Why are friendships so complicated ?

[Flint]

I'm sorry but I need to rant as I've come across several situations in my life related to friendships that are quite annoying. I'm talking here about platonic relationships, namely friendships and friends, NOT dating, altough women are often involved

They are basically a source of chaos because people are underdevelopped and unreliable accross the board and mind you, I live in a first world country.

The following situations (and I have quite some more) have happened and I'm very confused on how to process them:

• I randomly met a certain girl and we got along very well, we seen each other twice since. Then we stopped talking as she didn't answer one of my message. Then she wished me a happy birthday again this year and we did meet up again and the feeling was nice. We did talk about seeing each other again adn she agreed and when I offered something more concrete she stopped answering as well.
• I have a friend with whom I spent most of my studies which I didn't see for a long long period of time, which is definitely my fault. We did catch up and I did apologize and explain everything that happened to me, and it went quite well but we didn't meet ever since altough I did ask for it.
• In the virtual context : I met someone on shapr with whom I spent 1 year talking very sporadically who never at the end of the day MET ME and I was like for fucks sake why are you wasting my time by saying that you want to meet me irl if you in fact do not want to !? Yes, sure, I shouldn't expect decency out of low consciousness people who simply act out their survival agenda.
• Similarly, I've spent a very long time talking to someone online who at the end of the day didn't want to meet me either altough I tought we had a connection. But for online that's a harsh lesson to learn as meeting people online is mostly BS.
• I have another quote on quote friend who takes ages to answer messages.
• I had a very very nice friendship which was very balanced in terms of giving taking for quite some time, like 6-7 months. Then we decided to go on a short holiday together and well, shit hit the fan : she didn't sleep properly during several days before the trip and I expected more (platonic ! friendships !) intimacy such as discussing our problems and she didn't want to get closer to me because of that and I felt rejected the entire trip. Once we came back, we did discuss it but basically that made the entire relationship dynamic crumble because I didn't want to invest anymore and she didn't either. Like for fuck's sake, how can you just throw away a friendship like that - could you not have made the fucking effort of sleeping enough !?

On top of that, I see several issues:

I find that people are either not interesting (have no social skills and nothing really going on for them, underdevelopped such as stuck in deep stage blue and mindless survival) or are still heavily unreliable and simply act out their survival agenda mindlessly even when they are interesting.

Even if I align with their survival agenda by trying to form a relationship which provides them value - this is said very logically but I'm just doing an analysis here - it doesn't seem to work out either which is very puzzling because I'm careful about the aspects related to value, not being needy, etc and it's still not working altough we have a good chemistry !!! Perhaps 10 or 15 people is just a very very small sample ?

Also, since I've upgraded to stage green and I've been trying to be more considerate I feel like people respect me less vs me just being blunt and harsh all the time with who I am and disregarding their perspective, because before that, strangely enough my relationships seemed to work better because I was always more "authentic".

Anyways I'm quite buthurt because I interpret the fact that people do not seemingly want to make efforts to maintain friendships with me as me being low value which I completely disagree with as I have plenty to offer.

Then for people I do not find horrifyingly boring such as your average wage slave Joe who have no interests who is totaly unrelatable for me, for other people I face the issue of they will be close minded about psychedelics telling me it's only dangerous drugs, or they will be stuck in stage orange workaholism and scientific rationality, or vegan  ideology or w/e etc etc like good fucking heavens how difficult is it to work on yourself people !? Why is it not a priority for you if your level of consciousness and developlment determines how good your entire life is going to be !?

What are you relationship/friendship strategies, considering that even if some people are not the most actualized they can still be interesting, social contact is nice and it provides nice survival advantages ? Should I screen harder ? Have a larger funnel ? I dislike having to doubt my value (and feeling like I'm disposable garbage basically) simply because I cannot find interesting, good and reliable friends ! Even with good chemistry most of my relationships seem flimsy and I cannot grasp why.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Ulax]

Hmmm, thanks for sharing.

It appears to me that you are taking on stage-green as stage blue. Instead of an acceptance attitude that typify green, you are holding people to various difference standards of good and bad. I note numerous uses of 'underdeveloped' to label people.

I also noticed some covert contracts, which is a toxic behaviour. That is you do things with the expectation that you'll get something in return from the other person, and then hold them to that expectation. However, they never agreed to fulfil that expectation. I note that particularly with: "In the virtual context : I met someone on shapr with whom I spent 1 year talking very sporadically who never at the end of the day MET ME and I was like for fucks sake why are you wasting my time by saying that you want to meet me irl if you in fact do not want to !? Yes, sure, I shouldn't expect decency out of low consciousness people who simply act out their survival agenda."

"Anyways I'm quite buthurt because I interpret the fact that people do not seemingly want to make efforts to maintain friendships with me as me being low value which I completely disagree with as I have plenty to offer." That sounds like a really healthy approach.

"I have another quote on quote friend who takes ages to answer messages." I'd have a think about your boundaries/ standards. Do you want to be friends with someone who treats you like this?

To be honest, I think you could get a lot of growth from doing long-term depth psychotherapy, and developing a loving-kindness meditation practice. If you have positive experiences in these modalities of growth, then you'll naturally attract and be attracted to more psychologically healthy and fulfilling relationships.

You may also like the non-violent communication book.

[something_else]

This is spoken as someone who has a distinct lack of friends so take it with a grain of salt

IMO going out 'looking for friends' is kinda not the right approach. Nor is really giving too much thought about 'how to make friends.' The right approach is to do things you yourself enjoy and then you are frequently in contact with those who are at least somewhat similar to you and friendship develops naturally over time

It sounds like you are 'trying to make friends' when really you should just do things you enjoy and be sociable at these places. When you try to force friendship it's kinda like going up to someone and saying "I want to be your friend" which if you actually did you'd scare the person off

I think friendship is even less susceptible to 'force' than relationships. With relationships you can kinda control and influence your situation but with friendship things do need to happen quite naturally

Edited January 28, 2022 by something_else

[PurpleTree]

imo it's because of expectations

you expect something

or you expect someone to be a certain way

which i do too often and have too high standards

[Nahm]

5 hours ago, Flint said:

I'm sorry but I need to rant as I've come across several situations in my life related to friendships that are quite annoying. I'm talking here about platonic relationships, namely friendships and friends, NOT dating, altough women are often involved

They are basically a source of chaos because people are underdevelopped and unreliable accross the board and mind you, I live in a first world country.

No, they just are where they are on this journey. No one is underdeveloped, but thinking that way makes it seem so. 

Quote

The following situations (and I have quite some more) have happened and I'm very confused on how to process them:

• I randomly met a certain girl and we got along very well, we seen each other twice since. Then we stopped talking as she didn't answer one of my message. Then she wished me a happy birthday again this year and we did meet up again and the feeling was nice. We did talk about seeing each other again adn she agreed and when I offered something more concrete she stopped answering as well.

Sounds like she was being nice and didn’t actually want to hang out, and didn’t be upfront and let you know. 

Quote

• I have a friend with whom I spent most of my studies which I didn't see for a long long period of time, which is definitely my fault. We did catch up and I did apologize and explain everything that happened to me, and it went quite well but we didn't meet ever since altough I did ask for it.

Ask what’s been happening with them. 

Quote

• In the virtual context : I met someone on shapr with whom I spent 1 year talking very sporadically who never at the end of the day MET ME and I was like for fucks sake why are you wasting my time by saying that you want to meet me irl if you in fact do not want to !? Yes, sure, I shouldn't expect decency out of low consciousness people who simply act out their survival agenda.

“Low consciousness people” is judgement, discordant, and that way of thinking isn’t indicative of you in the sense it doesn’t resonate with your true nature. You’re learning to think that way, which comes with learning to believe thoughts and suppress the discord therein. I’d look to unlearning that way of thinking, as the judgement has the effect of being isolating for you. 

Quote

• Similarly, I've spent a very long time talking to someone online who at the end of the day didn't want to meet me either altough I tought we had a connection. But for online that's a harsh lesson to learn as meeting people online is mostly BS.

Also a judgement. 

Quote

• I have another quote on quote friend who takes ages to answer messages.

People like other people holding expectation over or upon them just as much as you don’t. 

Quote

• I had a very very nice friendship which was very balanced in terms of giving taking for quite some time, like 6-7 months. Then we decided to go on a short holiday together and well, shit hit the fan : she didn't sleep properly during several days before the trip and I expected more (platonic ! friendships !) intimacy such as discussing our problems and she didn't want to get closer to me because of that and I felt rejected the entire trip. Once we came back, we did discuss it but basically that made the entire relationship dynamic crumble because I didn't want to invest anymore and she didn't either. Like for fuck's sake, how can you just throw away a friendship like that - could you not have made the fucking effort of sleeping enough !?

Talk to a therapist or the like until you have let go of ‘problem thinking’, of framing experiencing in that way. Notice, whatever you hold to be ‘problem’, those thoughts don’t feel good to you. Why would you think they would feel good to someone else / they would want to spend their time in discord? 

Quote

On top of that, I see several issues:

I find that people are either not interesting (have no social skills and nothing really going on for them, underdevelopped such as stuck in deep stage blue and mindless survival) or are still heavily unreliable and simply act out their survival agenda mindlessly even when they are interesting.

It is as if you’re learning how to be megalomaniacal, but missing the discord of the judgements to ‘get there’. 

Quote

Even if I align with their survival agenda by trying to form a relationship which provides them value - this is said very logically but I'm just doing an analysis here - it doesn't seem to work out either which is very puzzling because I'm careful about the aspects related to value, not being needy, etc and it's still not working altough we have a good chemistry !!! Perhaps 10 or 15 people is just a very very small sample ?

Relationships for value and survival agenda is conceptual and doesn’t really ‘work’ per se in actual relationships because people are not objects, and thus objectification is discordant. It sounds like you simultaneously desire genuine friendships but push what you want away by conceptualizing yourself and others. 

Just. Have. Fun. 

Let friends be for that. No expectations. 

Quote

Also, since I've upgraded to stage green and I've been trying to be more considerate I feel like people respect me less vs me just being blunt and harsh all the time with who I am and disregarding their perspective, because before that, strangely enough my relationships seemed to work better because I was always more "authentic".

Anyways I'm quite buthurt because I interpret the fact that people do not seemingly want to make efforts to maintain friendships with me as me being low value which I completely disagree with as I have plenty to offer.

You’re missing that value doesn’t apply. It’s not wether you are “low value” or “high value”, it’s that attempting to apply that way of thinking is discordant. Consider why McDonalds literally calls their product “value meals”. Consider McDonalds intention. 

Quote

Then for people I do not find horrifyingly boring such as your average wage slave Joe who have no interests who is totaly unrelatable for me, for other people I face the issue of they will be close minded about psychedelics telling me it's only dangerous drugs, or they will be stuck in stage orange workaholism and scientific rationality, or vegan  ideology or w/e etc etc like good fucking heavens how difficult is it to work on yourself people !?

Boredom is an emotion you experience in regard to what you’re thinking, and is not a property of people as objects with ranging values and “consciousnesses”. 

Quote

 

Why is it not a priority for you if your level of consciousness and developlment determines how good your entire life is going to be !?

It doesn’t. It conceptualizes the enjoyment of life right out from under your nose, via the conjecture of conceptualizing - yourself. 

Quote

What are you relationship/friendship strategies, considering that even if some people are not the most actualized they can still be interesting, social contact is nice and it provides nice survival advantages ? Should I screen harder ? Have a larger funnel ? I dislike having to doubt my value (and feeling like I'm disposable garbage basically) simply because I cannot find interesting, good and reliable friends ! Even with good chemistry most of my relationships seem flimsy and I cannot grasp why.

Any help greatly appreciated.

The best thing you can do imo is recognize all of this as compensating for underlying discord, and use the emotional scale to uncover and release this via expressing how you feel, and understanding emotions more acutely. Try to let thoughts of judging others go when they arise, instead of expressing them to others. 

When the discordant thoughts arise, write the opposite, what you do want, on your dreamboard. Let everybody of the hook, in the recognition they can do the same. This will also infuse passion into your life, making it easy to have great feeling stuff to talk about, and holding people less accountable for your happiness. It’s more of a natural effortless ‘sharing’ of the happiness you truly are, than this, kind of, self centered mental gymnastics to remain “valuable” and “high conscious”.  ? 

[Thestarguitarist14]

In short, nobody wants friendships anymore. Everyone is more into networking and getting something out of someone else.  If they see that you are if no use to them they just go about doing their own thing.

It is rather sad.  Pink Floyd was right, no one has a real friend.

[ChrisZoZo]

@Flint In my experience if you can fill your heart up with enough love for a prolonged period of time (like 30 mins day) you won't require joy or love from other people. I obtained this by reading Eckhart Tolle book the power of now and applying it for when I went for walks by myself in the most beautiful place I could find. The trick was to look at nature COMPLETLY without intention.   

[somegirl]

Friendships are not complicated at all. That's your belief.

I have friends I have known for 16+ years. And I don't live in first world country.

Maybe it's complicated for some people because they care too much about it. Like... They don't have abundant mindset. They worry about whether they will ever find/keep a friend that it backfires at them and those potential friends always somehow seem to just vanish. 

Edited February 5, 2022 by somegirl

[integral]

There isn't enough intimacy in the way you engage with people. Connect at a deeper level and they will stick around.

[DIDego]

@integral

1 hour ago, integral said:

There isn't enough intimacy in the way you engage with people. Connect at a deeper level and they will stick around.

 

How? ?

Edited February 6, 2022 by DIDego

[supremeyingyang]

On 1/28/2022 at 11:12 AM, Flint said:

They are basically a source of chaos because people are underdevelopped and unreliable accross the board and mind you, I live in a first world country.

Well, @Nahm replied:

On 1/28/2022 at 4:32 PM, Nahm said:

No, they just are where they are on this journey. No one is underdeveloped, but thinking that way makes it seem so

This is true, judging people or be angry that they can't give you what you need is not useful to get what your want (orange thinking), for them (green thinking) or the community in general as this thinking spreads (yellow thinking).

The next step is however to unpack what to do next. Sometimes it seem that @Nahm advocates acceptance of what is. Nahm, maybe you can clarify my assumption.

However acceptance does NOT mean in my opinion that you like their behavior and continue to hang out.

Here an example from my life: I have for example old friends friends I seldomly see any more. WHY? They are functional addicts, who consume a lot of cigarettes, alcohol and weed and what else you have. Of course they are in low conscious trapped. If I continue to hang out with them their behavior swaps over to me. Guaranteed. But then I will not reach my Life Purpose. So I talked with them and because they don't really care to change their ways I stopped to hand out. It broke my heart, but I tried to help some of them for 10 years and nothings happens. Now I look for a new circle. There is a prospect who is a theologian who makes his doctorate and is already a entrepreneur in the field I want to go in: E-Learning. Then I will interview an 60 year old IT-Department Leader and Autodidact for my podcast. Another friends of mine is a banker, who schemes towards financial freedom and is in the beginning to get spiritual...  

@Flint , you seem to really want to meet like minded people. I get it, but have some patience and reform yourself and over time you'll get less needy and you will acquire knowledge of human nature. You have to consider that you are the odd one out, the lucky one to get to this information in the forum. Yeah and also try to be not cocky or arrogant about it, but it is what it is

[Hello from Russia]

Just different trauma profiles, Girl has probably learned a lot of avoidance strategies 

[Nahm]

@supremeyingyang

As opposed to denial… or not moving forward? Not exactly sure what you mean here. 

[supremeyingyang]

@Nahm

As opposed to denial. Take people for what they are at the time. Some people don't move (as I or maybe you as well define it) 'forward' and that's their choice. Who knows? Maybe we are too obsessive in some aspects of our life and I claim that every average Joe has at least some habits which we can learn from

[somegirl]

1 hour ago, Hello from Russia said:

Just different trauma profiles, Girl has probably learned a lot of avoidance strategies 

Are you referring to me? 

[PurpleTree]

what i dislike or find complicated in friendships is when i feel i'm the one trying to call/meet whatever and too not much coming back

like i hate if i feel like i'm the one who has to run after other people, then i'll probably just delete the number

but then it's probably no real friendship anyways more like friendshit  

Edited February 6, 2022 by PurpleTree

[Nahm]

@supremeyingyang

Not sure I’m following what you’re saying here but yes, I’d favor acknowledging what is, since it is what is, vs denial. 

[Hello from Russia]

59 minutes ago, somegirl said:

Are you referring to me? 

No, I am reffering to girl from Op's post

[somegirl]

@Hello from Russia Oh okay

[integral]

@DIDego In my experience if im not in direct physical contact or doing regular activities with someone at least once a weak the friendship will not last. There needs to be a lot of engagement and mutual interest.

- Physical Activity buddies, (gym, sports, chess tournaments, martial arts, wrestling, Pokémon cards...)

- Online Activity buddies, (playing video games together, online chess, programming apps...)

The reason people want friends and are lonely is because they are not 100% engaged in living life and are seeking people who are engaged to carry them. So instead get to the point where your so busy with business/passions/activities that there is no room for loneliness and by doing activities everyday friends will come naturally, a network will form. 

Edited February 6, 2022 by integral