided to go over?

On her not replying to your text, not everyone sees this sort of communication in the same way. I have friend who would be offended by this, and friends who wouldn't give it another thought. Last week one of my friends complained to me that I hadn't replied to a few of their texts as quickly as they expected and they'd found that rude of me. I apologised and made a mental note that this is one of the people who gets hurt by that, and so to try to improve my response time to them in future :-) . Your friend is probably one of those who doesn't take it so seriously (like me and some other friends of mine).

I think, that if you would still like to be friends with her, that you can fix this. I think you should apologise for getting snitty over the holiday, tell her you felt a bit hurt by it at the time, but that you realise now it wasn't reasonable to expect her other friend to change their booking. And that you hope they had a lovely time. Ask her if it's ok for you to still pop over for that coffee? If she seems nice about it and still quite keen, then ask her what would be a good day for you to go and arrange a time. If she seems a bit non-committal or not too keen, then drop it. But in a week or so ask her out for coffee or a christmas shopping trip or something small like that and see what her response is. You'll see if she still wants to be friends with you. If she does, great! If not, then learn a few things from it all and move on.