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

Dear Chloe:

Thank you for the note about digressing. I will feel more comfortable when digressing again.

“Earlier this summer, I did share with her my intermittent feelings of loneliness…“-

It occurred to me when I read your original post for the first time, reading about your friend saying that you were “passively aggressively saying she wasn’t ever going to be good enough“, that she was projecting someone in her early life=> into you. Could be a passive aggressive mother who repeatedly gave her the message that she was not good enough.

Too often when we talk to people, they don’t hear us. They hear the voices in their heads, often the voices of parents who keep talking to them via self talk. This is one reason why friendships in adulthood are difficult to start and to maintain: people “hear” people who hurt them when they (don’t) hear us, inaccurately projecting other people into us, and they react appropriately to those other people.. not to us. This was true to me too, still is, but I learned to notice my inaccurate projections and correct them, truly seeing and hearing the person in front of me.

“I may struggle with how to navigate sharing of authentic thoughts (disappointment of a cancelled trip) while still supporting friendships.  I think that may be the crux of it- no matter how improved I get at communication, I still feel like sharing anything negative at all about my life, any type of dissatisfaction, I feel like that is a major roadblock in my friendships“-

– I think that sharing anything negative about your life is likely to activate inaccurate projections on the part of many people who experienced lots of negativity in their childhoods, people who never learned to notice when they inaccurate project.

“Either I need improvement communicating my burdens when and how appropriate, or I’m connecting with people who have difficulty hearing those“- people who inaccurately project (there are so many of us).

Here is a way to help the situation, maybe: ask a friend, current or future, about their childhood experience and you will know what of what you share with them is likely to trigger their childhood negative experiences. You can ask them if they are familiar with inaccurate projections and explain to them what it is, if they don’t know.

“when I had an incident with my parents that took me away from regular messaging for that week she responded very negatively, accusing me of doing it on purpose.  She never actually was able to hear and acknowledge that I was slightly absent due to my parents’ concern, she just determined her reasoning was correct and disappeared“-

– I read this quote AFTER typing what I did above this quote. This quote right here has inaccurate projection written all over it. She never actually was able to hear you and your circumstances because she was hearing a parent (most likely) taking attention away from her on purpose, giving her the silent treatment perhaps. And she reacted appropriately (disappearing) to the parent and to her childhood circumstances with the parent.. not appropriately to you and to your circumstances.

“I’ve run into this more than a time or two- I’ll need help or support, someone will offer to provide it, but then when the time comes… it becomes a full-out ‘you shouldn’t need this’ or ‘you should be able to do this alone’“-

– there are plenty of selfish people, projections or not…

anita