Shyguy23 Posted December 10, 2009 Posted December 10, 2009 (edited) Hello. I am glad I found this place. I need to vent and am also looking for opinions from people who are not directly involved. I’m a guy. Very shy. I don’t make friends easily at all. I’ll try to make this short. My best friend (Let’s call him David) and I met in high school. (We are both in college now, attending the same one by chance.) We became good friends. Our friendship was perfectly fine until the middle of last year. Without going far into it, I’ll just say I got really needy. David told me he needed space, and that he would talk to me when he felt he could again. And, FYI- David is nothing like me. He’s popular and confident. He’s the one everyone wants to be friends with. Anyway, David began talking to me again in October of last year. And since then, our friendship has not been what it used to be. I am not as needy as I was, but there have been multiple, multiple situations in which I have wondered if he truly wants to be my friend at all. Since talking to me again, we’ve had issues where he wouldn’t talk to me for weeks at a time. An example is just a few weeks ago, David was to help me with a school project. We made plans to work on it many times. And each time, he’d suddenly become sick. Finally, on the 4th time, I told him he was faking and he stopped talking to me for a few days. And usually, the only way I’ve gotten him to get in touch with me again has been through calling another friend to get him to call me Anyway. This week has been particularly bad. Without direct details---David is involved in a club. The club had a presentation. I wanted to support him and the club, so I asked him when the presentation was. David ignored my question repeatedly, and all he managed to tell me was that he didn’t invite me so therefore, he didn’t want me to come I couldn’t understand why. And he wouldn’t give me any kind of answer. The past few days, we have had plans to hangout. Both times, David has told me he would call me “in a few hours” and hasn’t called me until late at night. We are where there was recently a lot of snowfall, and David cited he couldn’t hang out because he didn’t want to drive in the snow. (I don’t drive.) And let me be clear that when I tried to communicate how I was upset he didn’t call me sooner to tell me we couldn’t hang out--- all he did was breathe into the phone Today, I ran into a friend of David’s. She told me we should do lunch sometime, with David. I agreed and then she said, “Yeah. He texted me wanting to hang out yesterday, but I couldn’t." So, here, I’m thinking… He didn’t want to drive in the snow. Yet, he was willing to hang out with someone else. David can be a great friend and then, he does stuff like this. What’s everyone’s take on it?, thanks for reading. PS: When you post from word, all this strange format code comes up in the text. Edited December 10, 2009 by Shyguy23 Had to get rid of format code.
Ronni_W Posted December 10, 2009 Posted December 10, 2009 Hi Sg. Welcome to LoveShack It does sound as if your and David's paths have diverged, doesn't it, and that he may be more comfortable keeping more of an "acquaintanceship level" relationship with you. There's not much point trying to figure out his reasons (because you don't have the insights and information to do that), and he does not appear to have the communication skills to be able to tell you in a kind, positive way. For your self-reflection, you could (if you want to) spend time assessing what it is that you GIVE to your relationships; your qualities, values, strengths and talents that make it an attractive option for others to want to have you as a friend. I get that recently you wanted to go and support David at that presentation-thing, but what and when else? How else do you inspire others to feel good about themselves; to feel heard and understood, etc.? As far as that girl yesterday -- maybe SHE was going to be doing the driving? Maybe not. How he's doing it with other people is neither here nor there. [because] It still is that David does not appear to want to have a close relationship with you...and it's just about accepting and respecting that. As I see it, your self-affirming thing to do is to start developing new friendships and a new social network. It is about YOU overcoming your own shyness so that it will not disadvantage you, and limit you from being, having and doing what YOU want in life. You can join a ToastMaster's group; research codependent relationships; check the free articles and ebook at Self-Esteem-Experts.com; do some individual therapy if you want to get to the roots of your shyness and any other self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviours. Lots of ways to improve your situation, so no need to get too down about it. Right? Still. It does suck, definitely. It hurts when this type of thing happens to us. Hugs, and best of luck. PS: Yes, about copying over from word. If you do a 'preview post' first, you can edit out all the HTML crap prior to submitting your post
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