I had a life of the party friend who routinely cancelled plans last minute. I found it rude and inconsiderate.
We’ve also lived places where it was hard to break in and form real relationships. NE and SE were the hardest for us. Midwest was the easiest. Now we live in a college town and less than 25% of my friends and neighbors are from here. Makes it much easier to meet folks.
I’m from the Midwest and have lived in the same city all my life. Several of my best friends are transplants. I agree it’s easy to break into groups here.
It is easy to lose touch with people and takes some effort to keep up friendships, especially those formed around the kids and their activities. I don’t think anyone here has been “keeping score” and expecting friends to go back and forth every time. But even for an extrovert with no social anxiety, one can start to wonder if the person that never reaches out wants to continue the friendship.
I am a person that doesn’t let go all that easily and for whatever reason, assumes that people I have been friends with want to continue and so will reach out even if some time has passed. If, however, it gets to the point that the only time I see someone is when I reach out, I may reconsider the friendship. That is not always the case. I have one friend who withdraws when things are not going well and is bad at contact (we live on opposite coasts but see each other almost every year). We have been friends for more than 40 years and I will always reach out to her, even when she doesn’t respond. For others, however, it stops being worth the effort.
I totally understand the social anxiety issues. It is bit harder to me to accept that if someone tells you that they WANT you to reach out and it makes them uncomfortable to always initiate contact, that in a world of texting and email, the recipient of that message doesn’t at least try to reach out.
Just bouncing in late in the conversation to add another point to think about. I find it’s generally best to assume that we are all doing the best we can, and that unless you have had an actual falling out with a friend, you should consider her to still be your friend.
Very rarely is anyone thinking about you as much as you think they are. Most people are thinking about their own lives, and at our CC parent cafe ages many of us have other deeply important events and issues going on with ourselves or within our families that our friends, even our close friends, may not be aware of.
How awful it must be to be dealing with long term depression, or an addiction in the family, or a terrible medical diagnosis, or a parent needing more and more of your mental, emotional and physical help, and then to be finding that a friend has dropped you because you aren’t reaching out first.
We do not know what private issues even our very best friends are going through. I guarantee it.
^^^ And those introverted or socially unsure are probably the least likely to share those private issues or family struggles.
@eastcoascrazy If that were the case, of course most of us would not drop a friend going through a crisis. And I have had that situation in which I hadn’t /heard from someone for a while and reached out to find they had bad stuff/busy times going on. But that is not the situation most are discussing. It is rare that someone doesn’t have time to send a text saying “thinking you, crazy busy with xyz but hope you are well”. If they never think of you, are they really a friend?
At what point is a friendship done when you don’t have a falling out but just drift apart? Sometimes by not reaching out, a message is being sent that this person does not have time in their life for you, which is fine. Not every friendship is going to last for years.
@mom2and I find it interesting that you believe you know everything that is going on in your friends’ lives, and can judge whether or not they ought to be initiating funtivities. Maybe you really do know everything about your friends. Maybe you know everything about their finances, and the mental health status of their kids, etc., but I would guess it is more likely that you don’t know as much as you think you do.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “friend” and what you expect out of the relationship. I do think that for most people family takes priority — and if a person has a full-time job or another set of time-consuming responsibilities, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for sending out status messages.
I have to admit that this conversation makes me uncomfortable to be honest.
Having friends is hard! Moving away from those friends is really hard.
I moved away from the area where my kids grew up 11 years ago. Despite me reaching out, traveling to where I used to live. Inviting my friends to visit me. Even invited them to my S’s wedding. They were friendly and seemed happy when I visited them.
They have never once reached out to me, never called. Never visited my area. I’ve not been invited to any of their kids weddings. It is what it is. I’ve accepted that I’m the one who moved away and am no longer in their “circle”. I’ve slowly let go.
So I guess the moral is, if you want to keep a friendship, I think you’ll have to do the heavy lifting.
I’m an introvert who doesn’t like to plan too far ahead.
I find I’m not invited very often so I do the reaching out.
Usually, I’m a short notice kinda girl. 1-4 days in advance.
I want to see X movie next Tuesday at 7, wanna join me?
I want to check out the new brew pub; any interest? Next week sometime?
Seriously, if I did not text people in my already too small social circle, I don’t believe I’d be invited to go do things.
I do have people say Hey, we should… and nothing ever happens. Are they busy? Just being polite? I’ll never know!
I want more friends to do things with, for sure!
^. Adding…I will go alone if no one takes me up on an offer!
@eastcoascrazy I don’t think I said that at all. Why the attack? I am simply stating that in my experience when someone has stopped reaching out over a long period of time, it is not because they have something difficult in their life but that they are too busy for me (which is fine). Maybe my point about texting came out wrong - I was referring to ordinary busy, not when life has thrown a curve ball. And I don’t care about “funvites” but about any kind of contact to keep the friendship going. I don’t understand how knowing everything about my friend’s finances relates to the idea that some level of contact is needed to keep a friendship going.
I am the person that sticks with the friend who is going through tough times, even when many others have bailed (and yes I know this because the friends has been appreciative of my continuing support). I really value and nurture my friendships and don’t take them for granted so I am not quick to drop a friend, even if they are not communicating.
This thread inspired me. Five of my son’s close friends growing up were able to attend his wedding. This morning I emailed the mom’s pictures of all these young men at the wedding. By tonight, 2 responded. No phone messages, saying let’s get together to hear all about it, but the replies were enough. The 2 far away kids ( like Japan), I’ll send them the same pictures. My son went to both of their weddings, but the son’s were absolutely not able to attend his.
I’m clearly not the only one with love in my heart, but hesitancy about setting dates.
Funny story kind of related to this thread. There is a group of 4 of us, plus spouses, who get together every year for our birthdays, which all fall in February or March, and we’ve had this tradition for probably 15 or so years. I started the tradition, and I usually send out the “starter e-mail” getting us to pick a date, host, etc. One time someone else tried to send out a message wanting us all to get together, but people didn’t respond until I sent out a similar message. It’s like everyone is “conditioned” to seeing it from me, and didn’t know how to respond when someone else started. Another time, just his year, one of the group said we should all get together at the half year mark. He wanted me to send the message. We did all get together. Point of this is sometimes once a pattern has been set, it can be hard to move away from it.
I think we should be tread lightly in this conversation and give people the benefit of the doubt. I think most people who care to participate in this thread are trying to gauge the right thing to do, however we choose to handle it. People and friendships are messy things and some of us mean well but may be a little clueless (or fear we are clueless) and try very hard to decide what to do.not do. I didn’t read @mom2and’s post as claiming to know everything going on in her friend’s lives or judging them…she was trying to judge what she should do under the circumstances. It’s really not that clear to some of us how to proceed and we slog along as best we can.
A few years ago a dear, close friend of mine (of the few in this town) abruptly stopped calling/emailing/ responding to messages. (This was during the time when people still had phone conversations and texting/facebook hadn’t completely taken over.) She was such a close friend that I often looked up in my kitchen or family room to see her young son standing before me. She would be dropping by unexpectedly (fine with me) and parking the car while her son walked into the house without knocking. Her son and my daughter were best friends in pre-school/early elementary years. She was like a younger sister and I’d say we were close for around six years. It was mutual. No score-keeping.
We hadn’t had a falling out /argument, and nothing had changed in our lives that I could tell. Within a few weeks our relaxed but normally-mutual active communication dropped to almost nothing. I’d see her around town with other people and when we bumped into each other she’d act as bubbly as ever. She never hinted that anything I’d done had annoyed or offended her. When i finally asked her if everything was OK and mentioned (lightly, not angrily…I’m not a controlling or jealous person) her not calling me back she exploded. She was clearly angry, as if my asking was a confrontation when I was simply confused and concerned. She claimed her youngest child simply erased my messages and that she never got them. I made a few more light attempts to let her know I cared (spacing them out over weeks or months) but she responded in such a way that it was clear she resented being contacted. I do know that se was active socially.
I’ll never know what happened. Maybe she was tired of me, or just wanted a younger, hipper group (I’m an older mom). I accept that. But what hurt was her way of acting as if I should have just “gotten it”…that my not picking up her non-communication meant that was obviously ghosting me and that I should have known that and not put her on the spot. ,as if any friendly contact was somehow harrassing this person who had once said she considered me as family. I don’t know. But that experience (and a few others much less blatent but similar enough) make me feel it’s vitally important for me to pick up and respond to any cues that somebody is just not interested. So now, I’m quick to try to NOT harrass someone who doesn’t seem to want to reciprocate mutually in a friendship.
I also was systematically verbally abused for two years in a first marriage when I lived outside of the U.S. far from any supports (and couldn’t legally work because of my in-between immigration status). These kinds of experiences can really do a number on your personal sense of how to gauge people’s motivations/intensions and your own responses. Sometimes I fear that I may be on the spectrum even though I think I have abundant caring for others and a tender heart for any suffering person/creature/living thing. Some days I can barely stand to weed out unwanted plants from my garden!
Those of you who feel that life is too short to worry about such things may have simply had different life experiences (or inborn temperaments/neurology) from those of us who struggle to do the right thing (not always knowing WHAT is the right thing) but having our hearts in well-meaning places. I think some gentleness is called for.
@inthegarden, I can relate. 
BTW, I had a good friend who “ghosted” my wedding!
I think the posts about not assuming we know what someone is thinking were sparked by a commenter upthread (don’t remember who) who posted that she sort of tested the friend’s commitment by not initiating for a few months, not hearing from the friend, and so dropping the friendship because “obviously” the friend didn’t care. that one struck me as doing that “assuming” that might or might not be accurate. It was a really sad post, to me.
Introvert here, plus a lot of social anxiety. I don’t see people outside of family enough any more, partly because of folks moving away, our kids are all grown, we go away every weekend so planning is hard, etc.
I do try to get together with friends, but initiating is tough. I’ll do it, but it’s super hard, so probably don’t do enough, and extremely grateful when someone does first.
I don’t know that that comes from introversion so much as, like I said, general social anxiety. But the introversion does make a sparse social life palatable. I do like and cherish down time, and since my job requires a lot of social moments, I’m okay with a lot of alone-ness. I do cherish my friends, though, and keep in touch in digital ways when I don’t seem them.
One thing I have noticed is that I almost never talk to friends on the phone anymore, only family, and even them less than in the pre-social media, pre-text, past.
Years ago I became part of our school district’s gifted and talented parents plus GT coordinator committee (open to all interested). That was at a time they needed to upgrade things and it worked. For a few years at some point there were yearly Saturday teachers and parents seminar days. One I attended was given by a different city teacher about introversion/extroversion. Learned so much about that. Wish it had been known decades before, sigh.
Interesting to know it is a spectrum from extremes of either to being somewhat on one side or the other of the scale- not an on/off switch thing. 75% of the population was stated to be extroverted while 75% of the highly gifted introverted.
I’m definitely extroverted, need people contact to recharge. H is introverted, as is son. They need their down time. I think and talk simultaneously while they pause first. Etc.
In retrospect I understood how my college circle of friends and activites evolved. As a freshman I joined more activities and went to football games. However, I met my intellectual peers in my honors chemistry classes with the same interest- chemistry majors. Then I had my circle of women medical classmates- harder back then when we were not many in a discrimnatory world. In college I would have done a lot more gregarious activity but chose time with people I could discuss with instead (in college you try to solve the world’s problems…). I was the minority in my academic peer group, sigh.
Fast forward. Met and married my H because of some commonalities (intro/extro-version not one of them). Friends dispersed. I now keep in touch with very few of my long time friends. All introverted so much more so than I am. I think they enjoy my calls, which I need more than they do. I am sure to ask about them and their lives et al. Son was a teen before I truly knew about the basics and differing needs of the two personality types. It would have been easier since we come from opposite operating systems.
It is strange to be in the majority overall but in the minority among people I am intellectually stimulated by, something that is important to me. Was an outsider in HS, college, in general unlike most of the rest of you I suspect. Wanted to belong but didn’t- unlike the introverts who don’t care.
The bottom line. We need to make compromises. My friends listen to me and I don’t try to make them do things. The wisdom of age and experience.
@wis75, interesting. You were a minority within the minority you chose to be with, even though a majority within the mainstream culture. But also a minority within the culture at large if YOU classify as gifted and need to seek out intellectual peers.
I think there’s a wide range of introverted types: those who may like (but don’t really need) much interaction/stimulation because their own brains already provide plenty…and those (I include myself in this group) who need a lot of time alone and who also strongly need interaction/belonging but prefer a few deep, meaningful relationships (and sometimes really interesting conversations with strangers) to lots of “noisier,” shallower ones. ( I can truly enjoy small talk but can’t live well on that alone, and I will never be the life of a party). So for some introverts (maybe what Myers/Briggs classifies as feeling types) the experience of having a friend reach out is the best thing that could happen in a day. I know it would make mine and I would not react to a friend’s gesture with pleasant indifference…
This is a salient point for me. I have so very little family (only with an only, and my parents both died when I was 24 years old) my friends are LIKE my family, so they ARE my priority. I should remember that very few are in my situation whether they are introverts, extroverts, reacher-outers, or non reacher-outers.