bogota Posted December 20, 2007 Posted December 20, 2007 [this ended up being longer than I originally intended... apologies in advance for being so long-winded!] I have a friend at college whom I haven't been on very good terms with lately. Here's a brief recent history: We've been friends for a few years; superficially distant with each other, but we're both very distant people in general. But I think that this is part of the reason we were friends; we both understood kind of what was going on with each other, and knew that being distant is not necessarily being unfriendly. It's a fairly small world where we area, and for three out of the last four years we've lived in brief walking distance of each other. Starting a few months ago, she told me she was feeling "claustrophobic", which she elaborated as that she's not accustomed to having close male friends, and didn't want to be really close friends with me. I responded with my feelings that an artificial barrier between us probably wouldn't be good for our friendship. Friendships aren't static after all; you either keep getting close to people or you drift away. My impression at the time was that she had listened to what I had to say and would work on that inhibition, which she had kind of hinted was based on something in her deep dark past. Now that I later replay that conversation in my head, I realize that she was dismissing my concerns. I had a particular feeling of closeness with this friend. I'm not sure why. I don't feel close to very many people, particularly not people I meet at school. The fact that she kept on going with her plan to distance herself from me was really messing me up. I would stay online all the time waiting for her to come on, so I could chat with her. (I realize at this point it may sound like I'm obsessed with her for reasons other than friendship, and all I can say is that I'm definitely sure that friendship is all I want with her, and I'm not sure why I was so obsessed. Since I have a fairly small group of friends, I guess I deal with it poorly if I feel rejected by one of them.) She told me later, at the end of this story in fact, that it was just physical proximity with me that she didn't like, she still wanted to continue our online friendship. I continued to invite her to parties and dinners, thinking that if only I could bring her into a relaxed social situation with a group of people, she would realize that being close friends doesn't have to be an intimidating thing with lots of deep conversations, but that it's mostly just hanging out. She kept on refusing to participate in any kind of social situation with me, but telling me all about all of the fun she's having with her other friends. Things came to a head recently. She had been strongly hinting that she expected me to buy her a christmas present, so I went out and got her something. I tried to give it to her. She continued to put off the moment of allowing me to give it to her, despite being accessible to other people. This frustrated me, and I let her know. This was when she clued me in finally on some facts: as I mentioned above, the claustrophobia was about physically being around me, which was not something she had told me before. This claustrophobia was only about me, and did not apply to her other guy friends, at least not at that current time. She had no intention of resolving or even trying to resolve this feeling of claustrophobia, because she thought an online-only friendship would be fine (although she was willing to consider the possibility that the claustrophobia will fade). It was at this point that I decided that enough was enough, this dissonant friendship was putting too much strain on me, and I suggested that if she didn't want to see me, she should also not talk to me online. She got angry with me, and we haven't talked since. So, here are the problems I am kind of struggling with: 1. I want to continue to be friends with her, because we have a relatively long history. But we seem to have different expectations about what being friends means. I think that, as a start, friends should be able to hang out from time to time (especially if they live a quarter mile from each other!) And I also think that friends should be able to share hopes/dreams/plans with each other. She apparently wants a certain degree of physical distance, and...? I guess I don't know what she wants. I think it's possible for two rational people to come to an agreement on what we expect in a friendship. But how on earth do we start? 2. She doesn't talk to me about our friendship. (I realize this may sound like an accusatory attempt to divert blame away from myself, so please if you have an alternate perspective for me to consider, tell me!) I think our different cultures come into play here. She is conflict-averse, whereas I thrive on conflicting views. Whenever I tried to talk to her about what was happening our friendship, she would brush it off and come up with an obviously truth-strained excuse like "oh, I'm just a hermit!" (after regaling me with tales of her latest late-night adventure) or "I don't become close friends with guys" (she does). I guess I shouldn't bore you guys with a long list, but there have been a lot of issues over the years which I feel could have been solved better if she talked to me when the issues came up. So, where on earth do I start talking to this person again? What kind of strategies can we use to resolve our issues? How do I make sure I'm not just being used by her? How do I make sure my feelings of attachment are not irrational?
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