Flakes

[Cherry009]

I made a post a while ago about one of my friends who has just recently made it very obvious she doesnt have time for me anymore now that she is coming out of her depression and has her boyfriend living with her (she basically just used me when she had rough times with her boyfriend or was feeling low) now she has the cheek to even say to me 'i am pre occupied' when i ask her why i havent heard from her. I am not going to give her anymore of my thoughts or time. i know Its not a real friendship. I think i am a magnet to flakes in the friendship world and the dating world! I know the thing to do with an unreliable and flakey friend is to just move on from them and find new friends but its hard to make new friends these days, and if i drop all my flakey friends i will barely have any friends left because a lot of them are. I don't allow myself to get walked over so why do so many friends flake?

[shes2smart]

if i drop all my flakey friends i will barely have any friends left because a lot of them are. I don't allow myself to get walked over so why do so many friends flake?

 

If you have mostly flaky friends, it's not like you have many you would consider real friends right now anyway.

 

If the flake factor is a recurring theme in your life, you need to look at the only thing you have any control over which is yourself. When was the last time you did a conscious, detailed evaluation of what your definition of "friend" is? Are your expectations of someone in that role realistic? Are you expecting too much? If you are being constantly disappointed because you're not getting what you think you should from the relationship, you need to look at what your expectations are. Are you expecting people to give things they are not capable of and/or simply not willing to give?

 

Oh, and if you have a laundry list of things *you* would do for your friends that doesn't mean other people have that same list...or ANY list....for themselves.

 

While I firmly believe the world would be a lot better if we were all more like me , the brick wall of reality is people are all different, they all have their own agendas (which very rarely have anything to do with me and usually have to do with them), and they all have their own ideas about how the world should work. We may speak a common language (in this case English) but we all have slightly different working definitions of what words like "friend" actually mean in the living, breathing, 3-D world.

 

I know a lot of people. Even as anti-social as I am, after you've been knocking around this long, somehow you develop relationships with others. There are plenty of people I could get to go do stuff with me if I wanted to. However, the number of people I consider "friends" can be counted on one hand, and most have been in my life for more than a decade. They are the ones who have, over time and with a certain level of consistency, proven they can be relied on when the hits the fan.

 

I think most people go through a process of re-defining what a "friend" is and what that looks like in action as they grow up. As with any re-defining process, there are often times painful incidents that come along with the territory.

 

Some people are flaky, some aren't. Some people are not trustworthy, some are. Some people are good to have around when you're having a crisis, but if times are good you won't hear a peep out of them. Some people will only be around when it's fun and games, but at the first hint of something serious, they vanish. Some people are very giving, and some only want to take.

 

If you can learn to adjust your expectations to match who any one particular person is, you're more likely to be happy with your relationships. I wouldn't expect one of my "good times only" friends to be a shoulder to cry on. That's not who they are. Through their actions over time, they have shown me who they are. Expecting them to be who they are not only sets me up to be disappointed. Expecting them to be who they are not also shows some arrogance and self-centeredness on my part -- basically the thought process can be boiled down to, "I need you to be something you are not right now, but damn you, you won't do it because it's not who you are....how dare you not change to meet my needs."

 

People show you who they are through their actions all the time. All. The. Time. Too often, though, we're so focused on who we want them to be and/or who we think they should be that we totally ignore who they're telling us they really are.

[Cherry009]

shes2smart, thanks for your great reply,

 

In answer to your question about whether I am expecting too much, No...I don't think I am expecting too much, I don't ask a lot from anyone to be honest, I am a very laid back person, possibly too laid back sometimes. I just want my friendships to be 2 ways, where we BOTH give and take, where it is equal. I am never blowing up friends phones expecting them to see me and asking for a lot. I understand that there are some friendships where it is just about 'the good times' and not about deep emotional levels of friendship. Luckily I do have a handful of friends that i can turn to if i have a problem or need advice etc. Most of those are coupled up and when you get older your friends who are in serious relationships have less time for you and spend more time on their partner/relationship which is fine, I get it. I am just fed up of making plans with friends and then them cancelling, or not getting back to me, like I said...once or twice is ok but when it is all the time it just starts to get annoying and make you feel like that they aren't really all that bothered about you. But yes you are right, everyone has a different opinion on what a friend is and I guess some of those people I know have a different idea to me. I think I do adjust my expectations to match particular people, I have been doing that for a long time. It just hurts that this friend with the boyfriend has basically dropped me now that hes moved in and her career is getting off the ground, it was only a few months ago I remember her calling me and crying down the phone because she was so low, I guess she's forgotten that now! I know her boyfriend will mess up again and I don't particularly want to be there when she comes crawling back to me to be honest!

 

I was meant to go out for dinner with a different friend tonight and surprise surprise she has cancelled on me, another flaker 'friend' who cancels pretty regularly, don't get me wrong if it was a one off I wouldn't mind but this particular girl does it regularly. She also has depression (as well as the one I mentioned in the beginning of my above post) so maybe it has something to do with that. Not really sure what to reply back to her to be honest...?

[journeynow]

shes2smart, what an excellent response, and helpful for me, too.

 

"We teach people how to treat us", realistic expectations, boundaries... darn, this can be confusing!

[Hollyj]

They don't! It's who you're choosing.

 

Consider why your self esteem is so low that you have these types of people in your life. You need people that share similar values.

[shes2smart]

I just want my friendships to be 2 ways, where we BOTH give and take, where it is equal

 

Well...lemme know if you ever figure out how to achieve that. Because while it sounds not-too-difficult on paper, equality in any relationship between humans is quite elusive. You may be able to achieve it for brief periods of time, but I don't know that it's sustainable over the long haul. Lives, and the details of any one person's lives are not static. One of my favorite sayings is "Change is the only constant." I like it because of the truth in it. Most of us fear change, which means we end up living in fear quite a bit, since "change is the only constant."

 

It just hurts that this friend with the boyfriend has basically dropped me now that hes moved in and her career is getting off the ground, it was only a few months ago I remember her calling me and crying down the phone because she was so low, I guess she's forgotten that now! I know her boyfriend will mess up again and I don't particularly want to be there when she comes crawling back to me to be honest!

 

Of course it hurts to be dropped, especially when you didn't do anything to deserve being treated like that. She's showing you the truth of who she is now. She is a woman who drops her girlfriends in favor of a man. 10 years down the road, this may not be who she is anymore...but it is who she is now, and who she is now is who you're dealing with. If this is not who you are, then her behavior can not only hurt, but come as a surprise to you. If this is not something you yourself would do, it can be very difficult to wrap your head around *why* someone would choose to behave like that. You know this about her now, though....so you can adjust your expectations and (important) - adjust your future behavior. If you'd prefer not to be her shoulder to cry on, then don't be. If you don't mind being her shoulder to cry on - knowing full well she's likely to disappear when things are all lovey-dovey with the man again - then go ahead and be there for her. If you're ok with listening to her cry for, say, an hour...but not every night for a week, then give only what you are comfortable giving....again, knowing full well she's likely to vanish when the road smooths out.

 

I was meant to go out for dinner with a different friend tonight and surprise surprise she has cancelled on me, another flaker 'friend' who cancels pretty regularly, don't get me wrong if it was a one off I wouldn't mind but this particular girl does it regularly. She also has depression (as well as the one I mentioned in the beginning of my above post) so maybe it has something to do with that. Not really sure what to reply back to her to be honest...?

 

Oh, I had one like that in my life for a while too. Her name was Becky. And it used to annoy the living outta me. Make plans with Becky and you had about a 75% chance of them NOT having. For my own peace of mind, I reminded myself of that going in - any time I made plans with Becky, I knew there was a really good chance they weren't going to happen. So, I'd make sure I had other stuff I could do in case she flaked. Another change I made was not instigating plans with her. *She* had to do the asking. Because of who she is, the plans became less and less frequent and eventually no longer included me.

 

There's another thing about relationships -- I believe all relationships have a "shelf-life." They have a beginning, a middle and an end. The one possible exception is the relationship you have with yourself...but even then, this physical version of you will die some day, so maybe even that relationship is not permanent. If you know going in that nothing is forever, it can kinda force you into staying in the present moment. (...or completely freak you out and trigger all kinds of crazy fear, so we don't think about it at all...)

 

"We teach people how to treat us", realistic expectations, boundaries... darn, this can be confusing!

 

Yup. Isn't it great? It's part of the reason why we get to be here, now.

[Hollyj]

Cherry, why do you have to respond? If someone has repeatedly shown you that they do not value your time or friendship, why do you continue to stick around? it's time to drop some of the dead weight in your life!

[Cherry009]

They don't! It's who you're choosing.

 

Consider why your self esteem is so low that you have these types of people in your life. You need people that share similar values.

 

These aren't the only kind of friends i have, like i said, i have 4 or 5 friends that i can really rely on, it's mainly the two i have mentioned in my posts that i am getting fed up with. I suppose i have never really asked myself why i still bother with them, but coming on ena and hearing what other people have to say has really made me think about things, i'm not going to get in touch with either of them now, kind of feels like a weight has been lifted!

[Cherry009]

She wont change, shes in her early 40s so it isnt as though its an immaturity thing. Well she will probably go back to being interested in talking again when her boyfriend messes up next time. But i am not going to be used again.

 

Thanks again for your replies, it has helped a lot