Lopsided Friendships.

[Phosphorous 4]

I try so hard to maintain my friendships, I just wish anyone else did the same. I lose faith in people as a whole when someone says to me anything like "I care and if you need someone to speak to, I am always here" only for them to be completely absent whenever I do need to speak to someone. And while sometimes the absence is literal, most of the time the absence is mental and emotional, which is the worst part. I can witness people who claim to care about me, not give a shit about me at all, in real time. As I get older I realize cutting all of my friends off was the best decision I could make. Not the happiest or easiest, but the best for me. If I don't send a message or make a phone call, I would never hear from anyone.

If I died, if I got horrendously sick, I just don't see how that information would get back to any of these people. I genuinely think I could pass away and they would just believe I disappeared and not bother trying to find out if I was ok or not. They would never check in on their own volition. But I am always the first person anyone reaches out to when they have something to complain about. Something in their life is hectic at the moment, or depressing, or difficult and I am now expected to be everything they never are for me. I could replace friends with family and the same shit all applies. I'm just so sick and tired of people, I don't think I've ever used those words more accurately. I'm sick of the selfishness, the fraudulent personalities. I'm tired of watching people pretend they give a shit about anyone around them. Their eyes are focused on the interior of their skulls. They see no one but themselves.

I just remember people being different when I was younger. I think I've always gravitated toward older people for a reason. They aren't so self-obsessed. A conversation with an older person is a back and forth, not me being forced to hold the entire conversation or shut up and listen to a diatribe for an hour before the conversation is over and I haven't spoken at all. I don't want anymore low effort people in my life anymore. If I speak up about it and try to explain my feelings about the direction of a friendship, if I try to save my relationships, I just never seems important to them the way it is to me.

 

[MercenariesofMidgar]

I try so hard to maintain my friendships, I just wish anyone else did the same. I lose faith in people as a whole when someone says to me anything like "I care and if you need someone to speak to, I am always here" only for them to be completely absent whenever I do need to speak to someone. And while sometimes the absence is literal, most of the time the absence is mental and emotional, which is the worst part. I can witness people who claim to care about me, not give a shit about me at all, in real time. As I get older I realize cutting all of my friends off was the best decision I could make. Not the happiest or easiest, but the best for me. If I don't send a message or make a phone call, I would never hear from anyone.

If I died, if I got horrendously sick, I just don't see how that information would get back to any of these people. I genuinely think I could pass away and they would just believe I disappeared and not bother trying to find out if I was ok or not. They would never check in on their own volition. But I am always the first person anyone reaches out to when they have something to complain about. Something in their life is hectic at the moment, or depressing, or difficult and I am now expected to be everything they never are for me. I could replace friends with family and the same shit all applies. I'm just so sick and tired of people, I don't think I've ever used those words more accurately. I'm sick of the selfishness, the fraudulent personalities. I'm tired of watching people pretend they give a shit about anyone around them. Their eyes are focused on the interior of their skulls. They see no one but themselves.

I just remember people being different when I was younger. I think I've always gravitated toward older people for a reason. They aren't so self-obsessed. A conversation with an older person is a back and forth, not me being forced to hold the entire conversation or shut up and listen to a diatribe for an hour before the conversation is over and I haven't spoken at all. I don't want anymore low effort people in my life anymore. If I speak up about it and try to explain my feelings about the direction of a friendship, if I try to save my relationships, I just never seems important to them the way it is to me.

I understand that... it's insane how much people will just... not care. The lack of empathy surprises me. Sometimes it feels like I'm not even human.

I hope you find your tribe man.


I like your profile picture... for reasons I feel like you could already tell lol

 

[whywere]

I am older and I love friendships, like having one with you.

I have seen and felt it all my life, where I put in 100% effort and sometimes at best I get indifference.

But I have also seen the good old karma effect, where I get indifference and that same person down the road has zero friends, as they are either so self-centered or whatever that nobody wants to be around them, so the long story short is they lose.

You are a good friend to/for me, and I sure would love to be your friend also, that is what SaSu is all about.

Lots of hugs and well wishes to you my good friend.

Walter

 

[Phosphorous 4]

I like your profile picture... for reasons I feel like you could already tell lol

Thank you for your entire message Merc, I'm hoping I find my tribe one day too :/ and you like my profile pic because you have excellent taste of course! Bebop 4 life

I have seen and felt it all my life, where I put in 100% effort and sometimes at best I get indifference.

But I have also seen the good old karma effect, where I get indifference and that same person down the road has zero friends, as they are either so self-centered or whatever that nobody wants to be around them, so the long story short is they lose.

The indifference is so defeating.

I can't see it ending any other way but for a person to be entirely alone by doing stuff like this, but I can't say that it doesn't feel like I'm being screwed out of something as well. There was a time when the majority of my friends were people I had known for over ten years and done some crazy shit with, I had stories with them. I can't say anything similar about anyone anymore. No one new that I meet seems to mesh that way. It's just clear it's going to be an extremely short and uninvolved relationship, and it seems like it's been one person after another.

You are a good friend to/for me, and I sure would love to be your friend also, that is what SaSu is all about.

I appreciate you, thank you. If we're going to be friends you have to be at least 90 though, I'm accepting geriatric friends only at this point. :) (only jokes I promise)

 

[slamjoetry]

I agree with every single word. Most people are phonies, and don't know what true friendship looks like. And I agree that older people tend to be better friends and better conversationalists than younger. Of the friendships I've had in my life, I feel like I was the only one making any effort every single time.

Sometimes I'll go out to a bar or lounge to try and make friends but I haven't had much success so far. Most of them have ghosted me or turned about to be kinda awful people. I feel so alone, and I'm afraid it's gonna be like this forever. But I'm gonna keep trying though. I hope you find success too, man. For what it's worth, nobody needs a whole huge friend group. Just a couple or more close friends we can trust. That's all it takes, and it makes it feel a little bit easier to me.

 

[sorrymyfault]

I try so hard to maintain my friendships, I just wish anyone else did the same. I lose faith in people as a whole when someone says to me anything like "I care and if you need someone to speak to, I am always here" only for them to be completely absent whenever I do need to speak to someone. And while sometimes the absence is literal, most of the time the absence is mental and emotional, which is the worst part. I can witness people who claim to care about me, not give a shit about me at all, in real time. As I get older I realize cutting all of my friends off was the best decision I could make. Not the happiest or easiest, but the best for me. If I don't send a message or make a phone call, I would never hear from anyone.

If I died, if I got horrendously sick, I just don't see how that information would get back to any of these people. I genuinely think I could pass away and they would just believe I disappeared and not bother trying to find out if I was ok or not. They would never check in on their own volition. But I am always the first person anyone reaches out to when they have something to complain about. Something in their life is hectic at the moment, or depressing, or difficult and I am now expected to be everything they never are for me. I could replace friends with family and the same shit all applies. I'm just so sick and tired of people, I don't think I've ever used those words more accurately. I'm sick of the selfishness, the fraudulent personalities. I'm tired of watching people pretend they give a shit about anyone around them. Their eyes are focused on the interior of their skulls. They see no one but themselves.

I just remember people being different when I was younger. I think I've always gravitated toward older people for a reason. They aren't so self-obsessed. A conversation with an older person is a back and forth, not me being forced to hold the entire conversation or shut up and listen to a diatribe for an hour before the conversation is over and I haven't spoken at all. I don't want anymore low effort people in my life anymore. If I speak up about it and try to explain my feelings about the direction of a friendship, if I try to save my relationships, I just never seems important to them the way it is to me.

Every friend I ever had just made me more and more suicidal, there is not a single soul in this world that made me say 'hey I guess living's worth it'. I can't wait to be done with people just to go to my room and do nothing like always. When the people I trusted all my life made it hell then what's the point of having friends. I don't know if I'm neurodivergent but if I was it would make a lot of sense, there's a huge dissonance around me and other people that I can't explain, also I can't explain why almost everyone in my life chose to hurt me, chose to interact with me just for their gain, I don't believe in whatever is humanity because of my upbringing, I can't understand why everyone hates me

 

[Phosphorous 4]

For what it's worth, nobody needs a whole huge friend group. Just a couple or more close friends we can trust. That's all it takes, and it makes it feel a little bit easier to me.

I don't think I could mentally handle having ten friends at this stage of the game, finding that one person or those two people is proving to be pretty impossible. Because people do disappear on you or turn out to be terrible people you don't actually want to associate with! Or both! It dumbfounds me, I truly believe something is going on with the populous as a whole that is making it impossible for anyone to connect anymore. Social media, government plans, I have no clue, but it's definitely something. I was recently speaking with someone daily and my mood was better etc, and then they just dropped off the face of the Earth. To me specifically. It was just painfully obvious I was being ignored one day. For what? Why do that to someone? When I ask about it, I am told I'm imagining things. No one is so busy it takes two or three days to respond to a text message. You answer because you care or you don't because you don't. People are horrendous.

Every friend I ever had just made me more and more suicidal, there is not a single soul in this world that made me say 'hey I guess living's worth it'. I can't wait to be done with people just to go to my room and do nothing like always.

It's crazy sometimes how identical other peoples posts are to my feelings sometimes. I just left work after muttering "I can't wait to fuckin go home!" to myself a hundred times for the last hour. Everything in my body was screaming to be by myself, in front of my computer, ALONE in my room. The most optimal situation I can be in. I thought ironically that I would find friends on here that would be understanding enough to not make someone else more suicidal and depressed than they already are. Big mistake. Sometimes we learn the hard way. I try not to be pissed about it, I spent most of my twenties in a rage so I wouldn't have to be in a depression, but that just got me into trouble, so now I have the enjoyable task of fully experiencing every shitty feeling that comes with being ignored and rejected by someone. Someone who reached out to me in the first place. Jesus Christ. You can cut yourself off from the world, the world will still find its way to where you are to fuck your day up.

 

[milkteacrown]

I'm sorry you feel that way about your relationships. It's difficult to feel secure in your attachments when you believe all of your efforts are one-sided.

Actually, I am more like your friends: for the majority of people, I have a severe version of an avoidant attachment style. It takes a lot of mental energy to reply to things that don't interest me, and most things don't, so I often have people asking me if I'm upset with them or don't care about them.

More than anything, this unequal relationship you have with your friends is hurting you. It isn't as simple as "don't rely on them anymore," because to some degree we all need that, but I hope you can find at least one person who will check in on and talk to you when you need it, even if that person is a paid professional.

 

[quietism]

I genuinely think I could pass away and they would just believe I disappeared and not bother trying to find out if I was ok or not. They would never check in on their own volition. But I am always the first person anyone reaches out to when they have something to complain about.

Yes. There's really genuinely few people that share a connection valuable enough to actually go out of their way for, I've seen it infrequently, but I frankly consider it mythical. I think part of it is living in a society essentially designed to make this as hard as possible due to internet dependence and financial dependence. When lopsided communication is the status quo, of course it's so blatantly common, but at the same time easy to brush under the rug and hide it from those who'd prefer to ignore these problems with society rather than help fix them. I'd like to think of it as a good description for stigma; stigmatised individuals suffer the burden of being forced to seek out resources they need, and destigmatised individuals generally just have it given to them, this goes for material wealth as much as friendship and social opportunities. On one hand, it's incredibly unfair, on the other... this is kind of inevitable when we're a species that relies so much on making hierarchies out of everything? Life is suffering, as it goes. I think the real cruelty is that it's incredibly difficult for a person to understand and empathise with what it's like to lack and struggle for something that they've always been given easily and taken for granted. Quote to show case in point:

The great contradiction in Kathy's life was that she had inherited wealth, and therefore her life was not a consequence of her actions. She could live at a level beyond what money she actually earned. Just for the record, having someone else pay for your education, your home, your equipment, clothing, gym, bar bill, whatever, separates one from the experiences of most people. Regardless of how much they may know better, many people who are not the source of their own financial lives are both infantilized and tyrannical.
Schulman, Sarah. The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. pp. 70-71

And I think this applies as much to financial capital as it does social capital. It is cruel, and it is apparently inevitable. I'd say this is a core aspect of my belief in misanthropy, I just don't think there's really any rebuttal to this line of reasoning.

finding that one person or those two people is proving to be pretty impossible. Because people do disappear on you or turn out to be terrible people you don't actually want to associate with! Or both! It dumbfounds me, I truly believe something is going on with the populous as a whole that is making it impossible for anyone to connect anymore. Social media, government plans, I have no clue, but it's definitely something. I was recently speaking with someone daily and my mood was better etc, and then they just dropped off the face of the Earth.

You said it yourself. It was so easy for that person to just drop you. Why is that? I'd like to explain it using the term financialization.

We tend to think of market interactions as being the epitome of complexity—finding a literal common currency for the array of human needs and desires in the form of this abstraction called money. But at their core, market interactions represent an impoverishment of human reciprocity. In its natural form, human reciprocity is a triumph of comfortably and intuitively doing long-term math with apples and oranges—this guy over here is a superstar hunter; that other guy isn't in his league but has your back if there's a lion around; meanwhile, she's amazing at finding the best mongongo nuts, that older woman knows all about medicinal herbs, and that geeky guy remembers the best stories. We know where one another live, the debit columns even out over time, and if someone is really abusing the system, we'll get around to collectively dealing with them.
In contrast, at its core, a cash-economy market interaction strips it all down to "I give you this now, so you give me that now"—myopic present-tense interactions whose obligations of reciprocity must be balanced immediately. People in small-scale societies are relatively new to functioning this way. It's not the case that small-scale cultures that are growing big and market reliant are newly schooled in how to be fair. Instead they're newly schooled in how to be fair in the artificial circumstances modeled by something like the Ultimatum Game.
Sapolsky, Robert M. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pp 480.

In this perspective there is a very literal, tangible and indomitable cultural shift which directly contributes to this loneliness and isolation. My real gripe is when people are perfectly fine with this shift despite at least being partially aware that its logical conclusion is horrific. Financialization is the real evil.

Sometimes I'll go out to a bar or lounge to try and make friends but I haven't had much success so far. Most of them have ghosted me or turned about to be kinda awful people. I feel so alone, and I'm afraid it's gonna be like this forever. But I'm gonna keep trying though.

I feel exactly the same. Bars are basically the only way to meet new people in my city and for the past few months I've been going to them to try and make friends. I hate the loud noise, the debilitating drugs, but I feel a need to try. So I do try. But most of the time I go I'm just harassed and humiliated for being different. It fucking sucks and none of the bystanders ever care. And I really do think this is by design.

Most people are phonies, and don't know what true friendship looks like.

Here's a challenge for you: Describe what true friendship looks like as vividly as possible