Dear Chloe:

First, congratulations for all your amazing healing mindset and continuous work through the years: “I am a really growth centered individual… I went through a good bout of therapy a while ago… generally feel a whole lot healthier as a person…I continue to work hard on healing myself as a person.  I’ve noticed a lot of positive change… I am assessing for appropriateness for what I keep internal and what I share, and I’m communicating fairly compassionately and clearly…I am proud of the internal work I’ve done“-

– I am proud of you too, if I may say so!

I re-read what you shared here and in your previous thread like a detective of sorts, looking for the answer of your question, which partly paraphrased is: with all he healing work I’ve done, why is it that none of my friendship last and “if I had a really sad day I’d have nobody to call“?

I’ll be quoting you, then typing as I think, thinking as I type: “My family of origin is not close with me… there is no closeness or belonging there… I’ve grown up with this experience of love and belonging as only a factor of what I can give/provide/achieve/ reflect, and I’m still and likely always seeking a different, more whole kind of love”-

– there is no closeness or belonging now with your parents/ family-of-origin (you’re at around 40 years-old), but growing up you felt some closeness and belonging, only it was dependent on you GIVING and NOT RECEIVING, and on being invisible because the attention you received, when you received it, was negative: “in my youth invisibility was better. Attention meant you were in trouble, you did something wrong, or someone was mad at you”, Dec 2016)

Fast forward, in friendships you GIVE, but when you try to receive, the friendships end (I am stating this in a simplified way). This reminds me of a scripture from the bible: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7). At first, a moment ago, I thought to myself that maybe you don’t do the asking right, but then, there was nothing in your posts that indicate that there is something wrong with the way you ask.

Next, I am thinking that the problem may not  be with you asking for what you need, or with the ways you ask for what you need, but with the receiving part: “ask, and it shall be given to you”-

– being given attention when you were growing up was a negative experience (“Attention meant you were in trouble..”). Fast forward, let’s say you ask a friend for what you need, but when you receive it, the attention to what you requested scares you, and you reject the attention, the help…  and the friend for having her well-meaning attention being rejected.

Or maybe before you ask, a friend has been trying to give you what she imagines that you need, but you rejected it over and over again.. before ever asking. The consequence: the friend rejects you back and the friendship ends.

“A good friend just ended our friendship in the fall.  I had asked for more consistent communication…  and she determined I was passively aggressively saying she wasn’t ever going to be good enough and she stopped talking to me altogether”- was she saying that her efforts to help you were never going to be good enough…?

It is a human need to feel useful and helpful. When a person is deprived from being able to help/ when a person’s efforts to help are rejected again and again, the person himself- or herself- feel rejected.  It may be that the problem is not that people end friendships with you because they are not willing to give, but because you are not willing to receive.

“One thing I’ve noticed is that if I have a time of need or if I ask for something in the relationship, like more consistent communication, that’s damaging to the relationship”- it may be that after many times that you rejected a friend’s efforts to help (offered without you asking for it), then when you ask for something, the friend gives up on trying yet again to give you something that you will receive.

It may be that you don’t even register a friend’s efforts to help, and reject those without being aware of doing so.

“People identify me as fun, so supportive, a good communicator, a good friend.   A good friend often says one thing she loves about me is that I’m ‘low maintenance‘ and I don’t put obligations on people”-

– so supportive ..but not willing to be supported? Low maintenance to the extreme, as in refusing any support vs moderation?

I’ll stop here. Is it possible that my theory is true to you and your experience?

anita