Loners
Related: About this forumEngineered friendships
Any other loners out there have extroverted friends, who think you need to have more friends, and they go out of their way to try to "engineer" additional friendships for you?
It makes me nuts.
Example: I have a friend who gets his other friends to call/text me to try to make me feel less "alone". Or if he is with other friends and I am home, he wants to pass the phone around and make me say "hello" and engage in 10 minutes of useless small talk with each of them.
This is not fun for me.
I don't feel "alone", I limit human interaction by choice.
His efforts to try to make my life better make it worse because it makes me have to deal with extra people I would rather not deal with. (The *people* are lovely people, it just taxes my limited energy for human interaction further.)
Yes, I have communicated how I feel about this to him. It is hard to get an extrovert to really understand that this effort does not help me, it taxes me. Not looking for advice... just venting, really.
(Insert tiny loner scream of frustration.)
Scuba
(53,475 posts)... don't answer the phone.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Those persons you have set up ringtones... Works every single time. I set texts to silent, all of it.
Although I think it's nice that your friends think so highly of you that they're trying to give you what they think is a good thing. It's a gift in their eyes.
It's not practical to shut everyone out, even if a lot of people get on your nerves. If someone really needs to get in touch with you, they will.
BlueIris
(29,135 posts)the incredibly shallow, artificial motives many people have for "choosing" their friends, and the b.s. categories they put their "friends" into. (Ie; the friend they hook up with for bar hopping, the friend they use as a drug dealer, the friend they shop with, the one who helps them with their marital issues, etc.)
I've never had a friend try to engineer a friendship for me, but I've grown completely fed up with people who insist people need to have a vast friendship group to be successful. I have friends. I also have myself. This is good enough. Would be even if I had no friends.
But I'm sure everyone here understands that.
iris27
(1,951 posts)My mother does this...and then she wonders why I only call every couple weeks.