Mixed Personality Disorder and trying to have friendships.
I was once diagnosed with Mixed Personality Disorder. I often wonder if it is my ADHD or this, that causes people not to like me.
@tryingtosurvive2024
Hi there 💜 What kinds of things tend to happen when you try to have friendships? You mentioned that people don't like you--just curious if there's a pattern you've noticed to how things tend to go wrong.
@QuietMagic I don't know. I don't get into fights with people. I don't even get into many disagreements with them. They just start out acting friendly, and as they get to know me they start acting less friendly until the friendship is no more.
@tryingtosurvive2024
That sounds frustrating, and also a little mysterious. When you say that people start acting less friendly, what do you mean by that, or can you share any examples?
(Asking because my own experience is that lots of my friendships can fade for reasons that have nothing to do with people disliking each other: people get busy, they get distracted, they don't have shared activities/interests that keep them connected, they stop spending as much time together if they don't have hangouts regularly scheduled, etc.)
@QuietMagic My social and work life is so bad that I can not give you good solid examples. I think for me any hopes of any kind of friendship is over. Whatever is wrong is so bad that it would require therapy to figure it out, and that is not an option for me. ☹️
@tryingtosurvive2024
When people "act less friendly", is it like they stop talking to you completely, or are they less responsive/engaged when you do talk with them? (Or maybe something else.) Just kind of wondering how things usually go wrong.
@QuietMagic I notice that I must be the one that makes all the effort to keep the friendship going. Cause they just seem to lose interest in it.
@tryingtosurvive2024
Gotcha, that makes sense. So it feels like they aren't real friends because if they were then they would initiate things.
I wonder whether anyone would be willing to set up regularly scheduled days/times to chat/hang out/do activities together? Speaking for myself personally, I rarely initiate anything, so having recurring appointments with people is generally how I bake in time for "I will talk to this person 1x/week" and ensure that all of my friendships (and family relationships) don't dissolve into nothingness.
Then that also becomes a pretty simple litmus test for me of whether a friendship is functional: if I'm spending some time interacting with someone regularly, then I'm fulfilling my responsibility to that person (and vice versa). Removes some of the ambiguity or special/heroic effort of needing someone to spontaneously reach out.
@QuietMagic I think a true friendship runs in a complete circle. You reach out them, and they reach out to you. They reach out to you, and then you reach out to them. If that circle gets broken too many times, then the friendship was either not real or it is ready to end.
@tryingtosurvive2024
That makes sense, sort of like: "I'm the only one putting any energy into this friendship, and what I'm getting back in return feels like it's not good enough. I'm willing to let this friendship decay rather than trying to artificially keep it alive by trying to drag the other person into a connection that they don't seem to care about maintaining."
I wonder whether there's a point at which you say, "Yes these friendships are unreal, superficial, not good enough, etc. ... but if this is all I have and the choice is between that and being completely isolated, I'll take the minimal/imperfect connections for now. I'd feel even worse if I let all of my friendships disintegrate due to people not meeting my expectations, assuming I wouldn't find anyone better to replace them with. These friends don't meet my expectations, but having a few 'unreal' friends is better than having no friends at all."
In my previous post I mentioned scheduling as my way of side-stepping the entire issue of "will they/won't they contact me". If I can side-step a problem that's avoidable, that feels better than testing people to see if they'll mess up and betray my expectations under less-than-ideal conditions (i.e. will you contact me if I stop contacting you).
@QuietMagic Sounds like you are understanding me. I can tell you that I do put up with less than ideal "friends". I've tried to make the best out of the situation I find myself in. However I'm starting to wonder if maybe Isolation is the better choice. Because almost all of these less than ideal friends, end up hurting me in some way. Some cases they turned against me, or made my life harder. In other cases they fade out, no matter how hard I try to keep it going.
@tryingtosurvive2024
Glad that I wasn't too far off the mark. 💜
That's fair, I'd respect the choice to isolate--and I've certainly found that helpful sometimes. "Trying to make things work with these people is so miserable that I'd probably feel better even it means not having anybody. I just need a break from this nonsense." 😊
And then I guess at some point the pendulum might swing back in the other direction and you'd try to look for friends (or new/decent people might randomly pop up in the midst of other activities--and if you're desperate enough then those might jump out as opportunities and create some excitement/stir some action).
But maybe giving up for a little while will be refreshing if you're just burned out on people being dumb, haha. Can try again later.
@QuietMagic My whole life it has been a problem. At least I'm not getting bullied anymore. Hit and kicked, like I was in school.
I'm on the same boat so I feel you
@Phoenix2098 It is nice knowing I am not alone.
