Original post: https://mastodon.social/@heyokyay/117377613172824724
Is there a way to have friends that does not involve getting involved with other people?
Schizophrenia
Start a YouTube/tiktok channel or onlyfans. Parasocial relationships sound perfect for that.
There’s a reason LLM chat bots are so common.
help, when I do this I encounter sociopaths who view this “being nice” as weakness and an invitation to manipulate me; is there a trick to this?
right!? its always sociopths or addicts. cuz they are out there looking for exactly that.
My better friends were vetted through other friends, work, community sessions or school where more neutral time was spent to sit with the person to assess safety before committing personal time to them.
I always find these sentiments puzzling. As someone who tries to be nice to everyone I simply don’t encounter people like this. I’m not sure if I’m subconsciously avoiding bonding with such people, I’ve been lucky, or what. But I have a pretty big social circle so the second one seems hard to believe.
Have you ever done anyone a favor and they pushed a little harder than you were comfortable? Or complained while you were helping? Or got mad at you for not doing even more? All while never having reciprocated kindness in any meaningful way and over time just increasing the favors in quantity and scale?
I have made a lot of friends like that over the years. I’m better at spotting them now than I used to be. It’s easier to not make friends than to keep making friends like that, not see it for a while and then have your heart broken when you realize they never liked you for you, but for what you provided
You sound like my mother. But with her even when I warn her about the person, she is somehow unable to understand narcissists and sociopaths exist.
I wish I had someone in my life to warn me. I think I always assume people come from a place of altruism because that’s where I’m at, but I really think I could benefit from someone that could just tell me reality before my head is too far in the clouds.
codependency is a thing where a person is the exact puzzle piece that fits with a narcissist and equally hates boundaries.
I think studying that nuance is important before giving advice.
Telling a person to just be nice with absolutely no other factor can paint a target on their head and put them in danger.
Such as the power of observance to sense a danger. Place, location could be important. As is time. If you’re in more chances of being around the same people repeatedly to be able to assess their behaviour as safe enough would be another nuance that is important to know.
you can be nice to anyone without making friends which is ok but making friends with them is vastly different. friend ship is a whole other channel involving give, take, sharing, trust, boundaries, vulnerability, time and intimacy and should be treated with care.
And …Well for all we know of eachother as strangers online anyone on here could be this person who is being nice to everyone and are being completely taken advantage of. They could be full boil in a codpendency and have a distorted sense this is friendship. And just on here giving bad advice to others to get taken advantage of cus they believe dysfunction is how relationships work. The person giving the bad advice have no such boundaries and even perhaps hate and judge such boundaries as it means some hard self reflection.
Sorry to be too serious but in my experience, for me, it’s because how I was raised divorced me from my intuition. Getting your intuition back is a huge part of healing and making better choices about the people in your life.
how were you raised that muted your intuition?
Have you ever considered leading a cult?
Edit: it could be like a good cult. Like a place where all the cult escapees can go to heal, since their trauma will likely make it difficult for them to integrate into society immediately
ah, so the solution is just “don’t have autism”, got it.
well, I have little faith in the current administration being the one responsible for a new breakthrough in the curing of autism (unless that breakthrough is gas chambers), and academia is moving away overseas anyhow now, so I guess that’s not happening.
Just gotta be the bigger sociopath
Everybody wants a friend no one wants to be a friend
oh there are plenty who want to be your ‘friend’… how much money to you have?
There are a very small number of people that I would consider to have a true, platonic soulmate connection with. And I feel lucky to even have that. Those are the friends where you’re not expected to act any certain way, because no matter the circumstance or time passed, the next time you meet up its as if no time even passed.
God I feel really fucking lucky to have that, but I’m still hollow.
Also, what kind of cult do you want to lead if you’re hired?
My tried and true method: see people playing a game -> ask to join said game with them -> friends acquired*
*Results may vary, but it’s worked so far for me to make friends
I’d give this a go, but how do you get into people houses without causing issues?
Bluetooth controller to play
Have you tried asking people for a minor favor when you meet them?
on a scale of, “let me bum a cig” to “suck my dick”, how minor?
asking for a friend.
Instructions unclear, in jail for asking a …
You know what, I’m not finishing that one.
“Help me move this chair”
That’s not how it works.
If you want to find friends, that is ACTUAL FRIENDS THAT LIKE YOU, be yourself and do things you want to do.
The people you meet in that way will like the actual you.
Don’t try to become a different version of yourself to find friends, and then be surprised when they don’t like the real you.
I mean, “be nice to them” doesn’t mean “hide who you are and pretend you like everything they say and do when you don’t.” Treating people with respect as individual human beings (“be nice”) really is the starting point to any healthy relationship.
for some, yes it is very much like that meaning.
codependency, for example. we cant just stuff everyone’s mental health under one umbrella and assume they know what a simple sentence means without injecting their own meaning from experience into it.
and dont get me started on how distorted ‘respect’ can be for people coming out of traumatic relationships. not everyone on the other side of this conversation is just some disrespectful teenager taking everything for granted and needing to have respect explained to them as a formal way of connecting.
No I mean even “going up to people” is bad.
Let it happen organically, you can’t force lifelong friendships. They happen on vibes.
I know we’re kind being pedantic over the wording of a meme, but you absolutely can “go up to people” if the circumstances are right. Context is important, and most people aren’t going to be in the mindset to make friends if they’re outside of a “friend making context” like a bar/party/event so you probably shouldn’t just walk up to people at random. But making a small comment about a shared interest or experience that organically turns into a conversation can legitimately happen anywhere. Just respect people’s boundaries.
You can for sure force things, and reap the consequences.
Lifelong friendships aren’t made, they happen.
