It's a tightrope walk. Put in too much effort and you risk pushing them away. Not enough effort and they lose interest. That is also why, in my experience, it is a good idea to have multiple friends. If you're someone who needs a lot of attention, it allows you to have multiple sources of attention without being smothering towards one person.

[–] goofystench@lemy.lol 6 points 1 day ago

yea, having many friends sounds fun... but i would like to start with one XD

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is "smothering" and "risk pushing" you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.

It's not a tightrope walk, a friendship is built on mutual respect. Feeling left out and lonely because there is no reciprocation whatsoever is normal. Calling this OP's fault is extremely toxic, holy shit. If it's a tightrope walk, you didn't wanna be friends from the very beginning and are bad at communicating your intent.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The implication of OP's post is that they are unable to make new friends. Somethingsomethingcommondenominator....

If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is “smothering” and “risk pushing” you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.

Where does OP say that this is what they are doing? The assumption I would get from the meme is that they are trying to have long form conversations over text, which can be exhausting for other people - especially if you just met.

The whole phrasing of the meme puts off huge neediness vibes, which is kind of the joke. *Of course" OP has a hard time making friends, because they are so lonely. Catch 22, remember, was a comedy.

[–] goofystench@lemy.lol 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

can u be my therapist ?

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well, no. I don't have the certification to be a therapist, and I sure as hell ain't paying the money and putting in the time and effort for a job that pays jack shit.

But if you identify with the above image, my advice to you would be to stop trying and just show up. Just get online - go to Facebook and Instagram and meetup.com, and start searching for clubs, groups, meetups, and events happening in your area. Just scroll through literally everything, and if you think "hmm, maybe I'd like that" or just "I don't know if I'd like that", then put it on your calendar and show up. (Note: I would avoid any groups specifically about mental health or personal development, as they tend to be Scientology fronts). Literally all you have to do is walk in the door. No matter what, just walk in the door. From there, you can do whatever you want. You can just leave. You can find the group and introduce yourself. You can sit quietly and not talk to anyone the whole time. You can vomit your whole life story and history of trauma to everyone there. It literally doesn't matter. Afterwards, if you think to yourself "I liked that, and would like to do it again", then show up again. If not, get on FB/IG/meetup/whatever again and go to a different thing. Do this again and again and again. And again and again and again. Build up a calendar of events where 5 to 7 days per week, you are showing up to a group of people, in real life, where you are going to do something that you can reasonably expect to enjoy.

Basically without trying, the people in these groups will get to know you, and they will probably like you. If they end up not liking you, that is okay too - the group is just not a good fit for you. Go start exploring again until you find a group that is a good fit for you. The more people you talk to and interact with, the more you'll find that people are generally nice and want to know you. This will decrease your neediness, which will make people like you more. By just showing up and not trying, you will gradually build deeper relationships with the people you meet, and eventually some of them will naturally become good friends.

If you find that you show up and don't know what to say, here is a hack. Just go in with an autistic level of honesty. Don't try to be smooth or cool or likeable. Just walk up to someone and say "hi, I'm x. I'm here for the thing." Or "I'm feeling nervous because I'm meeting a new group of people". Or "I wanted to make new friends, so I just randomly showed up here to see if you guys are cool."

Literally, that's it. Show up. Vomit out whatever is in your head. Repeat. Just keep doing this, and you will make friends.

[–] goofystench@lemy.lol 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

idk if i have energy to do all this, but thank you anyway ❤️ good advice

[–] Signtist@bookwyr.me 3 points 23 hours ago

It really is good advice, and you do get more and more energy to do it after you get started. The thing I did was DnD, and I just found people in the area advertising in-person campaigns and went to some. I only wanted to do a social day once every week or two, so I started with that. That didn't last long, though, since after finding the one campaign to be really fun, I ended up joining 2 more and having multiple sessions every week! I wouldn't have had the energy to start with that, but now I've got plenty. It's a bit of a balancing act to both acknowledge the height of the mountain you're about to climb, but also keep in mind that all you need to do right now is take a single step.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

Just do it once. Then do it again. And again. Break the process down into the smallest steps you can think of, and just do a little every day. For example, today, type meetup.com in your browser and hit enter. If you want to do more, that is fine, but if that's all you can do, then accept that and go on with your day. Tomorrow, you can do the same thing, or you can try putting your location in the search bar. If even that is too much, you can just set a timer for 1 minute and think about searching for groups of people to meet. Or once you have some events that you might be interested in going to, and know where they are happening and that they are happening today, you could spend 1 minute thinking about walking out the door to go to that event.

Often what happens is that by just taking the smallest first step, you keep going. Because you feel rather silly "just" doing something for one minute. And sometimes you just do it for one minute, and that's all you can do, and that's okay too.

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

On the contrary, as a dude with many friends, none of us put in "tons of effort". Each of my friendships are casual and relaxed, we "see each other when we see each other", and that works well for all of us. We have lots of mutual respect, and an intent to have a friendship, but friendship just means different things to different people.

Some people, like it seems maybe yourself and OP, have the energy of a drowning person who will take any person who tries to help them down with them. And also a sense of... justice?... that's highly attuned to amplify small slights. I've seen it before in some second hand reports of like "I sent him a photo that I really liked and he didn't respond within 24 hours, and when he did it was just with a 😛. Can you imagine the gall!", when actually there's no indignity, he just doesn't look at his phone much... or he was busy. But it's a problem when the sender isn't busy, and is in fact just sitting there fuming for 24h because they have way more energy invested into this.

I want to check in real quick here, none of my tone here is intended to be angry or even mocking. I've got a lot of privilege for sure, and it helps combat this. A person suffering with food scarcity is going to react differently to a backyard BBQ than a person without food scarcity, and I'm willing to bet a person suffering from social scarcity would do the same.

My only purpose for writing this is because I've met people who feel "desperate", and people who have a sense of "principles of friendship" that are iron clad, but also not mutual and are inflexible and cause them to push everyone away for not respecting them, meanwhile all the people they pushed away seem to get by just fine. And often it's easiest to just let these people go because they're, perhaps through no fault of their own, toxic to non-manic casual friends and friend groups. And I figured I'd give a more "average" perspective of what the other side of this might actually look or feel like.

And I already feel like I'm going to regret it 😛

Also, since we talked about expressing intent upfront, let me say that I'm going to post this and then get out of bed, and I probably won't look at Lemmy again the rest of the day. I have some errands to run and I'm going to a BBQ with some friends later, and I have notifications turned off because I don't want Lemmy stuff being a force of push in my life, only pull, so I probably won't see any replies until maybe tonight when I go to bed, maybe tomorrow morning if I do something else tonight? So I can't guarantee I'll want to respond to any replies, but if I haven't replied in 24h, that isn't actually emotionally meaningful. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just doing other stuff and literally not thinking about you. 😉

[–] PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space 2 points 7 hours ago

Strange, you wrote a really sane take, yet you're getting downvoted.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Here is a scenario that actually happened, you'll be the judge:

Person A is someone who, to their own admission, wanted to be friends. I know them over persons B and C, long-time friends of mine, A is very close to C. I invite A to a BBQ at my place that B and C are attending as well, they leave me on read, but tell C they'll come, so when speaking to C shortly before the BBQ, I get told that A is coming as well. A then asks, last minute, if they can come too even tho I already know they planned to come. I brush it off as bad communication.

Next month, pretty much the same situation. I invite A, this time telling them that they should drop a yes/no so I can plan for food. Get left on read again. At the day before the BBQ, I ask again if they'll come, they say no. Next day, A asks if they could come despite saying no, okay well whatever. Anyway B and C arrive first and they know that A is coming too. They were told a week ago, I had no idea. Got me pissed, so I text A and ask what the fuck their deal is and now suddenly I am the clingy bad guy. B remains neutral, C takes the side of A telling me, it was my fault that it didn't work out and that A was simply trying to surprise me.

Anyway, I am not friends with C anymore either. Fuck that shit.

[–] undefinedValue@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago

I think this is super insightful. I have seen what you’re describing as “a sense of justice” play out a few times and it rarely ends well. I’d like to hear more if you’re willing.

My thoughts are that the person feeling slighted is feeling like they are investing more into the friendship than the other and it’s painful to realize- and since it’s probably happened to them before they realize they’re in the cycle OPs image detailed and start to pull back their energy to test the friendship. If the friend stops reaching back then it’s taken as confirmation that it was a one way thing.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If getting messaged once a week or so to ask if you wanna hang is "smothering" and "risk pushing" you away, then maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the dude messaging.

???

What?

Where in OP's post was this mentioned?

Are you okay?

It's not a tightrope walk, a friendship is built on mutual respect. Feeling left out and lonely because there is no reciprocation whatsoever is normal. Calling this OP's fault is extremely toxic, holy shit. If it's a tightrope walk, you didn't wanna be friends from the very beginning and are bad at communicating your intent.

You still have to maintain a middle ground, and blaming the other for a lack of interest like OP's meme seems to imply, is not the correct way of doing things either. That is also extremely toxic, and it's the kind of behavior I mainly see people who tend to smother or cling to others engage in. Being smothering or clingy is not even remotely healthy and will absolutely drive people away.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 day ago

Where in OP’s post was this mentioned?

Nowhere, to be fair. The meme just struck a nerve with a past experience of mine and it hurt. My bad.