…appreciate…feelings he has had about his relationships…honesty…disappointment and pain…sharing prompted me to reflect on my own ways of relating to people and…my own experiences…an internal longing for certain types of relationships and contact with people…it makes sense to assume that I may have some unusual patterns of relationships with people in general…my expectations of friendships, I think, are not always healthy…I just wanted to be deep friends long before it was socially normal…
In normal, healthy relationships this is a slow and natural process (it could happen or it might not happen, depending on whether we eventually found us to be mutually compatible–there is no pressure). But for me, it was like I was desperate to be close because I was expecting so much from the relationship. I wanted to force it to happen. The minute I called or sent an email, I would wait all day hoping for a response. If the response took a bit longer, I would be disappointed and read all kinds of things into it…“Maybe I am not liked.” “Maybe I am inferior.” Or if the lack of response happened too many times, I would criticize (attack)…”He is an undependable person.” “He doesn’t know how to have a close friendship.”
When we made arrangements to get together, I would be thinking about it all week. And when we met, I would be listening intently for any sign of affirmation in the conversation to show how he valued our relationship. I wasn’t just enjoying the friendship. I was using it to meet some deep unmet internal need. That is unfair and unhealthy and a lot of pressure to put on a regular friendship.
Fortunately, I was socially mature enough on the outside to know to keep all this to myself…inside, I was full of all this turmoil. If I were honest with myself, I would know that I was clingy and obsessed and desperate for connection…In the end I never became a deep friend…programmed to either seek a deep friend or none at all…I wasn’t satisfied with a normal everyday friendship where we might connect every few weeks or months or at any interval that was mutually good for both of us, even if it were just once a year. It had to fit the ideal in MY mind…I am healthier now and understand some of those dynamics…I have much healthier expectations of my relationships now. But I know that I am always susceptible to such tendencies, so I always try to check myself.
…I have encountered some who also have the clinginess…some who are self-absorbed, unable to take in points of view that differ from their own…some who don’t understand the basics of keeping up a regular periodic dialogue…the relationship dies…some who are overly demanding about relationships…We all have backgrounds with pain and hurts that affects the way we interact with people…need for healing…trying to honestly look in the mirror and face my own unhealthy views and expectations of relationships…trying to have honest, healthy interactions with people…tried to be realistic…Not everyone is skilled at having healthy relationships…that doesn’t mean we dislike them…they are on their journey and they may not have the skills to be a good friend at this time…
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Thank you…exactly the kinds of exchanges that give me life…never met in person…connecting…mutually relate…fellow human beings…a tendency to read the other person’s problem as a reflection of me…people often disappoint…
I used to look for that one good friend to satisfy all my friendship needs. I wanted that deep, intimate bosom buddy who took the time to know me well, who knew how to encourage me when I needed, who took the right level of initiative in our friendship, who was interesting, who had similar interests…I could never find the one person to meet this crazy criteria…differently…Instead of finding the one friend…satisfy all my needs…I diversify and accept people for what they are and accept what I can get from each person…No one individual satisfies me…the composite of them together has helped me have a fuller life…not overly desperate with any single one…You said “don’t throw me away.”…I’ve had this exact phrase play in my mind all the time, “throw me away” “toss me aside” “make me feel like I don’t count.”…I have learned that I often overread situations…When someone doesn’t respond to my overtures for friendship in the way I wish, such voices play in my mind…these sorts of thoughts are distortions that come from my childhood hurts…read situations in terms of rejection and non-acceptance….It is not a personal rejection or a criticism of me…don’t “fit” together at this moment in time…areas needing healing, but God did not make a mistake…
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Thoughtful and honest, an increasing of self-knowledge leading to surrender–soul expanding reading. I have a friend, an academic, a language specialist and self-acclaimed Christian philosopher/psychologist. He teaches a fundamental and debilitating obstacle for growing in Jesus Christ is self-loathing. The core of our psyche is diabolically attacked by the Father of Lies to form us in a way in which we despise ourselves. As children, within all the love, care, and concern of our parents or maybe in a cruel absence of love (abuse), experience springboards us into disappointment, a movement away from love. Our teen years and young adulthood only hardens and inflates the obstacle—the distance. We cannot accept ourselves—loneliness becomes perpetual. The self-loathing, the lack of trust in ourselves, submerges into our deepest dispositions, emotions, thoughts and thus behavior. We grow foolish, unstable, unable to mature due to unsound psychological needs. The instinctive reaction to turn on one’s self becomes subtler and grows. We become desperate and expect too much, lacking an inability to be honest with ourselves—to truly know ourselves as the Creator knows us. Patterns develop that lead to addiction, codependency, and other forms of frustration. I have decided it would be best to end with words sent to me by an individual here in Courage:
After reading your not-so-hopeful message, I was just prompt to mention to you that no matter how damaged/warped you think you are, nothing is impossible to Jesus since His Grace can, did and will do anything for you as it did for many of us and many throughout the history of Christianity. We cannot change or do anything by ourselves – I agree, but by belief in His Grace, with Him and through Him – all things are possible, remember this. Please pray for His Grace to transform you. ‘For with God nothing will be impossible.” Luke 1:37
