Unable to maintain healthy friendships

[Diggitydave]

I am a 29 year old guy from New Jersey. For some reason I am unable to obtain healthy friendships. The serious friends that I do have say that some of the other people I choose to be friends with are just fluff and I don't really need them. Every time I try to make new friends, after a few years, it always ends up the same way. We end up at each others throats and it kind of falls apart. For instance, just recently my friend who is much younger than me, in his early 20's developed a pretty good friendship, he is more of a little brother to me. He is however dating a girl that he treats like crap. The girl and him both vent to me about each other separately. Whenever I say something to him he is never wrong.

 

A very close friend of mine got all psychological on me and said that I subconsciously date and befriend people who are like my father. My father is a very narcisisstic (if thats how you spell it) person. He says I attract people who I consider to be stronger willed than I am and/or never wrong just like my father because thats what I am used to. It is partially true. I always tend to be the submissive person in any kind of relationship and always strive to make the other person right, even if I know in my heart they are wrong, just to not rock the boat. If I argue with them, they don't stay around. My father to this day has never admitted to being wrong about anything. If he says the sky is brown, it's brown. Now with women, friends, etc, these are the kind of people I meet. I for some reason don't get along with people who agree with me or agree that I'm right about things because i'm used to narcisisstic a-holes, that treat me like a second rate friend or boyfriend.

 

This particular friend as of recent, I do care about though. He does however, treat his gf like crap, calls her very bad names, controls her to the point where she has to call him and stay on speakerphone when she goes anywhere so he knows exactly where she is at all times.

 

They even play world of warcraft together and she cannot level her character higher than his without asking him permission lol.

 

 

Anyway, thats there business, and i try to keep it that way but they do constnatly vent to me about these issues as if they are trying to get my side.

 

Anyway, so it may not be an ability to maintain, but it might be looking for friends in the wrong people at the wrong times. I do have a couple of pretty close friends, but they are all on different wavelengths and don't hang out together so i've been trying to extend myself and look for people with other interests, but like I said I always end up in a situation.

[hosswhispra]

It sounds like you have good insight about yourself--picking friends/girlfriends that have your father's personality. I read that people enter relationships with people with the same type of personality of the parent that they had the most issues with. It's as though they're trying to correct whatever is "wrong". It's also a comfortable situation because it is something that is familiar to them.

 

However, as I said in the beginning, it sounds as though you have good insight into this already. Now it's getting the "tools" to change so-to-speak. Have you thought about professional counseling?

 

P.S. the way your friend treats his girlfriend is abusive. Control is an actual form of abuse.

[Diggitydave]

yeah, i have thought about it. and I am actually going for other issues, like depression and such in a few weeks, so i think i might bring this up too.

[HealingHandsWarmHeart]

maybe you are afraid or don't know how to create true intimacy ...which is why you choose gf and friendships that you consider superficial?

[HealingHandsWarmHeart]

i wanted to add that i say that because ...it was something that i have done in the past.

[Entropy Smith]

If you want friends resist the urge to be judgemental and give advice (obvvious i don't want friends) but make the the person knowyou understand them by repeating back the point they were making.

 

Friendships are dynamic, that is, sometimes closer sometimes farther apart, always evolving and thats ok.

 

Gotta be you bro. No trying to please people. Even if you stand alone for awhile, the respect you give yourself will attract more friends.

 

If you have a passion/goal you'll find friends will be born out of necessity/struggling for a similiar goal.

 

Personally i have no time for fluff or friends who are victims or boring people or people who've got nuthing going on...

 

...be an "alpha" who doesn't need friends and you'll find you have many people wanting to hang with you.