Why do I keep attracting such selfish friends?

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When she said that "perhaps you were never actually free to begin with" and then followed it up with "how dare you compare ME with an animal" shows that she obviously doesn't think that my cat's health emergency is serious enough to justify a cancellation without any snippy attitude from her. Therefore, my paraphrasing is absolutely accurate.

Last edited by SummerAndSmoke on 13 Jan 2023, 12:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

SummerandSmoke, being that I am a cat owner myself who I love dearly, I understand. As I said, you didn't do anything wrong. Your "Friend" sounds like she seems to think the world owes her a living and I feel sorry for her as I don't know where she got her attitude of entitlement.

As for your other friend who was mad about the road trip, I remember you mentioned it last year and I am sorry you fell out. However, I can understand why she didn't want to look at your phone the entire time because it sounds like she was looking to enjoy the trip with you on the road. I have been in situations where I really looked forward to something and there were things that bothered me that led to me feeling upset. However, I hate feeling like that.

So she was looking to enjoy the trip with..... me doing all the unpleasant work and her just sitting back enjoying the ride? She wanted a chauffeur not a travel buddy. I thought we were in this together, but she obviously had different ideas.

Thank you for reminding me that she used you as her chauffeur, I forgot that part and how she complained about everything. Again, like with the lady who made you feel bad because she didn't get her way, she's also immature, controlling, and entitled.

However, maybe the problem lies in the fact that you and the other people weren't compatible, to begin with. It sounds like they could be on very different paths or be in very different points in their lives. Say, they are both quite immature, bossy, and demanding and perhaps you like to go with the flow. Plus you are pretty independent and a lot of other people don't like that.

Question: Are these the only two plans you and she ever made to get together? If not, how many times did the two of you ever succeed in getting together?

Your original post gave me the impression that you and she never succeeded in getting together again after the event at which you first met. Is that correct?

If indeed, out of sheer bad luck, you ended up canceling both of the only two plans you and she ever made, and for very similar (even though causally unrelated) reasons each time, it's not surprising that she drew the conclusions she did, however incorrect those conclusions might have been. People inevitably judge each other based on their own personal experience of each other.

Even so, based on your paraphrase, it does sound like she was unnecessarily nasty about how she expressed the conclusions she drew.


It helps that you already knew he had cancer. Therefore, any such cancellations were not a surprise.


Agreed -- at least once the friendship is well-established. Being able to "support each other when bad things happen in life" is an important dimension of friendship that hopefully grows as the friendship develops.

But, if indeed the two of you had never seen each other in-person since the time you and she first met, then the friendship was not yet well-established enough for her to be able to make correct judgments about you.

How do you think she would have felt about a trip on which the two of you were to take turns driving, with neither of you having to look at your phones the entire time, but BOTH of you having plenty of opportunities to just sit back enjoying the ride? (Of course, this would likely have required a different destination, or at least a different, simpler route.)

Different people value different things when they go out on road trips together. It sounds to me like perhaps you place a high value on comradeship (facing common challenges together) whereas she placed a higher value on enjoying scenery.

That was not the only time we ever met IRL. Another time, she came to uptown Manhattan and we hung out for about 5 hours. We went out for dinner and explored my neighborhood. A few weeks later, we were going to hang out again but I had to cancel because of my cat's surgery. Then I went back to California for a long time.

The second cancellation was also not a last minute thing. The dinner party is supposed to be tomorrow night, and my cat had his respiratory attack on Sunday night. I told her a good 5 days in advance that I probably would not be able to make it.





If simply looking at a phone and keeping an eye on the directions is too much work for her, I very much doubt that sharing in driving duties is something she would ever be open to doing. She's always been an extremely lazy person with very little discipline. Driving for many miles is definitely not a responsibility that would suit her well.

If she wanted to hire a chauffeur to drive us both around so that we could both enjoy the scenery, she should have suggested that. But when two people are driving long-distance, it's only fair that common challenges should be faced together. To go on a road trip with the expectation that your companion will do ALL the work and shoulder ALL the challenges is just wrong.

It's not like she didn't know what was getting into. She does not have a drivers license and was fully aware from the get-go that I would be the one doing all the driving. Yet she resented lifting her pinky to help me out on the road and make my job a bit easier. My arms and legs were hurting soooooooo badly from all the steering and pressing the gas pedal, and I never complained about a goddamn thing. All she did was sit on her ass and b***h about how the trip wasn't living up to her expectations. She never even said "thank you" to me for driving her through 6 different states.

The one holding the dinner party is overreacting and that’s a red flag.

The one holding the dinner party is overreacting and that’s a red flag.

So it sounds like you made plans with her a total of three times, two of which you had to cancel. If that's the case, then you didn't have to cancel every plan you ever made with her, but still a majority of them, albeit through no fault of your own. Is that correct?


Still, if she happened to be a person who already had a bug up her ass about people canceling on her, it's not surprising that she would jump to the conclusions about you that she did.

Of course, she could and should have been less nasty in how she expressed those conclusions.

But it's just very unfortunate that you happened to have the bad luck of needing to cancel on her twice.

Regarding the other person:


This doesn't necessarily follow. People (especially autistic people -- was she autistic?) vary a lot in the kinds of things they are able and willing to do, sometimes being surprisingly able to do task x, given that they can't do y.

But you did mention later that she doesn't have a driver's license, so the point is moot.


Would she and/or you have been able to afford that? (The fact that you even mention this possibility makes me wonder if she's a spoiled rich girl.)


Yes, I agree that she should have been willing to so something to help.

Nevertheless, I wonder if she was unprepared to handle the specific requests you made. Did you discuss with her, beforehand, the specific things you were likely to need her to do?


Certainly, she should have at least thanked you.

I would just move on, and find some other friend.

There is definitely no question whatsoever about her ability to navigate a GPS. She uses her phone to get her around the city every day. In fact, she understands the Google Maps app even better than I do. It's more that she just didn't WANT to use it because she would rather enjoy the view. As we were leaving the city, she said she wanted me to stop at an electronics store to buy a $35 gadget (on my dime, of course) to pin my phone up on the car dashboard, because she didn't want to have to keep an eye on the directions. She thought that I ought to drive AND navigate. She was supposed to be the one on vacation from any sort of work.




Autistic people definitely vary in the kinds of things they are capable of doing, but this girl is 100% not autistic or disabled in any way. Her problem is merely laziness and immaturity. When we agreed to go on the road trip together, she just assumed that she would be enjoying the view and I'd be handling all of the grownup challenges of being on the road. And it's not like she's a child or a teenager, she's 25 years old. Not OK.

I just don't understand why these are the only kind of people willing to spend time with me. I'm starting to see now that this is a pattern, and I have no idea how or if it's even possible for quality individuals to ever want to be my friends.

Last edited by SummerAndSmoke on 13 Jan 2023, 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I hope you find a nicer person next time.

I hope I do, too. But I just honestly don't know if there's anything I can do to meet nicer people. After I stopped being friends with her, I went out and tried to make new friends but nobody was interested. The only person willing to talk to me was this awful woman who I now know doesn't give a flying f**k about my cat

On your dime? If she wanted you to do the navigating, for whatever reason, she should have at least offered to buy the afore-mentioned gadget for you as a gift! (unless she just couldn't afford it, of course)


How do you know this?


How/where have you been going about looking for friends?

Meetup dot com

Your post does not contain enough information to determine the answer to the question in your title

"Why" could have a lot of different answers

However nobody is perfect

Your "friend" might not be as "selfish" as you see her as.

You might not be that selfless yourself

Cancelling multiple times on your friend, is not considerate of your friend, even though it was because of your cats medical condition,

A couple of years ago I had one "friend", Amy Lee, who had the nerve to cancel on me for every slightest reason. Ex:. She had a lot of homework and her dad's birthday was next week. She could have given me more notice or scheduled her time better. But maybe "most people" cancel social plans as often as her. I have not had enough "friends" for a representative sample. But I don't want her to be my "friend" anymore. That's all I know