Derailing friendships

I'm getting worse at managing relationships, particularly when it comes to making new ones. Like, with friends? I've been abandoned by people I made friends with so many times - and the last few times, they were people I'd been friends with for a long period of time, people I'd gotten to some depth with.

I have a fairly new friendship that I'm working on building now, and I simply CANNOT relax. I keep feeling compelled to pick or push, to interrogate, to withdraw, to do SOMETHING. I want to grab this person and yell, "Why don't you love me yet?? Make up your *******ed mind or get lost!" Which would not be very conducive to continuing friendship! I'm feeling some aggression and hostility rising as I begin to believe that this person is "holding out" on me. It has only been a couple of months, AND she's an internet friend.

I realize this is unreasonable, but I don't know how to stop this process, nor do I know how to calm it. I desperately need human caring and connections right now, but I feel even less equipped to deal with them than ever before.

The more desperate I become, the faster they run. The faster they run, the more I freak out. It's a vicious cycle. I feel so rejected and unlovable. Am I not supposed to be a person?

You ARE a person!
Interpersonal relationships are HARD! Don't beat yourself up about it. Take it 1 step at a time, it's good that you're aware of your behaviour. Wish I knew the magic word to make us stop acting out tho.
Sorry no pearls of wisdom over here...

Why do you feel she is holding out on you?

Good question, Athena. I had to think about it for a bit, but I think it comes down to inconsistency. She'll be emotive and attentive one day, and then be distant and unresponsive the next day (or several days). Inconsistency has always been terribly upsetting to me, but people are rather inconsistent as a rule. I need to know what to expect and how the person feels about me.

You know, I've found myself stressing over the same thing. I'm thinking about telling the other person, "I need you to know...I have abandonment issues, so here's how I feel when you...." and see how they respond. You'll probably either find out that she has issues of her own or had no idea she was upsetting you or your issues may bother her. Hopefully you can have a conversation about it whichever way it goes and see how it can be resolved.

Thank you, but I can't help but hate myself more when I am making the same mistakes, and I KNOW it. These things, these destructive behaviors, become an overwhelming compulsion to the point that I can't think about anything else anymore. They become so loud that I either have to act on them or stop doing anything else but fighting the compulsions. I wish the self-awareness helped.

Athena, I'm scared to tell her. I'm not sure I can put that kind of pressure on her at this point. But things have gotten bad enough with me that she recently said that she could see me falling apart and that she was ready to apply duct tape, LOL. We'll see about that. She has no idea.

. Yes, this is always a risk...telling them too much. On the other hand if she's the type of person who can handle it, you may get an even more supportive friend out of it. So I guess it comes down to...does the potential gain outweigh the risk? And...what are you looking for in a friend?

You know how it goes - too many unknowns. Any relationship is risky, but I cannot live without them. What I'm looking for from her would probably be defined by most people as a very close friend. To me, that's just a decent friend. My idea of a close friendship is almost like a significant other, just with several components missing. I wish I could find one of those, but it's not a position most people would be satisfied with. My problem with close friends is that they tend to fall in love with me, but when I won't be "with" them, they get angry and leave. (Not to mention the challenges of dealing with me.) Even knowing their role and place in my life. So, I'll have to hope I can at least get a decent friend.

OK, I take it you are a guy then?

XD No, I'm a girl!

Girl, yes...That's what I thought all along. Your comment about friends falling in love with you, in the context of discussing this female Internet friend...had me confused. Still does. Perhaps you were talking about guy friends in real life in reference to them 'falling in love' with you?

It has happened with both boys and girls, both online and offline. Basically I'm saying that I seem to lose friends that way. I can't really explain why.

This quote, from your very first post in this thread...kind of shows that you essentially told people to fall in love with you or abandon you (even if it's subconscious, you seem to be giving this message and they seem to be acting on it.)

But you just said people fall in love with you. And that they leave when you won't be 'with' them. So you ARE lovable. But it seems that you are pushing them away, not the other way around.

I battle with this every day, mostly with relationships. What makes it so bad I realize that a lot of my thoughts and actions are irrational. Often times, I am literally embarrassed to tears because of the way I act. Yet, I cannot stop. I also need a lot of help/guidance in learning how to control myself.

Exactly. The compulsions are so strong that even if you realize you're being irrational or that your behaviors may make a negative outcome more likely, you just can't resist indefinitely. I don't know how to control it, either. Or how we could be trained to do so. I worry about that. So often, I wish people would define things for me. You know, what to do and what not to do. I need clear instructions. But people are loath to provide such.

I do not think that "I" am the lovable one. I think it is the construct I seem to generate in trying to be what people want and need. There is some "me" in there, and I gradually increase it over time, but I seem to be too afraid to just come right out from the very beginning and say, "This is me."

I want them to love me (a lot) and I want to be special to them - that meets my needs. But why can't they just love platonically instead of turning it into a situation where I lose them just because they can't have absolutely everything they want? I think what the message is from them is this: "I can't tolerate your issues if I can't have you."

I'm sure you're right in that some of this is my fault, but I don't know how else to achieve close and loving relationships with people.

Maybe your relationships take on an obsessional tone. Maybe you are so attentive, so interested, so loving, so perfect at the beginning, how can they not find you adorable? And maybe you do it because you are also getting caught up in the excitement of having a new friend...until you burn out and can't keep it up anymore. What if you slowed things down? Forced yourself to back off, not be in touch quite as often. Kind of an 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' approach. Just a thought.

They tire way before I do! It's not that I stop giving certain things, it's that my true self starts to come through. I think. But I do think part of what draws them to me in the first place is how attentive and focused I am. Strokes their egos and all that. Making people feel special - that's the only way to attract them. But after a while...maybe my attention becomes a burden. Seriously upsetting when some people asked for it in the first place, even after I warned them. They said they could "handle" it. HA.

Omg, slow things down? Not be in touch as often?? These are serious failure points of mine. I feel driven to keep obsessive tabs on anyone I like. I want to hear from those people every single day, preferably multiple times a day. I've been told by people who've been around me for a while that I'm (too) intense and that I'm really obsessive. And I am very obsessive. But I can't seem to help it.

With the new friend I mentioned before - I'm trying SO hard not to ask for reassurances that she likes me every 5 minutes. I'm chill until I start thinking I want someone around, and then BOOM - I become instantly neurotic and obsessive. :/ And to think, she thinks I'm hyper and intense NOW. I'm debating (and have been debating) over whether I should just drop the friendship and run while I still can. But at the same time, I NEED the support and contact. Ugh.

I have this obsessive tendency but not quite to the same extreme and I (mostly) keep it to myself. I think that getting to the bottom of it is key. It has to go, it interferes with daily life, with relationships, with mood. I don't know what is causing it, I've just come around to the realization that this is one of my major issues. We should be OK to be on our own for a good part of the day without obsessing about others. It's debilitating.

That's the problem...I can't. (Can't switch off the obsessive tendencies.) I mean, I can be physically alone, but I need to be emotionally "touched" very often. If I've got no one who can make me feel like that - no intense relationships - then I'm emotionally absent from life and feel dead. I can't stand that nothingness - it makes me feel very self-destructive. I live to find people I can love and obsess over, and to find people who can love me (and hopefully obsess over me a little, too). Without them, there is no reason. Nothing else is enough. I can't switch it off.

I totally get what you are feeling. But I wasn't aware of my tendency to do this until about a year and a half ago. That was a little after I quit working. I had a really high stress job before that and didn't have any energy to worry about being on my own. I also started therapy about that time. I think maybe being awakened out of my workaholic 'robotic' state caused me to notice what was missing. I think a balance is needed - enough meaningful activities to absorb us in the present and enough meaningful relationships to satisfy our need for human connection. Internet friends are great but one has to have a handful of face-to-face friends too. I think the more obsessive one is, the more friends one needs...so that we don't place too much of a 'burden' on any one friend. I don't know, that's just where my head's at at the moment. I still think that's not going to solve the whole problem. I think there is still something that has to be worked through.

It's great that you are making progress.

That is definitely what I am trying to do - build a larger friend-base so that I don't put so much pressure on people. T__T (Not sure about the balance of activities - my life is busy enough, but I don't often have time to do the things I want to do.) I have no face-to-face friends at all. There doesn't seem to be anyone around here, or any way to find them. The internet is perfect for that. I'm starting to think I don't need face-to-face friends, LOL. But then I may hardly leave the house at all. Bad enough that I tend to stay in all weekend and never go any further than the garden, if that.