A caterpillar that is slowly turning to a butterfly

As usual a good post. I don’t know the answers to these questions. I was happy to see you slowing down. I wish you every happiness. I think your questioning and refusal to back down will lead you to a better life.

I can try an answer these questions.. i guess.. not sure.. we’ll see… Not that you really want answer.. I’m assuming this is just like a rhetorical question

1. Maybe they know that only you can offer the best “something” for them? Or when they are thinking of something and it immediately reminds them of you?

2. Life gets too busy sometimes. I know it’s not an excuse, but I sometimes think that I’ve responded or haven’t been feeling well emotionally and when someone contacts me, I just don’t feel like responding and then forget. Like I said, not an excuse.. but I think that’s what happens.

3. A lot of people are douchebags. Or they hare giving you time to cool off, because sometimes I need time to cool off and think over somethings. Like currently, I am not speaking to my ex who recently broke up with me, because they are confusing the hell out of me with their emotions and I am currently going through the “I am soooo angry at you right now and I hate it, but I can’t talk to you because I love you too much” stage. And it sucks. Especially when you are hopelessly in love with that person.. you need time to get over them. Hence the no talking bit in my opinion.

4. It’s not that we forget people. Well, I didn’t. I just never had time to hang out with them, because I rarely saw my SO because they were in school and now work, and I am busy my own thing. So whenever we had time to hang out, we were at each other’s houses and getting to know each other. Plus my friends are busy too, they have lives. I guess. No excuses not to talk to your friends thought.

So that’s my rant.

So, I quit caring about everything, and only think about my self. Life is too short, and my hair is rapidly turning grey.

No way! I don’t have any gray hairs yet and I’ve been stressed out for over a decade, and I’m prolly at least 15 years older than you!

Mona, I think you may have a personality type similar to mine (at least a little) because what you describe sounds very familiar to me. I don’t have much advice, but take it from somebody who has tried what you are doing (making a conscious decision not to care and isolating myself from my friends because I decided they weren’t really my friends – these two things go hand in hand!) at two different times in my life, that isn’t the answer! The first time I did that was when I got out of the Marines – I stopped partying and decided to get serious about my life and realized my friends were all assholes, which they probably were but the again what kind of person has asshole friends? An asshole, right? Well, anyway… I actually succeeded in getting myself what I thought I wanted in life, but the methods I chose left me pretty lonely. Then I got married and my life got much better for a while, but when that fell apart I did the same thing all over again. I quit my job, wrote off all my friends (and family too, this time) and went to work as consultant so that I didn’t have to try to get along with any geek programmers or office politics. 5 or 6 years later and I’ve realized I kinda like geek programmers and I’ve yet to repair my relationships with family members I walked away from. Don’t go that route! People are important! If you find you don’t like people that you used to care about, it may not be them that’s the problem. Likewise, if you think people are not there for you when you need them, it may be that you’ve been broadcasting signals to them that you don’t really want to hear from them. Or, they may actually be jerks. It’s hard to tell sometimes!

I don’t really know you, but you seem like a really nice person. And you’re way too young to turn yourself into a bitter old lady!

My 2 cents worth!

And PS-making friends with people online isn’t a replacement unless those people become your friends in real life too! It’s better than nothing but people really need actual for real human contact

I don’t really know. I guess people get caught up with their own life, and only care about things that make them happy. I am guilty of doing that to people and have had people do it to me.

I loved this blog, your writing was fantastic. I wish I knew the answers to those questions you asked at the end. I know I am guilty of them just as much as I know most of my friends & family, yet I don’t do much about it which allows the friendships to just die. It’s rather sad. It does make me think about things a lot though. I think I am finding myself in the same boat as you, and it frightens me a little & all I say to myself is it will change when I get a new job and move somewhere else, but in the back of my head I worry that it won’t.

@Mona

Oh, we are supposed to answer the questions, eh?

1. Why do people only remember you or want to talk to you only if they need something from you?

a) They don’t enjoy your company. Find people who do

b) They aren’t very outgoing and so it is a big effort for them to initiate something, and so they only do it when they have to. They might be very receptive to being contacted first!

c) They are self-centered jerks.

2. Why do people forget you when you are no longer around them much, but there are many other methods to stay in touch?

Friendships are fairly high-maintenance. Some people can manage quite a few friends (my mother is a good example of that) and others prefer to have just a few good friends and don’t invest much effort in what they see as a casual friendship. I try not to let it bother me if somebody I thought of as a friend starts treating me like an acquaintance instead, unless they seem unusually distant (or even hostile) in which case I figure they must be mad at me about something and I write them off.

3. Why do people suddenly stop talking to you, even though they are the ones that pissed you off?

Aha! See the end of my answer to number 2!

If you got mad at somebody and they reacted by staying away from you, then maybe they don’t understand why you are angry, and what they can do about it. I’m not very careful about what I say to people (I’m quite blunt!) and I often find myself in this position of having people pissed off at me and not really understanding why. If its somebody I care a lot about, I make a few overtures and hope that they’ll explain what I did wrong so that I can make amends. If I don’t get any feedback, I step away and hope that they’ll get over whatever it was that made them mad on their own.

4. Why when people find a significant other, they forget everyone else, and you quickly become a number in the bottom of their list?

Ah, this one is easy! Couples like to do things with other couples. Friendships with single people just start seeming a little weird when people are in a serious relationship – and especially when people are married. Just “hanging out” with friends seems to go bye-bye too… activities become much more organized. This one seems to be pretty much universal… from what I’ve seen, when one or both of the people in a serious relationship is trying to continue hanging out with all their single friends, that relationship is headed for trouble.

It is harder to maintain real life in person relationships than it is to maintain internet relationships. You obviously have a lot to offer, so I think that you just need to meet the type of people that you’ve bonded with over the internet in real life. They’re obviously out there even it’s harder to find them where you live. You need to think about the types of groups you can join or activities you can participate in where you can meet people that you have more in common with. I wish you all the best in finding these real life connections.

Maybe there’s one answer for this bunch of questions which is “People are Egocentric”. I’ve observed this with different types of peope regardless their backgroud.