Have people who have been super nice to you ever changed?

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....If so, what happened?

I've had the unsettling experience of people who seemed very friendly and kind.......suddenly changing overnight and becoming cold and distant.

Of course, this is upsetting, so I try to introspect and figure out what I could be doing wrong. It is entirely possible it is nothing personal. However, a few examples stand out - in that it is clear the person was so accepting and suddenly changed and i couldn't help but think i had something to do w/ it

For example, this guy i met a few years ago was so helpful to me (nothing romantic), just wanted to lend a helping hand in my time of need and so encouraging and friendly at the same time. Well, I was so nervous that his friendliness would disappear that I overdid my expression of appreciation. It got to the point where I STARED while smiling in gratitude because I didn't want him to interpret a lack of eye-contact as not caring or something. The very next day he basically cut it all off. No warning.

Another time it was a lady who seemed to take a liking to me - it lasted so long i thought i'd found a real friend....until i let my guard down and started talking more, stating my opinions and feelings and such. Ugh! My social skills are so bad that i basically have to smile and say Yes! to everything - otherwise i come across as a scary, ungracious, mean ogre. i'm serious!

Of course, maybe it had nothing to do w/ me at all, but based on those circumstances i feel it did.....to this day i don't know what i did wrong or what caused the sudden change from super friendly to distant.

Has this happened to you, and if you could be specific, what do you think may have precipitated things?

Yes.


There was this one girl I knew and she was very sweet but her sister was a bully. Then when she reached first grade, she got snotty with me ad wasn't nice to me anymore. I don't know what happened. Then my brother told me inn 5th grade that she said to him one day in class "Beth is your sister right?" and he said "yeah" and she goes "she's rude." I thought then that explains it. Now I think she is a hypocrite because she was rude herself.

There was this other boy who lived on our block and then at age four he started to get mean to me. He was fine before then and then he started to change towards me when I was seven. I am not sure what happened. He decided I was stupid. He wasn't a nice kid anyway.

There was this girl who I always talked to on the bus when I was eight. I enjoyed her company and I loved hearing her talk. Then one day she didn't want me sitting next to her anymore and it was like that ever since. I am not sure what happened. Maybe I said something wrong to her. Even when I was older, if we happened to be sitting close by, she say to me "We are not going to talk" as if it was first and second grade. We were a grade apart.


In middle school there was this one girl I liked who was deaf but when I got to high school, she got snotty with me so I stopped being friendly with her. I started to ignore her after that and wanted nothing to do with her. I don't know what I did wrong.

This happens a lot when I was at school, it used to happen to nearly every friendship I had. I think it was because I was too 'clingy' or intense with one person (I only ever had one friend at a time). Now I'm older, it still happens but I'm a lot more aware of it and recently have started being more open with people about it once they've known me a while which really seems to help because they know to tell you when you're getting 'too much' or annoying them without realising it.

This happens to me with every human, I don't know otherwise. After decades of trying to decipher WHY, I've given up on humans.

Some stupid people tell me "why don't you ask THEM why?" - sure, I'll go and ask a difficult question precisely to the person who has cut me off so extremely and suddenly they won't talk to me even about the weather.

Other stupid people try to convince me that I KNOW I did something very bad to these people to make them change like that and that I know what I did.

I spent decades in Psychotherapy and the professionals never discovered why either. It was a waste of time.

For several decades, I corrected everything in my relating that I could think of might be the problem, and it didn't make any difference whatsoever.

I think the problem might be that as time goes by and we feel more and more secure in the friendship, we allow ourselves to be more ourselves, and that's when they stop liking our personalities.

Almost everybody has known people that are "two-faced" which is what the OP is describing. Extremely two-faced people are often sociopaths.

Sociopaths often act nice when you're alone with them, but then they change as soon as other people are around.

Yes, they have. Seems it's a common experience among us. I don't know if it happens to people in general as often as it does to people with AS.

Pretty much each time it happens, it's just puzzling. I agree with what Moondust said. Once you let your guard down, they see something rather off-putting. I don't know what that is - could be your weakness, awkwardness, quirkiness, something that makes them feel they really cannot understand you. Or they misinterpret your openness as being intrusive or being too clingy. After all they most likely know that you don't have many other friends and that you are rather insecure and they feel uncomfortable or embarrassed to be one of the few who seem to be close to this "weird person". It may or may not be one specific thing you said or did that put them off. Well, that's how I see what's been happening to me.

I also understand what Venger said in his/her post about two-faced people. For example at my work this guy is rather nice and talks to me as if he understood me personally when there's nobody around. Then in a group situation he suddenly turns into a completely different person and treats me in a rather disrespectful (not necessarily openly rude) way to show the others that he is not my friend. I think this is just group psychology. He doesn't want to embarrass himself or to be less socially acceptable by showing an association with a not-very-socially-acceptable person (me). Whatever it is, I regard him as a coward.

Sorry, I could only talk about my experiences, but could not give you much of an explanation as to your experiences.

I had one really good friend who was fine until about 18 months ago when he started ignoring my texts and e-mails. I went to see him once last year and I got the impression he didn't want me around. I saw him last December and he was fine if a bit nervous and we said we'd do something this January or February but then he never got back to me after that.

Yeah that two-faced guy sounds like mild-sociopath. I've known lots of people like that who I suspected of being sociopaths(ASPD) for various reasons. Other people being present seems to "flip a switch" inside their brain that makes them completely change all of sudden. Probably because they're fake to begin with.

It would be funny to call him on it, and point-out how he acts totally different as soon as other people show up. lol

Last edited by Venger on 24 Oct 2012, 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, to a few people. And that is far as I am going, due to me still being a tad bitter about them.

People were usually super nice and friendly when they wanted something from me. For instance, there were "buddies" who wanted me to help them move house or do any work for them, like fixing things or painting. When it came to paying, they suddenly had no money handy. When they asked again I would say no and then some of them became mean. Unfortunately, you can't take back the work you've done.

The same happened with some people who wanted to borrow something. Hardly anyone ever bothered to return things, especially books, and they told me they had lost the book, so after a while I learned to say no. Tools I had lend came back damaged.

At some point I decided that I was not going to help anyone who wouldn't pay the half in advance, nor lend anything, not even a screwdriver.

I've learned that people are full of hypocritical kindness and niceness as long as they want to take advantage of me. If I refuse, they don't even say hello afterwards.

I have had friends turn on me before, but even when I was friends with them I knew they had their moments but the silly me stuck with them because they were my only friends.

It's my mum who has had people that turned against her, who were the last people she ever thought would turn. She has now lost trust in people. Her sister-in-law had been in the family for about 14 years and was always friendly to my mum, but one day she suddenly started humiliating my mum in the middle of a supermarket, and my mum hadn't done anything to her at all. That was such a shock for my mum that since that day (which was now 7 years ago or so) my mum has became more depressed, anxious and prone to self-pity, so I reckon that has knocked her back a lot. I do feel sorry for her because she is NT but has suddenly developed Aspie traits in last few years what even I have noticed, and I think it's due to people being so rotton to her for no reason (her sister-in-law isn't the only person who had turned for no reason).

I've had that so many times! Although last year, I was open with a woman I'd been good friends with (and semi-open with before), and she was amazing about it. Maybe it depends on the person?

Yup. People have been quite sympathetic to me when they saw I "wasn't quite right in the head"... but once they saw some more upsetting aspect of my disability, like witnessing a meltdown or seeing obvious marks of self-injury, they'd kind of back off like I was dangerous. I have never hurt anyone (except for childhood spats with my sister), and they have no reason to think that I'd start now--but people are still too intimidated. I try to hide those intimidating parts of it, but sometimes it's just too hot to cover up every scar, and my meltdown prediction-and-prevention is still not perfect.

Please don't be offended, Joe90, I don't mean to make light of your mother's reaction, but I can't get over how easy NTs are to 'destroy' and shock. We usually take a lot of crap from an early age and it's pretty much normal for us. For her, all it took was one humiliating scene?
I'm so struck by how "normal" people are so easily offended by words or gestures, and shocked by the very thought that someone will target them. We might be scarred as hell, but they are way weaker in many ways 'cause like nessa238 wrote in another thread:


"Norms" have such a high opinion of themselves, they can't imagine not being treated with respect and being part of the privileged class. They think themselves so important and valuable. When I see them react like that, I can't help but laugh on the inside in disbelief because they have no idea what it means to really be targeted.

I've had a childhood bully befriend me for a few days. She said we were "play friends", and even called my house once, but then turned back on me a week later.

My experience with people who were very friendly then becoming cold was in my former church. I slowly quit being involved with church activities and eventually quit attending altogether. I had been a member for several years. Since I quit church, I never received a phone call or a visit from any member, even those I considered friends. Some of them won't speak to me or even look at me.
I am now atheist, and I'm happier for it.