How do I diminish my friendship with someone?

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A while ago, I was feeling like I sucked socially and I really wanted to have some NT friends. Now that I have them, I remember why I didn't have any earlier. For NTs, the go-to topics of discussion are all unintelligent cr*p. They talk about the silliest of things. And it is not just silly NTs who do this, even the smartest of them. Its like there is no exchange of "knowledge" taking place. I gain nothing out of talking to them. Plus, they will ask you to go out with them and waste a couple hours almost every other day. And you can't even talk about anything remotely intelligent in front of them, because it doesn't interest them. I've now realized, once again, that talking to and being friends with NTs is just a waste of time, even if they share your special interest, because they will only ever want to talk about bulls**t.

I don't mean to offend NTs, and I do know that there are some incredibly smart NTs out there. And luckily for me, I have some NT friends who are incredibly smart and wouldn't ever indulge in talking BS. However, almost every NT my age fits the description above. These smart NTs I am friends with are more than twice my age.

How do I get rid of these stupid NT "friends"? They do not provide any value to me whatsoever, I hate talking to them(and they talk a lot, and very often, at that), and I am having to waste a lot of time due to them. I mean, these are some people who will talk about stupid cr*p from 1 AM to 8 AM, non-stop.

Since they are much better at saying things indirectly, twisting and turning a point, and all of these social skills that most NTs possess, I am finding it very hard to get rid of them. I do not want to ask them to never contact me/waste my time again directly, but I do not know how to do it indirectly. And even doing it directly isn't going to really get rid of them for me. I've tried ignoring their calls, but that hasn't worked. I do not want to make it obvious that I'm ignoring their calls, or that I do not like them. NTs are so good at doing this kinda stuff. What do I do?

Ignore a few calls. Answer a few and if they want to meet up say that you are busy. NEVER intiate contact with them yourself. They will get the hint soon.

Eeeek, I think I'm first going to give you a piece of advice that you may not welcome. You might want to stop thinking about NTs and "us" with such a solid divide. Generalizing to this extent just isn't of benefit.

Onto what you're looking for- Stop reaching out, start taking longer to get back to them when they do, and don't get back every time they do. I would not recommend completely ignoring them, because the friendships will fizzle out with time given the former strat.

Last edited by calstar2 on 08 Sep 2014, 4:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn't generalising, and I did say that there are NTs who are different. But its just that all of the ones I've met are pretty similar to what I described, and so having that as a sort of a template has really been useful to me. But yeah, I get what you're saying, and stereotypes don't help.

I never reach out to them myself. I do get back to them every time they try contacting me, no matter how long I take. I'll stop that. The problem with answering even just a few calls is that if allowed to talk, they never ever shut their mouth. Its juts "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah" till the end of time.

The kind of lifestyles that afford a person the opportunity to think and learn and play around with ideas are not an option for most people. It's a tragedy really.

I would seriously consider not alienating yourself from all of your friends. It might seem like less of a good idea after you've become completely isolated.

I agree that not all people have the opportunity to "just think", but these are teenagers we're talking about. Like, what "work" do teenagers these days really have? They don't have any work-related obligations, they don't really care about the school-related obligations they do have, all they have is free time on their hands. And instead of trying to spend that time thinking about complex concepts, trying to come up with new ideas, and trying to make things better, they talk about crap like sex. And most of the activities they indulge in can be prefixed by the word underage. Oh, and they love to talk like frickin 3 year olds. I mean, I don't expect them to talk like scientists, but at least talk like a normal person. They think talking like a 3 year old makes them sound cute, but it only makes them sound stupid.

I still do have friends, only that most of them are roughly twice my age. And that means that I can easily talk to them just once every week or two, and I can talk about the stuff I care about. What I'm trying to do is purge the dumber group of friends I've got.

Just ask women, their pro's at that kind of stuff.

What kind of things interest you? You said you have some friends who share them. You could try to get together in situations where it's natural to do and talk about interesting things. I mean my mathematician friends probably talk about various things in different situations, but when we meet in order to do math, we're going to talk about math.

I stop talking, don't answer their texts, reply with one word answers when I run into them, stay at home, make excuses, look bored, shift my interests, hang out with other people etc. It takes a while, but eventually they get the hint.
I was told on another thread that this can hurt some people. Hurts me to have to hang out with with idiots.

Physics and computer science are the things that interest me, among other scientific topics. That's what I've been doing, and thats how I met these people. I attend conferences about my topics of interest, and naturally everyone who attends these conferences is interested in those topics as well. A great way to meet new people and make new friends. Also, a lot of people in these conferences share my lack of social aptitude, so it works out great for me.



Heh. I'll do that.



I think they're starting to get the hint. Now that I think about it though, I've done all of this before unintentionally, and destroyed quite a few friendships.
Yeah, I don't care if it hurts them if I start ignoring them. It hurts me when they waste my time with all their stupid s**t, and it should be a two-way street. You hurt me, I hurt you. I don't get it why you're expected to keep acting like you're interested in order to not hurt someone, and they're not expected to not waste your time in order to not hurt you.

Physics and computer science are the things that interest me, among other scientific topics. That's what I've been doing, and thats how I met these people. I attend conferences about my topics of interest, and naturally everyone who attends these conferences is interested in those topics as well. A great way to meet new people and make new friends. Also, a lot of people in these conferences share my lack of social aptitude, so it works out great for me.



Heh. I'll do that.



I think they're starting to get the hint. Now that I think about it though, I've done all of this before unintentionally, and destroyed quite a few friendships.
Yeah, I don't care if it hurts them if I start ignoring them. It hurts me when they waste my time with all their stupid s**t, and it should be a two-way street. You hurt me, I hurt you. I don't get it why you're expected to keep acting like you're interested in order to not hurt someone, and they're not expected to not waste your time in order to not hurt you.

A good compromise is to be very selective with the friends you keep (and you seem to have done that with some older friends you have) and to tolerate the NT's of your own age that mix with you. The reason for at least being tolerant of others you don't like is that people can be very destructive if they don't like you and can cause a lot of damage to you, if you let the cat out of the bag and declare your contempt for them (don't be deceived by their small talk; NT's are very political at getting what they want).

Yeah, being selective is exactly what I'm trying to do. However, there isn't a single NT my own age that I seem to click with.

I'm usually tolerant of people up to a certain point, and IMO, that point is pretty high. Its usually only after they cost me a lot of time and/or money that I could have otherwise spent productively that I try to avoid them. I've been harmed by NTs quite a lot of times, and that's without doing anything that might be considered "bad". Now I'm skeptical of anything they say by default. I haven't once in my lifetime told someone to their face that I disliked them, and it isn't something I plan on doing in my current situation either. I try to be nice to people as long as possible.

I usually stop talking to people all at once, without any explanation to them. Much easier for me that way instead of getting into an argument.

Yeah, if someone's wasted enough of my time already, I do not owe them any sort of an explanation as to why I wouldn't be allowing them to waste more of my time.

Some people just are that way. Most people don't get together to host intelligent discussions. My friends usually gather and it's just getting drunk, talking about women, sex, football, and whatever we watched on TV. That's perfectly okay. If I want to discuss the cosmos or a book I read I'll just go on the internet. If you genuinely don't enjoy pointless small talk it's all good and well but they're not any less of a person or unintelligent for it.