What did she mean?

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So I've got (or so i thought) a really good female friend. She's gay so there's no sexual tension to worry about, but recently she's been avoiding me. I wasn't sure how long I should wait before asking her what's going on so I gave it two weeks and texted her. She replied:

"When i see you i want to help you and you seem quite resigned to a life of living in your room. You don't seem like you're willing to try to make your life better and and it's depressing. Then you'd say things to me like "i could never go travelling" - you say defeatist things about yourself and it stresses me out."

I'm having a hard time with understanding it so i thought i'd throw it out to you guys. Was she just joking or something? She also called me a martyr as well.

help

I think she's finding it difficult to accept you the way you are and has been on a private mission to change you.

Now she's defeated and feels she can't be with you as a friend unless she can turn you into a version of herself.

She seems like one of these, immature, people who must do everything together with a person and you all must think the same too in order to remain friends.

By calling you a martyr she's saying you make yourself the victim by making sacrifices.

Perhaps it's never crossed her mind that you may actually be happy just the way you are.

Hope this helped and didn't seem too harsh.

I don't see anything in that text as being within a million miles of funny, so no, she wasn't joking. But, who knows why people send messages like this. Is she on to something, here? We don't know -- but maybe she does. Why don't you analyze what she said by turning her statements into questions for yourself. "Do I need help?" "Am I resigned to a life of living in my room?" "Is there anything wrong with my life that needs to get better?" "Do I say defeatist things about myself?" Like that. If the answers all boil down to, "no, what's she talking about?" then I think there is and has been something fundamentally wrong with your relationship. If you come to the conclusion that she's somehow or partially or totally right, then you have an opportunity and plan for growth.

To put it bluntly what she's saying is you are negatively influencing her life with your attitude. I'm not trying to be offensive but people do rub off on each other and negativity is draining.

Hi Colin, I'm going to try to explain what I believe she is thinking. I think she is feeling frustrated because she thinks you are purposely ignoring her suggestions about ways to improve your life. It may have happened that every time she made a suggestion to you about how you can be "involved" in an activity you may have responsed with a reason why you could not be "involved". From her point of view she is a willing helper to you and now she has concluded that you are passing up wonderful opportunities to be "better" or more of a regular person. Now I think she is going to start keeping her distance from you because her feeling towards you started out from "excited to help Colin" all the way down to "I'm useless to Colin". She's sad Colin and she expressed it in a very abrupt way in her text to you. A person can handle only so much rejection before they start to protect themselves from being hurt.
You said she way Gay. I'm sure there was a time in her life where she wasn't so sure about that and at some point she made a decision to completely live as a Gay woman. And once she did that her whole world became easier to live in.
The huge problem with her thought process is that she is completely wrong in her methodology of understanding who you are. Just as her "world" became easier once she embraced a Gay lifestyle she wants you to embrace the social world. She doesn't understand the AS mind. You didn't write about how you feel about your life. Maybe you're perfectly happy, maybe to want to socialize just a little more and maybe you just downright hate feeling alone. I am going to take a guess and imagine that you never wanted to change your current habits. If that is the truth then you should tell her that you are not looking for any help and when you say you like being in your room, you really mean it. Tell her that you want to be accepted for who you are and not who she thinks you should be. If you are content then she should be too. Tell her you want to have her friendship but only if she can accept you as you are just as you accept her.

Good Luck
Luna

Thanks for the help so far all, for clarification I am diagnosed AS.

I thought she was probably giving up on me and was saying i had been a burden to her but I wanted to see what you all thought because its really hard to understand people intentions sometimes. What's hard is three years ago I moved into london to start uni and after these three years she was the only person i would consider a friend, when all this time i've been a project or a burden to her.

If I could cry I probably would.

Although most of my spare time is spent in my room I'm happy with that, I don't know where she got the idea of me wanting to break free or something. She also called me negative. I'm not negative, I'm not positive, I'm just logical.

Arg people are so frustrating

People are supposed to go outdoors and meet other people. When you stay at home a lot there is probably something wrong, according to a majority of people.

People cannot understand when I prefer to stay home watching a film above going to a pub.

So maybe it is that way of living she does not understand. Maybe you could explain it to her?

Colin, we are social beings, we live a society and we do need each other for help, support and love. I understand that Aspies are perfectly content spending most of their time alone, but I do agree with your friend that this may not be the healthiest in the long run. You do need to develop at least some relationships with people that you could count on. You yourself stated that she is your only friend and if you lose her you won't have anybody else. I think she knows that and she probably feels a lot of responsibility for this. She has probably tried her best to make you see this. She cares a great deal about you otherwise she would not even have wasted her time explaining to you why she is distancing herself. I don't think that she expects you to become a social butterfly but that you at least try to develop some relationships so you won't be alone in the time of need. I don't think that she wants to change you, I think she is very worried about you and she is now very sad because she sees that all her attempts to help you develop new friendships failed.

She is saying she thinks you are a self defeatist and a martyr.

A self defeatist is one who defeats themselves. For example, Joe didn't like his crappy minimum wage job and wanted a promotion, yet Joe was so convinced he'd never get a promotion, that he never tried to get one.

In a historical context, a martyr is one who dies for a cause even if they were given the opportunity to live by refuting that cause. For example, in Rome, a christian could have avoided being fed to a lion if they refuted christianity, yet many of them refused to do this.

In modern context, a martyr is someone who makes themselves a victim of something and then complains about it.

Honestly I tire of people like this quickly. I see no point standing around like a stick in the mud complaining about things or hindering one's self when there are clearly steps one could take to better one's self.

I agree with what luna12 said. Out of curiosity, have you explained to her what AS is? Perhaps if she understood that she would be more willing to accept that you are fine with isolation (and you don't een have to explain AS if you don't wish to. You could be fine just telling her that you're happy being alone for a large amount of time). I do find it strange that people seem to try to fix others but a few posters in this thread give sensible reasons.