high maintenance friends

Agh Di thats a tricky situation innit. Its hard to know how tough to be on friends who clearly need a metaphorical slappin'. I guess it depends how close you are but maybe you really do need to put a foot down?

yeah i so do need to be more assertive. but i think i wanna talk to him about it sometime, maybe next week, when i'm not so angry about it.

(I typed "it'll end in teats" then, haha)

I had periods of behaving like a morose or drunken or whatever git and had a few friends give me the "look, for gods sake" talk and it really helped (once the sting wore off, heh). So its worth doing, if done right.

With one of my friends, I finally pointed out that I'm not a professional, all I can do is be a friend, not a therapist. The friendship ends up feeling really imbalanced when things are so intense.

It's for his own good.

Anyway at one point I had something to unload about so I started off and he cut me off with a really harshly spoken "for gods sake why do you always talk so much?" retort.

I dont speak to the silly neurotic shithead anymore.

You could simply say "jeez, maybe if you didn't whine so fucking much! Gah!"

I don't have any high-maintenance friends right now, I just have a friend who calls me up whenever he meets a new girl who is from another country and proudly shows off whatever new language he's learning in order to impress her. Naturally, he hasn't had sex since '99.

The main problem I have with this is I will say "no" when I want to. I get the tale of how they would be there for me. But I wouldn't want that - and it is kind of what annoys me. In a bad way, I will avoid people. Anyone who doesn't know the line of where to just stop things with me causes huge trouble, and I eventually end up ignoring them until they vanish.

i have a friend somewhat like this, we have the same conversation every time we meet. she complains about the situation she's in, outlines the predicament, etc. as i either nod sympathetically or sometimes, in desperation or frustration, make some blunt but sincere comment like "well if you hate school so much why don't you quit?" at one point i even asked her if she might be clinically depressed and she got really mad.

eventually it's just boring and my eyes start to glaze over.

i think there's a difference between friends who are genuinely desperate and disconsolate and those who don't really know what to do with certain friends except to bitch about their lives.

I hadn't had sex since Feb '03 until....

Yes, that's happened to me. And then immediately they started talking about wanting to see a counsellor. WTF?!
I must admit I am extremely patient with people like this as it's normally people who have no-one else to turn to/are very lonely or lost in the world and I know how this can feel. However I do get a bit fed up with people who are never willing to help themselves. Often a piece of advise or cruel-kindness will not go down well. They'll either get mad or try arguing their point even harder for why they're so sad all the time. But really I think they are taking things in bit by bit and will hopefully meditate on it later and listen to what was said.

Actually even suggesting someone is just depressed or should see a counciler is normally enough, never mind suggesting they should be commited.

Anyway - that is a little off thread. Totally understand the sentiment, but you really have to be careful about suggesting these things. Some people want to think they are depressed when they aren't, and the ones that are most typically don't want to hear a word about it until things are really bad.

My general rule of thumb is that I will listen to/put up with another person's crises and flappage as much as they will listen to/put up with *mine*.

It's a fact of life that people sometimes do go through very difficult periods in their lives when everything happens all at once, and it *is* hard to be reciprocal. A good friend will understand, and go through the downs as well as the ups.

However, some people are just drama queens, and *every* tiny life crisis gets turned into a major state of flap. Either you accept this as a part of their personality, or you walk away. The common mistake that people make when dealing with flappers is assuming that they actually *want* the friend to help or solve their dilemma. Sometimes they *just* want some kind of attention or friendship, and don't know another way to go about getting it. In this case, trying to solve their dilemmas will actually make them cross at you. They don't want to be *fixed* - they just want to be listened to! Detachment is key in dealing with these kinds of people. Be their friend, but just don't get sucked into their dramas. (Hard, but sometimes necessary.) Set a time limit on listening, perhaps - listen to five minutes of it, then change the subject by asking them about something *positive* in their lives.

In a way I feel if any other friend from school rang me now I'd make an excuse, cos 4 years is an eternity. But I guess a sort of guilt compelled me to say yeah lets meet up. And obviously I feel bad for that too!

It's a really odd situation, I guess it could go fine but on the other hand it could be a disaster.

To this day I'll always give someone the benefit of the doubt in these situations, no matter how hysterical or melodramatic they seem to be - maybe this gets me into trouble more often than it helps but I think I do so out of fear of something like that happening again.

i have some pretty intense stuff going on at any given time, and i find myself glossing it over a lot, or just not really talking much about how i'm really doing someteimes. because there's nothing new to say, and what there is can be difficult to understand...people just don't know how to respond.

i'm not quite sure how to balance that sometimes...i want to be a supportive and understanding friend, and i want to have the same from my friends. but i end up being more reserved about my problems than friends seem to be because i don't want to be overwhelming. i dunno.

Did you get LAID last night, Gear?