Is friendship COMPETITIVE?

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It seems as though it takes lots of effort to "win" the hearts of others so they would be friends with you.

Isn't it funny how NTs worry about finding a job or making it into university or making it into grad school YET no one seems to worry about making new friends in a new setting.

It seems so competitive to me and I'm losing in the "competition". Or even worse, perhaps I haven't even moved an inch in this "commpetition" and I'm still at the starting line.

Yes, but I let it go... Those interested in me remain with me..

I have no idea how I ended up being friends with my friends... I hope this advice helps

This is exactly it. You don't 'win' friendships; you fall into them when you hang around people you click with. There isn't that much effort and then you wake up one day and suddenly realise you've been friends for the last month...

Rarely happens with me. There was this one random person in high school, where we both loved math, and he somehow started befriending me. We go to the same university now, but I'm not sure if he's only using me to work on school assignments. Aside from that, we don't really hang out. I understand where you are getting at, but I just feel that it seems like there's nothing about me that anyone would suddenly consider me one of their best friends. For example, who would call me up to go hang out on a weekend and include me in their group of friends? Who would suddenly ask me out to lunch with them? It seems as though all the "friends" i know have other TRUE FRIENDS they would rather hang out with and never invite me.

Of course it is, competition usually brings out the best results? i dont know.

I stopped caring a long time ago but to an extent I do identify. I think for some NTs, the pressure to socialize is taken only for granted. If you're like me, it isn't easy just to get out and make friends despite your status.

Yes, everything is a competition and I am winning.

I always felt so. Whenever my so called friends were interacting with another person I would get jelous. I remember one time, my so called best friend and I had to share our school bus seat with another girl. She started interacting with her and I shoved the other girl out of the seat while the bus was still going. The bus driver demanded to know why I did that. I didn't have the words to tell him the truthso I said what I always said when I got in trouble because I had been trained too. "I wasn't thinking." I remember this as clear as day and I was really trying to send the message to the other girl not to "advance" on my friend because she was mine. I think the driver moved me to another seat by myself and my so called best friend didn't act as if anything had happened.

My mom was always trying to get me to understand that it was okay to have more than one friend. I wonder if it was so hard for me to understand because I never had more than one friend at a time. I've met some of the friends of my current best friend but I never felt they were trying to "advance" on her. Perhaps because she knew most of them longer than she knew me or perhaps I knew better by then. Most of her friends didn't seem to be trying to advance on her like the girl on the school bus or perhaps I know better by now. Now that I remember, it really did seem as if the girl on the bus was trying to "advance" on her. I could kinda sence when people thought I was weird and I could feel this girl thinking I was too weird. My mom says I was just paranoid as a kid, but I knew when people thought I was weird.

Anyway, I always did find friendship very competive. Espicaly once my so called friends started making other friends with more normal girls.