The "Cycle of Rejection"

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Does this happen to you? This pattern has been a common occurrence for me and I think is a sound description of why we have difficulties.

1. You form a friendship or relationship with someone.

2. Usually unintentionally, you say, or do something, that makes the other person uncomfortable in some way, often without knowing you've done it.

3. The other person pulls back. They don't correspond with you or want to spend time with you they way they did before.

4. Not understanding why you're being rejected, and the other person seems less interested in you than they used to be, you become distraught and try and find out what happened, but you don't get a clear answer.

5. The relationship either ends, or deterioriates from there.

The other person either drifts away, OR, you push it even more and things get worse. You possibly get into an argument and the other person tells you to leave them alone. I would imagine that if you're a guy and it's a girl you like, or even vice versa, you might be accused of harrassment.

Desperate for friends, you try and reach out to someone else, but it happens all over again.

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To be honest your describing someone I would not care to want to know. I'm not 16 anymore I have no time nor interest with people that can't come out and explain what is wrong so that we may come to some sort of conclusion and solve the issue. If I sense some type of problem and the person can't give me a direct answer to why that problem or distance in a relationship is occurring then I move along there are too many people who have matured past this type of BS for me to be stuck around someone that's still back at that level. Now if they can't expression their feelings I can work with that but not wanting to like you described I have no patience for and I will just move on.

To be honest most of my lost connections are because lack of upkeep mostly on my part.

Usually goes like this

1. I meet someone that for one reason or another I'll end up seeing at least weekly either because of school,class,hobby, yadda yadda

2. when said activity no longer keep the ease of relationship together we use social media or text to keep in touch

3. As I get more and more absorbed in whatever my current activities are I text or message said person less and less

4. relationship dies

I have obviously noticed this trend that I have and have seen taken steps to ensure that doesn't happen but I have lost touch with some very good friends because of this and while I'm sure if I did message them on facebook I could start the relationship up again, I somehow always get the feeling it because one sided at that point because of the time that I basically let that person fall through the cracks. The people I have meet since I have taken steps to prevent the above situation happening with I don't get that feeling with so I'm sure it not just an irrational thing.

people say plenty of offensive things to me all the time and I try to let it go, so the way I look at it, if someone is going to get riled up because of something I said that I didn't even mean in a derogatory manner (and they usually realize that) they can piss off

this in turn causes some kind of rift between myself and my family sometimes

When people treat you like that you haven't lost much

Yes. Every single time. Always some small thing that was done with the best of intentions yet due to bad luck or bad timing turns out to be catastrophic. ><

yep, has happened to me quite often especially with other girls. Just happen to me recently. Ive tried quite hard to prevent that from happening more but I really cant in the end. Not all friendships end that way, some other friendships had died more peacefully as in we just drifted apart.

Overtime, Im starting to pick up on what kinda people would be good to friends with and what people wouldnt. For me, its hard to be friends with the sensative types. I learned recently that for me, its not a good idea to be friends with conservative people, not to say id immediately discount them, just gotta be a bit more cautious with them. Im drawn to people that are a little quirky themselves, more honest, and dont expect high expectations of conduct when it comes to others.

For instance: I had two friends that have higher expectations in terms of social conduct both conservative, 1 our friendship ended disasteriously due to what was described above, the other the relationship has vastly deteriourated, even tho it was more due to mutual disagreement, I was 1 who more so made the decision to withdraw, but we still talk to each other, were just pretty closed off from each other.

Exactly.

And if the the majority of people treat others like this...

...the majority of people aren't worth being friends with.

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This only happened to me twice so far. And it already sucks. x:

When I was in school, i had a few friends that i met during the summer break that ostracized me once school started and they met other people.

Out of school its more that i just don't make friends.

Yeah, I just had this happen.

I need to learn to just let it go and not be in such need of answers or something.I hate that.

This has happened to me twice and both time it was with girls. The first time it happened was because I asked her out and she rejected me. I became depressed and had to drop out of university for about 6 months. We kept in touch while I was away. Once I returned, she avoided me and would take my calls.

The second time it happened, I had met a girl who had the same pdoc as me. We became friends and she asked me to accompany her to church. After 3 weeks she became distant until I asked her what was wrong. She then flipped out and told me to erase her numbers from my phone.

I have had this happen to me all the time causing the end of most of my "friendships" Having said or done something and not knowing what it was has led me to wonder why this has happened. Now that I have been diagnosed with Aspergers it is becoming clearer since I have read a lot of posts on WP and have had a lot of members experience the same thing.

Here is a scenario of what I mean :-

1. I meet up with someone from work or someone I have met in passing and ask if they want to meet up for a coffee or a drink and get their cellphone number.

2. We meet up and I think we had a good conversation.

3. I text them again during the week to arrange to meet up or do something and I am lucky if they will meet up with me again. Most of the time they do not respond to my texts and I find that downright rude and this includes family members who I have texted and have never text me back. I usually do reply to most people who text me.

4. I try to get an answer as to what I have done wrong but to no avail.

5.The friendship ends and the person never contacts me again.

This has happened time and time again and I can relate to Daryl_Blonder. Have never had a friendship last longer than 2 years. Have got talking to a girl at an Aspie meetup I go to and hoping to form a friendship with her. We have met up twice so far. So far she hasn't responded to my text from the weekend but hoping to see her at the meetup Wednesday.

I must be very shy but then again shy people can make friends. I am very clueless as to why this happens. I don't really try to make friends anymore but such is life.

While I dont feel that for me personally this exact scenario occurs with everyone, it does tend to happen in various forms. One example being a coworker who while at work fancied me until we hung out alone outside of work once and while hanging out she suddenly had something come up and henceforth never made any effort to hang out after that.

I've developed a phobia about hanging out with new people one on one. My recent batch of work friends keep wanting to hang out, but since last time we ran out of things to talk about and it became super awkward I'm scared to do it again and completely sever the friendship. I know some of your attitudes are just "then they're not worth hanging out with!" but being completely socially isolated is not always a better alternative. I'm willing to compromise a bit, although its not working out so well.

Sounds like someone you shouldn't be hanging out with. There are more people out there who will accept you for you.

While I dont feel that for me personally this exact scenario occurs with everyone, it does tend to happen in various forms. One example being a coworker who while at work fancied me until we hung out alone outside of work once and while hanging out she suddenly had something come up and henceforth never made any effort to hang out after that.

I've developed a phobia about hanging out with new people one on one. My recent batch of work friends keep wanting to hang out, but since last time we ran out of things to talk about and it became super awkward I'm scared to do it again and completely sever the friendship. I know some of your attitudes are just "then they're not worth hanging out with!" but being completely socially isolated is not always a better alternative. I'm willing to compromise a bit, although its not working out so well.

That's my life story