a pathetic obsession

a pathetic obsession

grendyl

Registrant
This is long. I have tried to edit it down.

I have lately become obsessed about a friend of mine (not sexual, just in keeping a friendship going) . He occasionally calls and says 'Let's work together' I will begin the prep, working hard to begin the process, and then he won't call for maybe a month, and when he does he pretends like that conversation never occured (when we talk about iPods and laptops, I know he is trying to hide something). I try to detach but he keeps pulling me back in.

I am angry about the situation, because it started out as me trying to help him

About a year ago, he stopped contacting me all together for 6 months even though I would write letters such as 'we don't need to talk, please just email response saying you are okay.'

Then suddenly he wanted to be friends again b/c he said he quit medicine and needs help w/ his life. In those 6 months he stopped contacting me, I had detached completely, and then I got involved again damn it.

About about a month ago he calls me with BS re: working together (he has pulled really weird shit like this before in the last 6 months). I said 'are you BSing me?' He said no. I assumed that meant moving back to my city (he knows I would not move and this is the city), which also got me excited. When he pretends he never said these things, it hurts in both regards. I feel very used.

He called me last night re: my b-day, I decided I won't return his calls or email anymore. The b-day thing is also a hellish issue for me but unrelated to this. Up to now, I tried to be a bigger person by return his emails when he doesn't respond to mine for ex

Without my family and without him, I am essentially alone in the world (I am not being dramatic here, I have no other friends) Luckily I am not without my family (I don't talk to my sister anymore, but my mother is there for me), so I can handle us becoming totally BS friends I think. I try to be the bigger person, but I quit the prep work I was doing (I never needed the job, he did), stopped feeling like if I had done more maybe we'd be better friends, quit returning email + phone calls at least for a little while, and am trying to make some new friends that live near me ( I doubt that will be succesful).

I am scared of being w/o friends. However, I read a book about how relationships can become toxic, and I think this one has. What irritates me the most now is not that I am not involved in his life or we can't hang out together, it is that I am probably way more obsessed about this than he is.

I wish I knew of a way to shed this whole thing.
 
I hope you can find the balance with this friend that you're looking for. I don't think wanting a friendship to work when we need that connection so badly is "pathetic". We all need someone to care for and to care about us. We've been trained so badly by our pasts that sometimes we reach out for it in maybe not the best of ways. I had so many "friends" that were only interested in what they could get from me. My therapist told me there are throwers and there are catchers in the world, the helpers and the helpees. I've always been a helper. Helpees love that. It only took getting burned, and I mean scorched, about a thousand times for me to hear the knock on my head. My wife and I have started hanging around people who don't need help. Surprisingly enough, these people like us anyway.

Thanks for posting this. It got me to thinking again. Quite frankly, helpees can be real jerks sometimes. This reminds me of the posts we had a week or so ago about saying "no". Don't let him mess with you. I can say that, because I always let people like that mess with me, and I can't ever say "no".
 
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. That thrower, catcher thing is especially enlightening. I believe I am a helper too, I am not sure how that happened. I am going to work on saying 'no'
 
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