Friends who never initiate

[Sci-Fi]

Some people just like to use others for their own selfish needs, once they are done with you or used you up they move on to the next sucker.

 

[Gutted]

I get this with people. It's on and off for me. What I do is make some effort and then wait to see if they make some back. If they don't then there will just be silence until they do. So far they all eventually have done and things have been okay. I think that if they're not interested in you then nothing you do will change that really. Trying may even make things worse.

 

[Jack _]

I get this with people too. Almost no one initiates a conversation with me. It's always me trying to talk to other people and being ignored, OR, being briefly acknowledged and THEN being ignored.

It sucks when no one's interested or wants to talk to you. Happens way to often.

 

[ardour]

Well I sent a message last week about meeting up for lunch. The last time we spoke in person was November last year. I'd sent two messages since. Had she at least replied to decline I might have kept things open-ended. At least that confirms it... I've deleted her and get to move on. For some reason this "friendship" meant more than it should have. I would have brushed this off more easily when I was younger. Guess I wanted a second chance and just couldn't accept that it was over this time. Now at 33 I have maybe 2 friends I keep in regular contact with. Live and learn...

 

[putter65]

Well I sent a message last week about meeting up for lunch. The last time we spoke in person was November last year. I'd sent a two messages since. Had she at least replied to decline I might have kept things open-ended. At least that confirms it... I've deleted her and get to move on. For some reason this "friendship" meant more than it should have. I would brushed this off more easily when I was younger. Guess I wanted a second chance and just couldn't accept that it was over this time.. Now at 33 I have maybe 2 friends I keep in regular contact with. Live and learn...

don't beat yourself up about it. We all do it !
I hope you've deleted her mobile number as well ?
Clean start !

 

[jean-vic]

If people never initiate, it's doubtful they are friends.

In my experience, people don't like to initiate conversation with me because I am tall, broad and have a stern appearance. I am not down or anything, I just look it and it puts people off. Once I've made that first step, they are more at ease with me, but things never progress beyond that. People don't want to talk to me much, whether it is because I am more intelligent than them, a little odd (addmittedly), I don't know, but people seem to like me, but not enough to spend time with me.

For instance, there is a girl I work with. We have a laugh. We get on. She is very similar to me. We chat on Facebook, but one night, about 6 months into our "friendship", I had to leave while she was talking about something important, so I told her to text my number. I sent her my number. Her response was: "I'll keep hold of it." I knew what that meant. Two weeks later, I had to leave the chat again, but it was another important topic so I said, "I'm sorry, but you have my number if you want to keep venting." Her response was: "No, no. I don't want to keep talking your ear off." What pissed me off was that one day at work, I had to cover her break. Sitting at her till, I saw an old receipt. I threw it away and then saw on the blank side that the lad sitting behind her had given her his number. I took it out of the bin and put it back. There have been other times when I have invited her out only for her to avoid the issue.

Is this person a friend? No. If there is never iniation from the other side, there is no friendship.

 

[ardour]

She did initiate one time last November, suggesting we meet for lunch. A major surprise there - but when it came around it was as if she was just trying to get it over with; sitting their looking awkward for 30 mins counting down the minutes, not really interested in conversation.

 

[Spy]

You just put the finger on one of my biggest problem. I have a few friends and a few acquaintances that I tought were friends but they never initiate contact with me. This is also why I erased my Facebook account. Almost nobody was writing me. At home, when my phone rings, 95% of the time it's my parents or my brother. The other 5% are marketing services.

Is there something we can change in our behavior that will push those people to be more interested in us and initiate contact more often?

 

[Nightwing]

I experience this often. I seem to make friends and then drift apart from them.

It kinda bugs me that nobody ever calls me out of the blue or texts me out of the blue to say "let's go do something." But that might be because all my friends live a long way away from me. Only one lives nearby these days and he has a girlfriend, who naturally takes priority. I can accept this... but he doesn't really hang out with anyone else. So it does make me scratch my head why he doesn't try to do something with me every couple of weeks to break the monotony, ya know?

When I was in a relationship, I was pretty similar, so I can't blame him. But I did make an effort every few weeks to make sure I hung out with at least one other friend. I'm not 100% sure why I did that lol.

 

[Peaches]

The people I like to call friends do initiate some things, if I have to initiate more than say 60%, 70% per cent of the time the pursuit it's not worthwhile. Also not-really-friends may initiate things if you leave a lot of "hooks" around, so to speak, and drop here and there: I want to see this upcoming movie, watch the game next weekend, etc, I mean, aside from asking them directly. In my case these invitations disappeared for month after I have an illness (last spring, the last month and a half), because probably they saw me as a "drag", not in the transvestite sense.

 

[WallflowerGirl83]

Yeah I get this a lot to be honest, the sad thing is I don't even have friends in my area anymore. So I'm usually keeping myself busy most of the time now. All my old friends stopped speaking to me and I'm not even sure why that is. People change & end up meeting different friends. I'm usually the person who's forgotten for some odd reason. It used to bother me a lot but now I'm so used to it: hate to sound like such a downer though. Now I meet people, talk to them and hope they stick around and if they don't end up sticking around I figure it's simply their loss in the end. I'm a very good person, loyal, caring & I'm the kind of person who always sticks by all my friends.

 

[jayme89]

Would you consider somebody a friend if they never called or sent you a message? What about the kind of situation where you knew for certain that if you stopped initiating then that would be it?

I've known someone since 2005 (university) who I later worked near for about 2 years. When she left she said stuff like "we'll always be friends" and "any time you want to talk etc." (2 years ago) but never makes the slightest bit of effort to stay in touch. She gives some short response to FB messages I've sent once every few months but never reciprocates. We've been to lunch a couple of times since but she wanted to turn up on my 10 minute break instead which I thought was an insulting not-so-subtle way of saying "I want to minimize the time spent around you".

Bar mitigating circumstances, people do what they want and avoid what they don't want, right? She must have thought I was a "nothing", a creep, loser. End of story.

I've noticed this with a couple of others, it's always been up to me, although it's more understandable since they moved to different cities. She lives 15 mins away. What gets me now is not the rejection, but the implication that I lack the intelligence to see things for what they are. There's this *need* to let her know without wanting to sound bitter and pathetic (impossible as I AM bitter). Not because I want to re-establish contact as there's nothing to salvage here ; just for my own satisfaction. If I'm being honest "guilt trip" might be the operative too. Yet I think they should feel guilty. I've been through some serious stuff lately, but wasn't worth TYPING A SENTENCE for.

So what do you peeps think ; a F U message followed but deletion (definately bitter and attention-seeking), a quiete deletion (still bitter), or nothing? Still worth keeping in contact if it's just one-way?

I relate to this 10000%!!! I have always been the initiator in friendships. If I don't call or text or plan a meet-up I won't see them for months until they suddenly call and say "hey, haven't heard from you in awhile"...as though it's my sole purpose to contact them! This is how it was even with someone I considered my best friend since high school. I noticed this more and more as I got older and I became fed up with it. As a grown-up I want to feel like people want me around and I'm not in a one sided relationship, otherwise I feel like I'm just being used for convenience. You know...that "friend" you hang out with when you have no other options...I don't want to be that to someone ever, and I refuse to at this point in my life. I'd rather be alone in that case.

What helped was being very blunt and clear with people (I'm a Sagittarius so bluntness is easy for me luckily ). I told my friend "Look, I'm always calling you, I'm always doing all the planning to meet up with you and its not fair. If you're really friends with me you need to initiate too otherwise we just don't need to be friends at all. Think about how you would feel if you were me ." It was really blunt and you know what? It worked. Not immediately, but overtime I notice she'll initiate texts with me and even ask me when I'm free from work and plan to hang out now, something she never did before. Her excuse for her behavior before was "she didn't want to feel like a burden" and "when someone texted her she knew they actually wanted to talk to her so thats why she would wait for me first". Valid excuses I'll admit.. for someone you don't know well or consider a close friend! But I told her that we're supposed to be beyond that since we've known each other over 5 years. She knows I want to talk to her, she knows I want to hang around her, hasn't that been evident through my actions all these years?! Its time for her to do the same in return if she wants to keep the friendship. Plus, what does it say to me if she never texts me? It makes me feel the way she fears feeling. We need to meet one another halfway. When I told her that I think it really opened her eyes. Some people simply don't know what their doing wrong and need some assistance.

On the other hand, you can do what I did and lose people. Either way, you win because you get rid of the dead weight in your life. So be straightforward with your friends ... the ones who you think are worth it. You're all adults, and you have the right to tell people what you want from them. It may seem silly but its worth it in my opinion, especially in really confusing situations. Those who care will adjust to your standards, those who don't will vanish from sight.

 

[Gutted]

I don't call someone like that a friend at all. I call them an ass x] Why are you bothering? What do you have to gain?

 

[ladyforsaken]

I don't call someone like that a friend at all. I call them an ass x] Why are you bothering? What do you have to gain?

Eh my thoughts exactly here.