earthmom wrote:
Here's a case study:
I met a person on a message board, we shared an interest. We both came there daily and tended to agree on most things discussed and we joined up in helping others several times and it just became a friendly association. That led into private email where we shared details about our lives and talked freely. We started this ongoing email conversation, talking almost daily.
Birthdays and holidays we each sent small gifts through the mail - so this online friendship had moved to real life, exchanging addresses and that. This went on for a couple of years. Her husband needed help creating a website (for someone else) and paid me to work with him on that project for a few weeks. I did it, got paid, everyone was very happy.
I think it's important to say that even though this was being maintained for quite some time - and with success - it was very one note. The discussions were mostly her issues, her problems, her life, with me reacting and offering positive words or support. I noticed this but that's normal for any relationship I can have with others and I figured it was the price I had to pay in order to keep this going.
I need to note also that she was working for a big corporation all through this time, so she was on the clock for most of our email conversations. That is a big thing - people who only chat with you while being paid to be at work are not real friends. Most of my "friends" fell into that category, but as soon as they're on their own time, they stop talking.
During our "friendship" I got laid off and was at home, on my own time, still talking away with her whenever she needed to talk.
Then she got laid off, and she joined her husband's business working out of their home. At that time she told me she had no time, was too busy, and would get back to me soon.
I was paying for a service that provides updates each day through email, and she was very interested in it so instead of her paying for it too I had been forwarding her mine every day. It wasn't automated, I had to manually do the forward from my email every day. I continued to do this for her for weeks, then months. I checked in by sending her several emails that went unanswered over the next month, and finally she wrote back asking me to please hold off writing, not to contact her until she got back to me. She was very nice about it but said she was "so busy" and to not write again until she wrote to me. I agreed. So with that rule in place now I am totally bound.
I continued to send the forwarded free email every single day .... for a year. When I got the renewal bill for the service I realized it had been an entire year. And I never once heard from her in all that time. The holidays went by, not one single word.
We didn't actually 'break up' (it always seems like a break up but with girlfriend relationships I guess it's not politically correct to call it that) and there was no fight or any issue, just that she put me on Hold and never came back.
Since I was forwarding the other emails though, I know for sure that my name, my email address, was visible in her inbox every single day. So it's not likely that she just totally forgot about me.
At that one year mark I stopped forwarding the emails. More than a YEAR LATER she wrote to me all chatty and saying HI we have to catch up! how are you! how are things going! chat chat chat. I was horrified. I had actually cried over the loss of this friendship, as shallow and silly as it was and as ridiculous as that sounds, I sort of mourned the loss of it all and had to make changes within myself to realize she was not in my life anymore. Then she pops up like nothing happened.
I wrote back and told her I was shocked by this behavior, we were such regular friends, and then she put me on hold like a phone and out of respect for her and her new rule I did as she asked. I reminded her of the whole year that I manually forwarded her that email every single day..... with no reply. She wrote back saying she assumed the forwarded thing was automated because "no one on earth would have done that" (ha)
and she was sorry but she had "just been busy". How busy can you be and for more than a whole year???
I told her I was sure that I was going to be very busy from now on indefinitely and to have a good life and good luck to you and all those nice things but let's not have any contact. She said she was "so hurt" and couldn't believe that I wanted to stop being her friend and "after all we've been through" and she really "needed someone" (THERE is the truth - something must have happened in her life and she needed the free therapy and support that I had given her)
She tried hard to make me feel guilty or like I was a bad person for turning my back on my friend but what I saw was there was no friendship at all anyway. And I had already mourned her and was fully used to her not being a part of my life so it was already over.
IF I had chosen to lie to her and then trash her to someone else later to vent all of my hurt feelings, we would still be "friends" today. What a mess - just the thought of her being in my life now makes me feel tired. But that's the step I would have had to take there in order to keep my "friend".
What do you think?
This is pretty typical NT behavior. Humans are creatures of habit. Unless you see that person on a regular basis., most of the time they will not go out of their way to socialize with you.
Case in point, I have a friend that is just like the above mentioned. I am lucky if I hear from him every 2-3 years. He was close to me when I was growing up, but we went our seperate ways and have seperate lives in different states. I had a big fit about this years ago, but now understand that many relationships are this way.
09 May 2010, 1:37 pm
