Overly friendly and familiar - a negative?

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Jayo
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25 Mar 2012, 8:48 pm

When thinking of an initial contact or acquaintance with someone, I have learned through experience that it's generally BAD for either me, or the other party, to come off as overly friendly and familiar. (I'm an adult male Aspie BTW.)

I swear that just about every time I can recall (in my adult life) that someone was overly friendly and familiar as I first got to know them, turned out to be a bully. It's like they were trying to prepare me for what followed, blindside me, so I wouldn't see it coming, and it bypassed my distorted intuition. It didn't make any sense when these covert bullies gradually turned 90 degrees, then 180, from their initial selves - almost like a Jekyll-and-Hyde metamorphosis unfolding - and really caused me a great deal of grief and suffering. It got to that point where I called them on their game, and got the line "how dare you, after all I did for you" - typical retort. In more recent years, I was able to use my intuition to see through this mask, so I guess that's a good thing - too bad I had to learn thru trial and error though!

Conversely, I have tried the overly friendly and familiar approach on others in my youth - stepping outside my comfort zone - and was told by an NT friend that this is generally a bad idea b/c people tend to think of you as weird. So I self-calibrated to a low-key but not spaced-out initial approach. In retrospect, I can see why I was given this advice - people would see something like this as odd - sometimes I wonder if it's b/c they suspected I might be a bully or psycho, but then I realized no, they probably sense some sort of desperation due to my inherent difference, and this turns them off.

Either way, bad for both parties - I guess there's that unwritten rule that "there's something up with him/her" if that person is overly friendly and familiar.



Ria1989
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25 Mar 2012, 9:16 pm

YES.

The girl that I thought was TOO friendly, ended up being the biggest bully I know. Sadly, I ended up being friends with her long after I thought that (and ended up forgetting about it).

The guys that were the friendliest to me, were the ones that used me. The girls that were the friendliest to me, were bullies.

I asked my friend what it means when women are overly nice, and she says they're the women that do stuff with your boyfriend. No matter what I hear, it's never a good thing.


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questor
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25 Mar 2012, 11:04 pm

Yes, there is a category of bully that starts out with false friendship. This type of bully prefers to use manipulation instead of open aggression. And yes, they will often use the "after all I have done for you" routine, when someone actually calls them on their manipulating behavior. You could try coming back with, "you mean, what you have done TO me." :lol: I doubt that will stop them, though. They always seem able to find someone else to take advantage of.


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abyssquick
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26 Mar 2012, 7:53 am

There is also a category of person who starts a false friendship, just to use you. I've known a few.



TechnoDog
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26 Mar 2012, 8:31 am

abyssquick wrote:
There is also a category of person who starts a false friendship, just to use you. I've known a few.


Personality camouflage, to look like a innocent person, same way how a scam works:-

Image

Edit:- whats command line to resize a image on this site?


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Ria1989
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26 Mar 2012, 10:09 am

Yep. ^^ I love it when they turn it around and say it's your fault. Not even close.


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ToughDiamond
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26 Mar 2012, 11:09 am

I agree that it's usually too good to be true when somebody is being really friendly.

I think sometimes it's innocent enough though. Some folks are just very genial and personable, and will almost instantly engage with a new person. Sometimes we get the chance for "closed-ended" associations, such as chatting to a stranger on a train, where the knowledge that you will probably never meet again may allow you to talk more intimately than you otherwise would, because the contract is not about weighing each other up gradually in the hope of building a good friendship.

But it can happen because of poor self-esteem, poor social confidence, sudden loss of somebody close, loneliness, and narcissism. Even if they always remain friendly, they can arouse suspicion and a sense of being somehow fobbed off with unqualified approval.......they're often so busy trying to be nice that they don't really engage with you, and by putting themselves last too often they may invite you to put them last also, and so harm your sense of respect for them. If it's down to a serious case of narcissism, it's definitely a negative. You won't get any genuine friendliness from a hardened narcissist. They can be very charming, but really they don't give a damn about you.



CockneyRebel
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26 Mar 2012, 4:54 pm

I was friends with somebody like that. She was very manipulative. She was very nice to me and than the little bimbo turned on me. She even phoned and said, "Please don't phone here any more." so I haven't phoned her since. I haven't seen that little wolf for almost 2 years now.


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Jayo
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26 Mar 2012, 7:49 pm

Of course, there are strategies for dealing with the super-nice person who premeditates turning 180 on you. For me, it came more with experience. I frequently used the line "Oh! You didn't have to do that." when they did some random act of kindness. If the new acquaintance tried to invite me along somewhere or to look at something with them, at first I accepted; but now I'm more stand-offish if it doesn't feel right, I'll tell a white lie and say I'm busy, maybe some other time. For the longest time, this behaviour was unnatural to me, and it cost me - how ironic, I must say. 8)



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26 Mar 2012, 10:03 pm

Quote:
too bad I had to learn thru trial and error


Don't sweat it. It's how we all learn- no matter what kind of neurology we have.


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ToughDiamond
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27 Mar 2012, 4:51 am

CockneyRebel wrote:
She even phoned and said, "Please don't phone here any more."

That was a strange thing for her to do. I think the usual way to discourage somebody from phoning is just to stop picking up....if they don't have "caller display" on their phone, they can wait till you phone and then ask you not to. But phoning somebody to tell them not to phone is kind of odd. :o