Friend with squirrelly behavior

[magnesium]

I have a friend. Harmless enough, but his odd behaviour is hard to deal with. He lacks social awareness, and he talks about himself a lot.

 

He initiates making plans with me, and asks me if I'm available. We wants to meet up and hang out this weekend.

 

I know before-hand that he is going to back out (he has a pattern of this), but I respond back saying I am available to hang out Saturday evening.

 

He responds back saying he needs to check his schedule to see if he is free. Keep in mind he initiated plans with me.

 

Then he calls me today (instead of sending a confirmation message about meeting up). I know he is calling just to talk about himself, and then not have to meet up during the weekend since we already talked over the phone. So I did not answer the phone.

 

Now he sends another text after his missed call saying he isn't free Sat. evening, but wants to talk over the phone instead Saturday afternoon.

 

I knew all this was going to happen, he always does weird stuff like this. I know that he weighs his options to see if there is something better to do besides hanging out with me on Saturday evening, even though hanging out was his idea. Even if he doesn't have something better to do, he will still try to push for a phone call instead of meeting up in person. He lives like 20 minutes away, so distance isn't an issue.

 

He tried to do something similar like I said above last week too, and I said I'm busy just to avoid his BS behaviour.

 

He used to send me long emails detailing every aspect of his life. I asked him to stop sending me emails.

 

I already set some boundaries with him (like stop sending long emails), and another boundary is that I won't talk to him over the phone this weekend because I know he is "down-grading" spending time with me in order to find something better to do, or maybe he just doesn't feel like meeting up in person.

 

And...even if we did meet up on Saturday evening...which I knew he would back out of, I already know he would talk about his life non-stop.

 

I don't value this friendship like I used too...I have out-grown this friendship, but cutting him off seems kind of harsh since he isn't a toxic person, he is more of a socially awkward, selfish, and harmless/annoying type.

 

Any advice how to handle this?

Edited July 22, 2017 by magnesium

[preraph]

Do you get the sense he's self-centered or just lonely because he has some social fear of actually going out of his house and doing things with friends? I mean, does he ever go out with friends?

 

Obviously, anyone who does nothing but talk about themselves nonstop needs to be given some book about how to make friends or something. He sounds like a windbag. If he is social just not with you, then that's not right he'd only be interested in talking on the phone about himself to you or emails.

 

If he isn't really ever leaving the house for social stuff, then maybe he's got some social anxiety or fear of being out of his surroundings and so he tries to just talk on the phone. But that's a problem he should instead go take care of in therapy and if it persisted and it was something like that, I'd tell him so.

[magnesium]

Do you get the sense he's self-centered or just lonely because he has some social fear of actually going out of his house and doing things with friends? I mean, does he ever go out with friends?

 

Obviously, anyone who does nothing but talk about themselves nonstop needs to be given some book about how to make friends or something. He sounds like a windbag. If he is social just not with you, then that's not right he'd only be interested in talking on the phone about himself to you or emails.

 

If he isn't really ever leaving the house for social stuff, then maybe he's got some social anxiety or fear of being out of his surroundings and so he tries to just talk on the phone. But that's a problem he should instead go take care of in therapy and if it persisted and it was something like that, I'd tell him so.

 

He is self-centered. He is not good at listening. I don't bother saying much about myself to him anymore because he has a warped view of reality.

 

He only has two other friends aside from me, and from what he tells me, they catch up over the phone maybe once every several months.

 

He does not go out with friends, but he does go out a lot. He is a party-crasher. I'm not making this up, he crashes banquets at hotels, casinos, country clubs, etc. He will crash almost any event, if just for the thrill of crashing the event alone, and then leaving 10 minutes later if he is bored.

 

He is a very good looking guy, and in a sports jacket and nice clothes he gets into places he does not belong pretty convincingly.

 

He brought me along once to crash a party a few years ago. It was a thrill I'll admit, but I didn't want to do it again after that.

 

I know how strange this sounds; he never hurt anyone with his antics as far as I know. he doesn't have any normal hobbies either.

 

As for real friendships, I don't think he is able to make any real connection to others. He can only relate to others on a very superficial level.

 

I'm his friend because I knew him since elementary school and his other two friends were his college roommates. He never had any other friendships aside from that.

Edited July 22, 2017 by magnesium

[magnesium]

Obviously, anyone who does nothing but talk about themselves nonstop needs to be given some book about how to make friends or something. He sounds like a windbag. If he is social just not with you, then that's not right he'd only be interested in talking on the phone about himself to you or emails.

 

Pretty much this.

 

Despite his issues and lack of awareness, I'm being taken advantage of. And I'm not interested in hearing whatever he has to say.

 

I gave him a chance. Then he tried weaselling out of the plans he initiated.

 

I need to let this friendship die.

[magnesium]

UPDATE:

 

I did not reply to his messages yet, and he has already sent another message cancelling all plans to catch up, despite the fact he initiated everything to begin with.

 

I didn't even get the satisfaction of making up an excuse to avoid him!

 

Now I responded to his text telling him I'm done with his BS.

Edited July 22, 2017 by magnesium

[preraph]

He may have some mental problems making him pretty much dysfunctional and one possibility could be he's a real narcissist and can only relate to things about himself or filter anything he talks about threw himself before he can relate to it.

[magnesium]

He sent a response a long response at first, which I deleted.

 

Then he kept sending more responses talking about how he is a high level functioning psychopath, and thats a secret he never told anyone. He admitted he can't form friendships correctly, and he does the same things to his only other two friends. He said he prefers to not have friends.

 

I wasn't going to bother responding to any of his lengthy messages, but that caught my eye.

 

From what I read and with experience with some narcs and sociopaths, they all have a idealization-devalue-discard routine which they follow.

 

This guy didn't devalue me (as in taking subtle jabs to lower my self-worth), and I discarded him first, and even then he was polite about it.

 

Maybe this is a different kind of psychopath, but he is very self-centered and delusional, he just isn't mean in a covert or overt way.

 

I suggested he should look into therapy like you mentioned, but he brushed off that idea, he says he is stuck the way he is.

 

If he ever tries reaching out again, I'm not responding.

 

So it's done now.

 

Thank you for your help with this.

Edited July 22, 2017 by magnesium

[preraph]

He very well may be a high functioning psychopath. Usually psychopaths are getting into trouble, though. He could easily be a sociopath, which have no empathy for others and that means not only sympathy but that they simply can't care much about others except as to what others can do for them in whatever way. There's an unusually high percentage of sociopaths in high executive positions like CEOs because they're ruthless -- but they're functioning at least as far as work goes.

 

He sounds like he may actually have gotten diagnosed. I'd sure be worried if he's an actual psychopath because they are just more dangerous and out of control than sociopaths, who are dangerous but not necessarily out of control or delusional. Scary.

[pianomanwoman]

or he could be using drugs and alcohol you don't really know

[preraph]

Maybe crashing parties is his way of working off the psychopath urges to do crazy crap -- or maybe he is victimizing someone around these events.

Who knows. Glad you rid yourself of him. Ever done a background check on him? I wonder if he has a record. If he's a psychopath, he'd just about have to.

[magnesium]

or he could be using drugs and alcohol you don't really know

 

he is a health nut, but he does enjoy hard drinks. Even in the past he said he wanted to limit his alcohol consumption because having a healthy lifestyle is important to him.

[magnesium]

Maybe crashing parties is his way of working off the psychopath urges to do crazy crap -- or maybe he is victimizing someone around these events.

Who knows. Glad you rid yourself of him. Ever done a background check on him? I wonder if he has a record. If he's a psychopath, he'd just about have to.

 

I'm glad you brought this up, and I checked.

 

I didn't find a record of him, however, I did find his resume online.

 

I know everyone embellishes their achievements, but the lying on his resume is hilarious and so far fetched.

 

As an example, he worked at Comcast as Technical Support guy at the call center, you know, the guy you speak too when your cable isn't working. He was fired from that job.

 

Well according to his resume, he was a web developer/programmer, a business analyst, he helped develop in-house programs as part of a product development team, worked with clients to get feedback to enhance and upgrade their workflow, etc...

 

He isn't even a computer guy, in college changed his majors from computer science to something else because he hated programming.

 

--

 

At the events he crashed, he claims to have slept with women at most events. I never believed him, because he was my wing-man at bars when I was younger. He has no game. I even confronted him about this years ago, but he was so insistent that his stories were true.

 

But as life happens and the years go by, I spent my time with other people while he was like a "background" friend, someone I never saw but was always just there. Eventually I forgot about all his lying and I didn't care much about it.

 

I wish I payed attention to the subtle signs of his craziness, but honestly I was naive and I hadn't learned the devastating effects of toxic people back then.

Edited August 28, 2017 by magnesium

[preraph]

Yeah, he's a mess. Glad he doesn't have a record though. Sounds like maybe a bit of a con artist, typical with sociopaths and narcissists.