obsessed with making friendsobsessed with making friends

i had an acquaintance who is bad at responding to people, but after reaching out to them they became my best friend. In what way? With some people the questions felt awkward, but with some people I really vibed. Lack of perceived control over a situation. Hoovering, aptly named after the Hoover vacuum, is a technique narcissists use to try to "suck" their victims back into the vicious cycle of abuse and regain control, especially if their . My main tip is to avoid jumping to conclusions about the problem and what is needed, and instead to explore the problem more than feels necessary. A party with friends-of-friends will probably have pretty different base rates to random strangers? Once identified, try to actively optimise for the ways I add value. I think having a literal list of questions made the interactions much more artificial. I try to be honest and vulnerable myself, and freely share things that feel authentic throughout the conversation. On the playground, for instance, autistic children tend to operate on the periphery. What's the chase? Autistic children also might not be able to find the children they know in the crowd. Mainly because it is meaningful and important to me, and fun to share with others (it also reflects my love of freedom, which I forgot to mention). "OCD is a mental health disorder consisting of obsessions (unwanted, intrusive, distressing thoughts) and/or compulsions (repetitive behaviors or actions in order to eliminate the distress. And, in hindsight, I am still really surprised that the success rate was so high! You like to be around people who make you feel exactly like who you are. I'd recommend "Know Yourself" and the dating one. Most people are really bad at keeping in touch, especially without a structure like university that keeps you in frequent contact. I find that many people are too socially anxious to do this, but this is a really useful skill to practice. And, if you think you know more about Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross than you do about your real life friends, then you might be, too! Who expose me to new experiences, and ways of seeing the world. If I meet 100 people, and want to pursue a friendship with just a handful, this is great! Taking social initiative is hard and most people arent very good at it. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone youve just met. But when I tried something totally different and super weird, it often went great! When I reduce my 'care' for these people to it's constituant parts. What could be better? Theres a lot of swinging and missing, but when [autistic people] do connect, it goes out of the park. Brett Heasman. Most people find this great and flattering, dont overthink it. My guess is that most people shy way too far away from being vulnerable, and being nudged towards 'just say fuck it and practice being vulnerable' will get them closer to the optimal amount of vulnerability. Challenging my self-image and growing. An obsession is a recurring thought of something or someone, where it always seems to be in a person's mind. Further, compatibility is heavy-tailed - I wont really vibe with most people, but some people are awesome. It didnt feel like a void missing from my life - things just felt normal. Warning: these tactics sometimes get the other person to monologue - I am fine with this, and most people enjoy talking to an engaged audience, but some people feel bad at one-sided conversations. Please agree and read more about our, Cinyee Chiu, photographs courtesy of Dante DeSole and Jay Spindel. And effort, intelligently applied, can really pay off. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? Edit: Apologies if this is already covered somwhere, I'm new. How do you feel about it now? I was trapped in a normal mode of conversation - making small talk, being inoffensive, feeling aversion to being weird, respecting where I thought other peoples boundaries were. But, empirically, I am confident many of my friends value our friendship, but also suck at reaching out. I feel like whenever I message them I'm just bothering them so I'm trying to limit the messages I send. For example, like neurotypical girls, they name only one or two close friends, but unlike them tend not to have a wider circle of casual friends. It was not out of financial interest. My close friendships are one of the most important components of my life happiness. And as part of trying to move on and recover, I did a lot of introspection on how the relationship had changed me, and what now felt missing from my life. Leaving it up to chance feels like passing up an incredible opportunity. That can mean crying or throwing a fit unless daddy reads that same book for the 300th time. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? Sometimes I feel closer to someone after a single amazing conversation, than to people Ive considered friends for years. I have found for myself and for a lot of the other guys diagnosed with Aspergers that I know, that we befriend other people with Aspergers, Britton says. What roles do love and affection play in your life? But there is less conversation than you might expect from a typical group of friends: One of the boys seems to talk only to himself, and a girl looks anxious and occasionally flaps her hands. Premium Powerups . In his 1943 paper, Leo Kanner described one autistic girl who moved among other children like a strange being, as one moves between the pieces of furniture. He interpreted the behavior of autistic children as being governed by the powerful desire for aloneness and sameness. For decades after, scientists and clinicians supposed that people with autism do not have friends and are not interested in forging friendships. and it ended very badly and it makes me feel awful when I think back on it. I'm pretty sure that for me, with the right person, I'd have a strong friendship after a few hours or days. Though there is always a small risk of finding out that the mysterious stranger actually is your colleague or neighbor, you just never noticed each other before but now you certainly will. I think this 'shared vulnerability' may be the problem with my approach, as I cannot think of anything that I would not feel perfectly fine discussing/'opening up' to literally anyone I know. It's borderline annoying. I and another participant noticed we were both uncomfortable with being vulnerable and authentic, and tended to use humour to deflect from anything personal. Which of them do you feel closest to, and what has led to this? The link to the 36 questions is paywalled. People with strong social connections survive longer, on average, than those with poor connections, according to a meta-analysis of more than 300,000 people. There are always risks, and always tail risks of super bad outcomes. Lerner and his colleagues have proposed that there are aspects of autism, including difficulty processing social information efficiently, that get in the way of this deeper phase of friendship. This is late, but as a highschooler who very recently realized that I don't actually have any close friends and found that deeply upsetting (while also being kind of lost on where to make better friends), thank you from the bottom of my heart. But forging a lasting friendship takes an extra ingredient: the sharing of emotional experiences. 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I want to be a person who creates win-win situations is fairly core to my identity. I did not expect it to be in my top 2 most popular blog posts ever. The friend in question is someone I've known for a good few years and we're close friends. We were writing a new show, and while we were writing I wanted to listen to the same song over and over for the whole time, Britton says. What have you tried to do about this so far? How could you identify these traits in someone in a first meeting? Apologies for the off-topic post. Tiara J October 24th, 2012 at 10:00 AM . My guess is broadly that this helped some people try taking action, and helped them feel more agency over their friendships. I find thorough enjoyment in digesting your thoughts and hope that you continue to do what you do. Further, I am not constrained by the number of people I could meet - there are a lot of interesting people in the world. And for many, it is a dismal experience. One of the main reasons Id recommend others try this is that it broke me out of a bad equilibria. But I actually found the caveats Neel made pretty reasonable. We cuddle, touch and have intimate conversations even though we met fairly recently, which would usually feel awkward to me, but this time it doesn't. And this advice was much easier to apply in uni, surrounded by a pool of interesting people in a concentrated area. I just want to be able to control this thing and not let on how it's making me feel crazy. All rights reserved. Moreover, it didnt even occur to me that I could try to do this. I guess this is about vulnerability: it feels more dangerous to be vulnerable with strangers than with close ones, and more dangerous to be vulnerable with many than with a few. I want to be good at keeping in touch, because I want to be able to remain friends with less conscientious people. If your child's friend treats their parent or. (OTOH, minor inequalities are certainly necessary and acceptable, and a high floor is clearly better than a low ceiling: an "equality" in which all are impoverished would be very bad), Utilitarian/consequentialist-leaning; preferably negative utilitarian, High openness to experience: tolerance of ambiguity, low dogmatism, unconventionality, and again, intellectual curiosity, I'm a nudist and would like someone who can participate at least sometimes, Agnostic, atheist, or at least feeling doubts, If you could be sure to achieve one thing, what would you pick? Ive had a bunch of these conversations, and still find it exciting (and sad) when I meet someone with really similar problems to me! But your mileage may vary! I find that a similar strategy works for most forms of comfort zone expansion. Strangely then myself, I value the "how" more than the "who". This cookie recipe is about as simple as any run-of-the-mill homemade cookie: You cream together the wet ingredients, add the dry ingredients, throw in some chocolate chips, chill the dough, and bake. Give him the space to pursue his own interests and goals, whilst you do the same. Its easy to think of friendships as just something that happens to you. We spoke briefly at a Warwick AI Summit on the topic of finding a meaningful career and I'm an avid reader of your blog. So, reassure her that . Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. How to Make the TikTok-Famous Blueberry Cookies. "You make me feel like an actual princess.". I have not had a relationship with a person where h. What would it be? Photograph courtesy of the New York Transit Museum, Having friends who are also on the spectrum may skirt some of the conflict. Some of my favourites: I am incredibly happy I ran this experiment. Often, however, the quality of autistic childrens friendships is poor in terms of companionship and support. That relationship ended in my first year of university. The games result in many in-jokes about the silliness that ensues. The vast majority of my current friendships would not exist if I was bad at reaching out. If youre overthinking it, talk it through with a trusted friend and let them talk you into it. They dont know your stories, or cant keep up because they dont have any frame of reference as to whats going on in your life. So now I decided I'm going to be the one to keep the friendship alive and keep developing it as well. Do you feel happy with your ability to emotionally connect? External stressors. I can think of multiple friendships that have felt exciting and close within maybe 3-4 one-on-one encounters of 2-4 hours each. Then, I repeat this process on their new answer. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Answer (1 of 4): When you are in school it is easier to make friends. Having had a similar experience, I strongly endorse this advice. And that most of the value comes from getting people to actually be intentional and do something differently, and starting some kind of positive feedback loop, more so than the exact advice matters. Because they're vegan, you'll use vegan butter and no eggs. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Below are a few behaviors commonly showcased with obsessive love disorder: Obsessive thoughts about a person. And this is really sad! Good luck :), Outstanding post, thank you! After about 3-4 iterations, weve normally gotten somewhere that feels alive and novel, where were both learning, rather than the same stale conversations they have all the time. Founded in 2010, Thought Catalog is owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Company, Inc. For over a decade, we've been at the bleeding edge of media, pioneering an infrastructure for creatives to flourish both artistically and financially. One boy wears headphones around his neck. Key points Obsession can cause a person to devalue important dimensions of their life, tolerating their atrophy and even collapse. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Nothing will go visibly wrong. Other recreational social groups Lerner has launched make space for autistic peoples preferred interests. I'd really prefer to avoid that particular pitfall into misery in time, so thank you a lot for posting this. And this loneliness may contribute significantly to the high incidence of depression and anxiety among autistic adults. I think it's because he grew up in poverty. Eg, being open about the strategies Im running and why, if it ever comes up. It's not that other people are boring your best friend is just that much more interesting. Exercise: Think about your closest friends, and how these friendships happened. It may become a self-fulfilling prophecy., Photographs courtesy of Nick Morgulis / Actionplay. I tried to be pretty concrete and actionable in my advice, which I feel good about. About 80% of the people I asked said yes, and I felt much closer with about 50% of them afterwards. 0 coins. What in life do you get truly excited about? People who bring excitement and novelty into my life. You end up comparing the new to the old, in the same way that youd compare a new fling to the ex love of your life. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. They've lived in a different country, they've had unique and helpful career experiences, and have a solid friendship group from university and a close relationship with their siblings. 12. This one is higher variance - I dont recommend leading with it! You have to realize that hormones are the most powerful things in our life and our behavior. In hindsight, I expect these could have been far richer (and Ive formed much stronger friendships with some of these friends since! If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know? If you read this post, and wanted to put any of it into practice, I'd love to hear how it went! With new people, youre always concerned that youre being slightly misread. Who help me learn, point out my blind spots, and correct me when I am wrong. Finding people's real identity can be surprisingly simple: follow them home; take a photo and do a reverse search; use some information they volunteered, like school or club or neighborhood; or if you notice they know someone, simply ask that person, or identify that other person, and then go through their contacts on social networks. You like to be around people who make you feel exactly like who you are. Getting the children more engaged on the playground is a good starting point. Youre one of those people who would rather collect a few close friends, than an army of people who you sort of like, but actually mean absolutely nothing to you. Personally, I tend to be very anxious about whether Im making other people uncomfortable, so I find this technique pretty aversive at times. When they're in a pinch, they'll turn to you for assistance and even if this other person is generally self-reliant and capable, they'll still want you around to help them out. But the ability to filter fast is crucial. Friends who help me grow more into the kind of person I want to be. You should experiment, try things, and forge your own vision of what intentionally forming close friendships looks like for you. I also find that both are effective for breaking peoples social scripts/default ways of acting by being weird and unexpected - I find this is often a good first step to actually having a meaningful conversation. Actually optimizing for high quality relationships in modern society looks way different than following the social strategies that didn't get you killed in the EEA. But also, even if it did work for some people, most people don't follow-up! And only by having a bunch of unusual and scary conversations yet having them go great did I develop the courage to be weird. I find that sharing anxieties and insecurities can work particularly well here - almost everyone has them, it feels stigmatised to discuss them but people tend to respect you when you do, and theyre often much more common and relatable than people think. I try to make sure I get their contact info, and reach out shortly after meeting them trying to arrange a call/meetup. In that environment, you really dont see his differences, Montes says. 4. Obsessed with marvel. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. They wont be turned off by something you said that one time and decide they dont like you because of it, which is honestly reassuring. Why? Theres still the initial concern that maybe they just dont want to talk to you. Like most adolescents, 15-year-old Massina Commesso worries a lot about friendship and feeling included. Cultivating friendship is definitely a skill that becomes significantly more important with age, and more important given friend groups have a tendency to stagnate or become static over time. For me, this strategy has been overwhelmingly worth it, and I refuse to let the fear of tail risks close off such vast amounts of potential value. Thanks, fixed. How does this compare to how you want to be perceived? Hey, Im actually outgoing but meeting you scares me and thats why I seem really quiet! No. He and his doctoral supervisor at the London School of Economics in the U.K. video-recorded pairs of autistic friends playing together and coded their conversational turn-taking. And, for some reason, people often enjoy interacting with me. The obvious next question was, what to actually do? I agree with your anylasis as I came to a very similar conclusion on my own. So while I think this is a good way of making close friends (I will definitely try to apply it on a small amount of people at least), I'm not too convinced on making a lot of close friends, because I think I already have enough close friends (4 or so - close friends is a fuzzy term), and more close friends feels like it would dilute my time too much. We were doing a workshop on Comfort Zone Expansion (CoZE), where the intention was to identify something we were uncomfortable with but wanted to explore and try in a safe environment. More than once, youve chosen to stay home and g-chat with your high school or college friends rather than go to the happy hour you promised your co workers youd make it to. 10) Enjoy your freedom. What am I living for? she asked her mother at the time. I love your comments about not getting hung up on who initiates. This is a fascinating strategy and I'm surprised it worked so well. Why? On priors, I'm sure most people don't actually do much follow-through, which is the core problem of ~all self-help-ish posts. I suspect there are other caveats I would think of if I thought about this post more. And get along famously with all people! Love it or hate it, Friends was a cultural phenomenon back when it first aired on TV, and its still hugely popular today. Additionally, it doesn't feel like a strategy or a "move", more like I'm just being more of myself and people like me more for it. Fixing that which is broken. That was the first time my daughter had a friend over, says Lexis father, Jay Spindel. I had friends, people I liked, people I spent time with, whose company I genuinely enjoyed. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? But this is difficult to manage because vulnerability, by definition, is hard. And, empirically, Ive found this really useful to practice. Sometimes we want to push people away., We just listened to Garden of Your Mind by Mr. Rogers for hours. This might seem daft but it's a biological possibility, that there is a friendship-mechanism which allows only mostly "organic" encounters (because there is value in a network of peers which is organized differently than in a direct-interests metric). For me, a key is creating clear and explicit common knowledge that we both value this friendship and are invested in it. I think this is one of the most valuable skills anyone can learn, and one I cherish, though I am far from perfect at it. Further, Ive managed to add a lot of value to their lives. Excellent post! The worse case is when you start doing something that seems like building a deeper connection, and gradually you find yourself in some twisted mind game with no easy way out (kind of similar to joining a cult). Anyway, I may as well put down what I'm looking for: Does this friend reach out to me? is an incredibly noisy signal for how much they like you, and I consider it to convey approximately no information. And Lexi and Actionplay veteran Adelaide DeSole, 21, spent a long afternoon at the Spindels apartment over the holiday season. And an autistic adult who avoids eye contact may simply be trying to avoid overstimulation or to focus more intently on the conversation. What do you guys think? It wasnt that I knew how to form close friends but was too anxious to try, rather, try to form close friendships was a non-standard action, something that never even crossed my mind. A point Ive made throughout is that this is a skill. Whats the best way to get to know you as a person? These are all things you can practice, experiment, iterate and get better at. Another key lesson is that closeness isnt just about spending a lot of time being friends - intentional, authentic, 1-1 time together makes a big difference. They have a partner, and they're engaged. Pay attention to their interests, experiment, and take social initiative! In general, obsessive people are characterized by being very demanding both with themselves and with others. Any spare unconscious moment, I'm thinking about them, I just really want to stop it as I know it's not healthy. Before seeing this I was just thinking about why I didn't have any close friends of the sort I wanted, and I figured the reason is that I need someone who is mostly like me, and such people are extraordinarily rare one in a million, I guessed. "I couldn't imagine finding a better man than you.". The Friend Who Gaslights You If your compadre constantly implies that everything's your fault in a friendship, it might be time to call gaslighting what it is and bounce. A key mindset I use when forming connections via conversation is: If we arent both excited about this conversation, do something differently. I've often felt that I was born on the wrong planet but one look at me and you can see, I'm the most human darned alien you ever saw. Sometimes I feel trapped in a boring conversation direction because the structure of small talk feels hard to break out of. Why havent you told them yet? Staying home and bitching to someone youve known for 8+ years > respectfully asking people about their siblings and hometowns. With new friends, you have to pretend you love everyone! My colleagues surveyed a few thousand of the world's wealthiest people, asking how much . But as they entered high school, the other friend pulled away, apparently out of embarrassment over some of Massinas behavior. Most of them have their phones out. I can't entirely put my finger on it, but it was something about the level of introspection, the use of the word "optimise" and level of enthusiasm highlighted by the exclamation points that made me feel that way. I also like Spencer Greenberg's Life-Changing Questions and Askhole (again, most of these are unsuitable, but there are some gems in there). So I decided to fix this. But all of this is conjecture - I don't have good data! Also, not all people want deep relationships. I like to ask questions that invite a vulnerable response, but to give the person an out, some kind of reasonable excuse they could use to deflect without losing face. But it's hard to compare small probabilities of very bad or very good outcomes to each other, and maybe the opposite trade-off is correct for other people? "Just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking of you right now.". At a long table inside a delicatessen in midtown Manhattan, a group of young people sit together over sandwiches and salads. But I find it very worthwhile to practice. A mindset I find helpful is reframing it all as providing a public good. Exercise: Make a list of your good friends. The members share a group text in which they call themselves the Wrecking Crew. According to Dr. Avery, some of the tenets of hygge, particularly socializing, could help someone coping with the blues. I wrote this a year and a half ago, about an experiment I ran 4 years ago, and given all that, this holds up pretty well. At least, they'll be polite. I've always been a bit of a reclusive guy (big surprise given that I'm on LW, I know) and the two main people I've tried to be more open and emotionally honest with this month have responded very positively. Btw, if anyone is looking for more fun questions, School of Life has some card decks designed for introspection and getting to know each other. Tell your partner something that you like about them already. The ideas in this post are all specialised to my tastes, and my experiences. Thanks for collecting those! You dont have to explain anything to anybody, she says. When you referenced yourself by name it clicked! I'm in a new friendship with a married woman who has admitted to me she wishes she had more friends, but due to busyness/lifestyle and marriage dynamics that limit how much she interacts with members of the opposite sex, she probably can't be the one to initiate that often. Imagine you met someone at a party, they thought you were cool, and messaged you afterwards asking to meet up again. Ah, I didn't notice the paywall. Have you experienced a similar phenomena, and regardless, do you have any sugestions on how to proceed? This means taking a genuine interest in what were talking about - and if I cant take a genuine interest, then I am doing something wrong. (The other girls mother reportedly told Massinas mother that her daughter has to think about her reputation.) Massina, who also has depression, was crushed and struggled to get past the rejection. I dont know about you, but Id find that pretty flattering. And empirically, this picture is often totally off - some people think I want them to act normally, but are open to a much wider range of conversational styles if I initiate it. . Limerence is a term that describes an infatuation or obsession with another person. Because we are social creatures it goes against our programing meh I think this mindset is absolutely crazy. I really like asking questions, and will often weave these questions into a conversation if appropriate. Not realising I could make close friends was a failure of agency, an unknown-unknown that cut out a massive amount of potential happiness, without even realising it. I believe that it's really rooted in poor self-esteem. 15. Nobody will stop you, or solve this for you. What needs are you fulfilling in each others lives? For example, in a 2016 meta-analysis of 18 studies including 1,768 autistic children aged 8 to 12 years, Lerner and his colleagues showed that the majority of the children reported having a friend. Its great to start liking a few new people, but then when they trot out an entirely new entourage of 15 people, it makes your head spin. In fact, autistic children tend to be lonelier than their neurotypical peers, according to a study published in 2000.