Great at making friends, but the terrible at maintaining/keeping friendships

[Jam do Bronx]

Anyone have this issue?

I have no problems making friends, but maintaining friendship is a complete mind f**k for me and a puzzle I've not been able to solve.

[Jam do Bronx]

Oops, I meant to post this in the SA room, feel free to move it.

[Sunrise]

I find it easier to make friends than keep them. It's only when I try to get close to someone that they start to realise that I'm completely nuts and start running for the hills. I think it's more of a BPD thing than an SA thing though. It's not really a shyness thing.

There's a reason why I stay inside my shell. Try and pull me out of it and you'll immediately regret it.

[biscuits]

Yep - this is me. I make friends really easily, but then can't maintain it at all.

Part of it is because I have a burst of being really talkative. Then I feel like I can't maintain their initial opinion of me. I worry that they'll find out I'm neurotic, anxious, abnormal and a birrov a mess. I worry about not being able to think of things to say. I worry about them getting to know me.

Once I was on a bus, chatting away to this girl and she was saying I should come to a house party she was having that night. I said yes and just didn't turn up. Another time I went out with some people that I met in a bar the night before and then when the bus going to the club arrived, I just hid in a bush. (This was all at uni, so not with complete randomers!)

I take full advantage of the fact that if I put in no effort then other people will give up on me! Sometimes people persist and then I begin to trust them and it's okay.

Sometimes I regret saying anything interesting or funny because then it's like.. oh no... I'll have to always think of something interesting or funny and I can't! And I worry that I'll become unintentionally interesting to them and then will have to socialise with them.

Typing it out makes me feel really weird hahs

I also notice that people often just randomly start talking to me and I don't really know why. I googled it an apparently it's about having a high vibration. Whatever that means! It makes me feel stressed to have to perform, but also I know I won't see them again so it feels a little easier.

[biscuits]

^ that's a better way of putting it. Thank you. Yes, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be entertaining and engaging and not really knowing how to be like that all the time. Sometimes I just want to be quiet and being quiet with people feels strange. Plus I just worry about arranging things and not really knowing if people would want to spend time with me. Also not knowing when it's okay to leave/go home. It's difficult to be natural.

Yeah, that's exactly the same. It's so much easier to feel natural around people who know about anxiety and struggles because the shame is lifted because it's out there and you know they don't give a fug and they want to be supportive.

[anxiouslondoner]

I often feel like I'm the only one who makes an effort with some of my friendships and if I didn't bother, nobody would.
It does make me think that perhaps I don't really mean all that much to the people I'm friends with. They aren't the SA ones, after all.

[Bambos]

^ I've started to notice that a lot of friendships are only maintained if one person puts in a lot of effort, some people do this and other people just do not, barely, if at all. It can be really one sided and hard to keep up once you've become aware of it.

I wouldn't say I'm great at making friends but have done ok with it in the past. Terrible at maintaining them. I think for me it's partly caused by being really poorly organised. I've had a lot of circumstantial friends in the past and as soon as the circumstances change then I don't maintain. As I've got older people are busier with work or family and I feel like everything needs to be arranged well in advance which I'm absolutely terrible at doing. There's a dash of fear of rejection and some daft, insecure man issues that make me feel silly for being like 'hey please hang out with me'.

[Mike.Kzov]

Nope, I'm shit at both.

[choirgirl]

I haven't made friends in years. I've been on friendly terms with people, but not converted any into friends or attempted to. I nearly lost all my friends during the hermit period which would have been a Huge mistake, but fortunately we stayed in contact because of them, proximity, history.

[Finlay]

Nanuq and biscuits kind of hit the nail on the head, for me. It's something I've been thinking about recently myself.

When I was young, I wasn't any good at keeping long term friends, and also rubbish at first impressions due to lack of social skills. As I've got older, I've managed to develop the first impressions a bit like a skill I've learned, to the point I think I'm quite good when you get to know me at first, even though it's took me about 35 years to get to that point. I can be breezy in general conversation, come across confident, and generally a decent guy (I think), albeit very People Pleasery. But the problem is this uses so much energy and isn't really "me". Not saying I'm a miserable grump in real life, but I'm definitely a bit more quiet, reserved and shy, with bouts of low self-esteem, low confidence and general low energy.

This means friendships and relationships tend to go two ways:

1) I keep up the initial Superficially Confident, Always People Pleasing act the whole time because I'm scared of letting out the real me, which usually results in me pushing people away because keeping up the act is so exhausting to keep up. It also attracts a lot of people who I wouldn't normally hang out with, because although we don't have much in common, I pretend that we do as part of the whole People Pleasing part of it, meaning I'm more a mirror to them than my real self. Again, exhausting to keep up, resulting in me drifting away.

2) I meet someone who I like enough that I want them to get to know the real me, so I tone down act a bit. Sadly, sometimes this results in the person themselves drifting away when they realise I'm not really person 1 at the core.

I'm not saying Person 1 isn't me at all. It's just a bit like me with a boost of confidence, like the way I could be in another universe, only all the time. But Person 1 in this universe is like a learned skill that can only be used for small periods of time.

I made a friend recently, and I know it's a real friendship because she's got to know Person 2 for a while now, and she's not done a runner. It's actually quite nice! I recommend it. For so long I thought friendship was just an exhausting concept that I just wasn't built for, but now I realise it's because that whole time I was just a people pleasing pretend person around them.

And I should add, I feel bad for all those people in the past I kind of almost led on. When I was younger I'd just feel sorry for myself for not being able to have meaningful friendships that didn't just tire me out because I guess sometimes you only see things from your own perspective....but now I think what about them? I must've made them feel crap. Here's this guy, coming across like he's a friend, interesting in the things they're interested in, and them making an effort with me, only for me to kind of drift away for long periods of time, with them doing all the chasing. How were they to know? They must've felt a bit rejected, without me realising. I was the one putting on the front, and they were just going with what they were presented with.

[DocHope]

I'm terrible making friends, the friends I have made my mum thinks they're either toxic or weird.

Once I do make friends, it's very difficult to maintain them because I lose interest or motivation to keep in touch with them.
I don't like instant communication, I'm very grateful for the friends that appreciate and respect that.

I can go for months without talking to 1 or 2 friends and it's like no time has passed....I wish to have more friends like that.

[Gellerbing]

The older I get the harder I find it to not only gain friendships but keep them.

I've cut off so called friends off when I've been the only one making the effort, I just can't be bothered with the chasing around. Making friends is difficult because I can never think of anything to say in conversation so usually people don't talk to me once they know this.

[Appear]

Nope. I don't make friends in the first place. I'm awkward and tend to assume people won't want to spend time with me, so usually reflexively dodge anything that might lead to it.

Or at least I used to. Mainly working from home means I'm not really in situations where I could make friends anymore. I've been in the office a few times for away days and got on with people well, but as it's so infrequent it doesn't really go any further. I did go to a conference for a few days with a couple of people, but I'd already established an awkwardness with one of them which made the whole thing a bit uncomfortable. That awkwardness has *almost* gone though.

[Consolida]

I'm rubbish at making friends and I'm even more rubbish at keeping them. I've now got to the point where I don't even try anymore and I my best friend is my cat.