/hikki/ - NEET / Advice

TJ: My other neighborhood friend. He lived in the house behind mine and was much younger. His family was super christian and constantly talked/yelled about god to each other. TJ just soaked it in. When I went to his house, we would always do the same thing. We would play with legos mainly, but TJ also had a weird obsession with eavesdropping on our sisters. Baseball played on their tv in the background 24/7. After moving, I went to his house one more time. He didn't care about legos anymore. The entire time he was totally absorbed in his game boy. I was made to just sit quietly and watch him go at it. His parents got a divorce later and I was a bit happy about it.

The five: In my first district, I always just imitated tv-characters in a general sense, which other students liked and thought was funny. In my new district, the kids had a different sense of humor. I immediately made a bad impression that would stick for the rest of middle school. Somehow I became part of a five person friend group. I could tell that none of them actually liked me. A vague, amorphous blob of people. One of them planned to have a sleep over during summer and either they forgot about it, or I wasn't invited. When I talked with the one I knew best on the phone a few years later, I found out that one of them consistently made attempts at killing me. Whenever I passed that person in the hall, they would always completely pretend that they have never met me, even during the one time I said hi. I just thought is was strange and going overboard.

Michael 3: My only black friend. He was obsessed with sonic and overly energetic all the time. He's the only one to come to my new house more than once. Every time he visited, he wouldn't be able to sit still for more than three minutes. Forget about watching a movie. After I broke something cheap in the house around the end of the school year, I pinned it on Michael. That was the last straw for my parents and they told me that they didn't want him around the house anymore. I tried to explain this to him in a way that wouldn't offend him, so I told him that he just had too much energy. He was just too fast for us. He took it a bit worse than I thought and looked like a wounded animal or something. I don't know where he went or what happened to him, but I never saw him again.

Adam: This is the point where the real pattern starting showing itself more. At this point I was wondering why it seemed everybody around me seemed to perpetually be drifting away. That's when I met Adam. We sat together at lunch and for the most part had the same interests. I'd consistently talk to him on the phone and he went to my house one time to study for a test. For one and half years that was how things went. Eventually it started happening though. He started sitting with me less and less. I stopped talking to him on the phone. I didn't know why it was happening. On the last day we sat together, he left mid way after telling me he'd see me later. I had a strong hunch that his other friends were getting annoyed by him sitting near me and not them. That amorphous blob wanted to suck him back in and he went along with it. After our relationship practically totally fizzled out already, he invited me to his bar mitzvah. I went and didn't get to say more than a word to him the whole time. In High School though he became a total fedora fag. He literally went around the school in a trench coat and didn't shave at all. Gained a lot of weight too. We had nothing in common anymore since I completely changed and he was just the same more or less. In a way, I was glad our relationship imploded. Some man he turned out be.

Michael 4: Michael 4 sat with me on the bus just like the first. I guess that's kind of like going in full circle. Our relationship though extended only to the bus however. At this point, my negative impression of friendships was already starting to ferment and change into some kind of conclusive statement. We talked and we played chess once, but he mostly just stared at his phone and played little games. I was a lazy student, so I mostly just scrambled to finish my homework. I tried though. I payed attention to him whenever he wanted me to look at his game, and I made an effort to seem interested. He even went as far as to call me a good friend one time because I never made fun of him for his ADHD. I didn't even notice he had it before. Towards the middle of the year though, he started talking to another Asian student in the seat across. They had a lot in common. Despite both being smart, they had weirdly juvenile taste. They went on and on about sponge bob and all of that other annoying shit. Every real conversation I had with Michael was engaging and horizon expanding, but he preferred to drone on and on with the other kid. I had a dream around this point about going back to the past and meeting Michael when we were still close at a festival. We had a good time going around and enjoying the mood…
One day I went on the bus and saw that the other Asian kid was in my seat. I got pissed off about it and both of them wrote me off and told me to sit in the empty seat. After a couple days of this they gave in and things were back to normal. Except, Michael was ignoring me even more now. After months of this I was on the verge of tearing up over it one day and for the first time Michael seemed to have some slight concern for me. I didn't get how he couldn't figure out why I was upset. I didn't get how he could be so blind to other people's emotions and thoughts. I had too much pride to spell it out for him and just told him I was fine. Michael eventually moved to the other seat. The next year, before the bus seats were set in stone, I happened to sit down in the seat across from Michael and that other kid. I overheard Michael saying something along the lines of, "It's like we're cursed to sit next to Anon". At that point, a remark like that just rolled off me like water, but it did solidify my opinion of Michael. I tried talking to him every so often about tests and stuff after getting off the bus since we were neighbors and he always politely responded, but when our classes diverged more this also fizzled out. It became obvious to me that Michael got bored with me. The entertainment and validation of people that made fun of him offered more to him than I ever could.

John and Andrew: By my freshman year I understood that any relationship I would make would inevitably end. I figured out that that was just how people operate, so I decided not to put in any unnecessary effort for anybody. I perfectly fine and comfortable with talking during small chit-chat or if I needed something, but I never went out of my way to try to start a conversation. At most I had class specific acquaintances. The only notable of the two being John and Andrew. The three of us sat next to each other in Physics (our last period), which is given freshman year in my district. John was a Junior from another district, Andrew was a freshman and a bit dumb, both were way taller than me. After a few classes they started being weirdly affectionate to me. It was off-putting, but I didn't want to be rude so I didn't say anything about it. The thing about that physics class was that is was taught by the worst teacher in the entire school. She was a slutty, thrice married, fifty something year old who was obsessed with cheer leading and knew nothing about physics. God knows how she got tenure. The way she structured class was also the most horrible way that it could be done. Constant, tedious white boarding that took the entire class. John, who was normally cool as a cucumber and totally collected, did especially bad in the class and occasionally started muttering obscenities about her. The horrid, oppressive atmosphere created by this honors course being taught by an airhead actually made everybody in the class bond a little over our collective plight. I didn't know how genuine John and Andrew were being, but I started warming up to them and appreciating their attention. I didn't know how to express my feelings, but I did start talking to them more casually. I once overheard them talking about how Andrew was going to a party and John warning him not to drink a lot. They realized that I was in earshot and asked me not tell anybody. I made a joke out of pretending to not know what they were talking about and they thought it was pretty funny. I was fully aware of how our relationship would end, but I couldn't help but love the way they greeted me back after I left the classroom for something or how they gave me pet names.
The end of the year started closing in again and a feeling of dread started coming over me. Everybody else in the class talked excitedly about having one less year and how great that is. I felt the same dismay that I did with Michael IV. What was so great about finishing up their school years? What were they looking forward to? How don't they see what I see? Death. Death of one of the last remaining years. The last day arrived. John and Andrew hugged me and talked about how I was the saddest kid in school. I didn't care anymore, I was glad to be there. Even as the last minute ticked and the bell rang, we walked together down the stairs and practically to the door. Andrew tried to give me some kind of encouragement about enjoying life and working out, and that was it. Summer came and bleached the world white again. I passed John a total of one time in the hallway the next year. I thought about emailing him before he graduated, but ended up not doing it. I talked to Andrew a little over the next three years.

The main thing that got to me was the predictability and repetitiveness. I always knew how it was going to go with people. My sister had a far better social life than me, but she fluidly went through the process with no problem. She would constantly go from one friend group and best friend to another over the course of her school life. She would even rotate them. She always acted like her friends were so important to her and she would go out of her way and inconvenience our parents constantly to spend more time with them. Then she would move on. She refused to acknowledge this whenever I pointed it out. She adopted all of her friends interests, she shifted herself like a chameleon. For what? Fun. That's it. From what I've seen, people use each other like objects as a means to pass time and feel like they're a worthwhile person. Hanging out with somebody else is entertaining and if somebody wants to hang out with you, you must be doing something right. You can see how people project these two desires onto other people from how they see the inverse. People use not having any friends as an insult. This notion of needing other people to validate your existence permeates through all of culture. Social media is the best example of how powerful this effect is. I was too dull and quiet to entertain anybody for long. Too dull to give your cellphone number to. To dull to stick around with. I was thrown out like a used tissue. I'm not making this thread because i'm bitter towards one person, i'm making it see if anybody else can see what I see. I'd like to hear about any similar experiences.

>>4831
>She would constantly go from one friend group and best friend to another over the course of her school life. She would even rotate them. She always acted like her friends were so important to her and she would go out of her way and inconvenience our parents constantly to spend more time with them. Then she would move on. She refused to acknowledge this whenever I pointed it out. She adopted all of her friends interests, she shifted herself like a chameleon. For what? Fun. That's it.
You pretty much figured it out, the truth is friendship is actually a really selfish thing (and I'm not saying this in a bad way) because it's something someone does for himself and not for his friends, people hang out with each other in order to get that rush from being validated by someone else because psychologically our personalities (or our "selves") cannot exist in a vaccuum, they can only exist when there are other people who act as mirrors to reflect our "selves" back at us, this is why it's said that who you are is a combination of the 5 people close to you.

>From what I've seen, people use each other like objects as a means to pass time and feel like they're a worthwhile person. Hanging out with somebody else is entertaining and if somebody wants to hang out with you, you must be doing something right.
>I was too dull and quiet to entertain anybody for long. Too dull to give your cellphone number to. To dull to stick around with.
The main underlying concept of social interaction is that you have to bring something to the table in order to receive something from someone else. Eg: by being dull, you don't get responses from people, and by being interesting you get better responses. It's a lot like imageboards, we post because we want a response from someone, to be validated and to reflect what we said back at us with their own take on it, we put effort into our posts because we don't want to be ignored. Women who don't get enough attention tend to do crazier and more desperate things for it, whereas guys usually just withdraw into their own inner worlds, or on imageboards, people spam and shitpost just to get some kind of response.

>>4862
Thanks for reading.
>our personalities (or our "selves") cannot exist in a vaccuum
I don't buy into that. Are you saying that people without close relationships have no character? People can't bounce off of themselves? I'm always thinking, and monologging, and going back and forth about ideas in my head. Just because people want a mirror that looks back at them, that doesn't mean they need one or five. What if there aren't five people like you? I didn't know anybody who was actually that similar to me. Dullness is a facade I put on because i'm opinionated and disagreeable, which puts most people off.
>by being interesting
Interesting doesn't fit the kind of social interaction that I usually see.
>we post because we want a response from someone, to be validated and to reflect what we said back at us with their own take on it
Yes and no. I don't post to validate my very existence like people do in real life and I don't do it to hear the same thing again. I'm interested in anything other people have to say, regardless of whether it fits my impressions or not. I also don't put effort into posts just for other people; I do it because I like to write and express my ideas in words.
I get it, I get why people work like this, but I hate it. I can't stand it. I'm not willing to, "put something on the table", just so some glutton can drain it down and demand more, elsewise they leave the dining room. I can't stand the callousness. I'm just waiting for robot companions. I want to compensate for lost time by having a relationship based in mutual, obsessive commitment and possession. I want somebody who will altruistically understand and love every inch of me. I'm not delusional enough to think a normal person could or should do that.

>>4864
>I don't buy into that.
I know it's unpleasant to hear, but it's something extensively documented in psychology. I get that most of us on boards like this try to adopt a "lone wolf" mentality where we tell ourselves that we are better off this way, but the fact is that we are seriously depressed while fighting the need for companionship, we just aren't hard-coded to be this individualistic, it has worse effects for our health than smoking.

>Are you saying that people without close relationships have no character?
Character and personality are very different things.

>People can't bounce off of themselves?
They need feedback from other people, if they don't get it, they try to create a feedback loop within themselves and socially masturbate by talking to themselves and having fake conversations with people in their minds as an attempt to simulate feedback from other people.

>What if there aren't five people like you?
I didn't say "like you", I said "close to you", ie. they left an impression on you.

>I get it, I get why people work like this, but I hate it. I can't stand it. I'm not willing to, "put something on the table", just so some glutton can drain it down and demand more, elsewise they leave the dining room. I can't stand the callousness. I'm just waiting for robot companions. I want to compensate for lost time by having a relationship based in mutual, obsessive commitment and possession. I want somebody who will altruistically understand and love every inch of me. I'm not delusional enough to think a normal person could or should do that.
Well, I don't know. I think putting something on the table and expecting someone to pay you back with the same amount of social investment is a fair deal. It would suck trying to be friends with someone, but that person just can't be arsed to hang out with you or play video games with you or watch anime with you or put in at least a minimum amount of effort to be a good friend.

If we use the table/food analogy again, it's like cooking good food for your friend because you like them and care for them, but they don't put any effort into cooking food for you despite wanting to keep you as a friend. That's kind of a rip off, you either break ties with the person or invest in them as little as they are investing in you.

This thread has been an interesting read so far.

>>4862
>Women who don't get enough attention tend to do crazier and more desperate things for it, whereas guys usually just withdraw into their own inner worlds, or on imageboards, people spam and shitpost just to get some kind of response.
Eh, I'd say there's plenty of male juvenile delinquents and the like unaware of imageboards going around doing crazy shit for attention in real life, just as there are milder, withdrawn women whose issues go unnoticed. Do we even have any actual concrete data regarding this?

>>4864
>I get it, I get why people work like this, but I hate it. I can't stand it. I'm not willing to, "put something on the table", just so some glutton can drain it down and demand more, elsewise they leave the dining room.

If you're not willing to offer something, it's just unfair to expect anything in return, especially "altruistic love" or "friendship" or whatever.

The anon above me explained this a little more coherently…

But just putting the stuff you've written into perspective:
The people in your life offered you their time and what they probably thought was a fun/interesting personality - something that you might or might not have actually considered gainful. I guess in return you offered an ear willing to listen, "interested in anything other people have to say, regardless of whether it fits your impressions or not", and your own time and personality, of course, but they didn't see any worth in it either. So they stop talking to you because you're boring or whatever, and instead of altruistically loving them despite them distancing themselves or acting like assholes, you cut the """friendship""" off. You left the dining room because you weren't being served well. Same thing from both sides.
In short, it seems immature and hypocritical to dislike this kind of "system" when you practice it yourself (thought it may be unconsciously/unwillingly).

>>4866
>Character and personality are very different things.
Could you elaborate on this a bit? I only have some blurry idea of what you could've meant by it…

>They need feedback from other people, if they don't get it, they try to create a feedback loop within themselves and socially masturbate by talking to themselves and having fake conversations with people in their minds as an attempt to simulate feedback from other people.
Well, shit. Not so much related to the topic of friendship, but I figure this is the reason why I'm always so reluctant to join discussions or express any kind of thought, even online; I just have endless conversations in my head and end them feeling like I've said everything that could've been said. Which shouldn't be true, considering my limited perspective. Suppose it's something I need to work on.

>>4867
>Eh, I'd say there's plenty of male juvenile delinquents and the like unaware of imageboards going around doing crazy shit for attention in real life, just as there are milder, withdrawn women whose issues go unnoticed.
This is true too, people are very different but women are generally more social than men.

>Do we even have any actual concrete data regarding this?
I don't have any statistics on this, just my own and others observations, it just becomes common sense when interacting with people, I guess it's what normalfags refer to as being "desperate".

>Could you elaborate on this a bit? I only have some blurry idea of what you could've meant by it…
The character (Greek for "inscription") is who a person is at their very core, it's someone's condensed habits and principles that make him who he is. The personality (Greek: "persona" - a "mask") is the outer layer we wear when socializing with others, so for example, if someone is really funny or has a really cool personality, it's because that personality is something that got refined and sharpened through constant interaction with other funny people, or other cool people. If someone is stubborn or honest or hard-working, it's a character trait, not a personality trait.

>Well, shit. Not so much related to the topic of friendship, but I figure this is the reason why I'm always so reluctant to join discussions or express any kind of thought, even online; I just have endless conversations in my head and end them feeling like I've said everything that could've been said. Which shouldn't be true, considering my limited perspective. Suppose it's something I need to work on.
You're right, these inner conversations are actually good to have, it's something your mind does to train for the real thing (the Tetris effect), but the problem with them is, as you mentioned, that you feel like you're right about what you said, but your argument might not fair well under real conditions.

There's two things I forgot to mention in the op. Whenever I tried talking about this to somebody older than me, they would always immediately write me off and start lecturing me about how I would eventually gravitate towards a group of people who were carbon copies of myself. It never happened.
Whenever you spend even a bit of time at a distance from a person, your relationship begins to fade. It doesn't matter if it's only been a few months, it will be like you never knew the person eventually. To me this never made sense. Time seemed so trivial. It felt like I was talking to that person yesterday, so why do they act like past events faded? What's with this reset? Don't people ever think about how fleeting their emotions are? Don't they ever realize that if their connections and emotional states are so fragile and blow away in the wind so easily, they were practically meaningless from the beginning? Why doesn't that meaninglessness bother anybody else?
>>4866
>it has worse effects for our health than smoking.
I definitely don't buy into that. Maybe close relationships are important to health, but I already do lots of unhealthy things on a regular basis. I'm not going to force myself.
>socially masturbate
That's a pretty negative way to describe inner-monologging. People should be thinking to themselves regardless of how much feedback they get from other people. It's not a bad thing. I don't really see how the necessity for outside input necessarily connects to consistent relationships. I don't think you need one for the other. Even a book can provide outside influence. You're still intaking new information that comes from another person.
>I didn't say "like you", I said "close to you", ie. they left an impression on you.
While the people around me did influence me, I don't think I am just the product, or even mostly the product of those people.
>That's kind of a rip off, you either break ties with the person or invest in them as little as they are investing in you.
That's what happened near every single time. What do you do then? It's not a fair deal if I have to bend over myself to keep people's attention. I don't want a, "deal".
>If you're not willing to offer something, it's just unfair to expect anything in return
I already said that I don't expect it from people. I'm waiting for something better than people.
>>4867
>of course, but they didn't see any worth in it either
Why do you say that I didn't see any worth? I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere. I was always there. They always had full access to me. Look at Adam again. How was that my fault? Even if I did do the exact same thing, how is it hypocritical? I don't like how people work in that regard. That can include myself as well.

>>4870

>Why do you say that I didn't see any worth?
I think you quoted the wrong section, but I said that you MIGHT or MIGHT NOT have seen the gain in what they "offered" you (so maybe both), referring to your experiences in general, not a particular one. I mean, I can't exactly know what these friendships really looked like, or what kind of relations with people you've had outside of them.

> I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere. I was always there. They always had full access to me. Look at Adam again. How was that my fault?
I think "fault" might be too strong of a word here. It's not about placing the blame on anyone. If the guy decided that you weren't a person he wanted to hang out with, the cause of that lies partly in your personality and partly in him perceiving you in a certain way and disliking it for whatever reason. And to go back slightly to the previous point, even if you most truly appreciated this person, and the others, it's possible that they didn't see it, whether it be because they were dense or because you didn't show it in some conventional way. Either way, there's not one single person to blame, and I'm not trying to imply that.

>Even if I did do the exact same thing, how is it hypocritical? I don't like how people work in that regard. That can include myself as well.
Yeah, you did say you're not so delusional to think that such people do/should exist, but I'd forgotten about it until seeing the line after having posted my response. Disliking this shit seems perfectly reasonable, it's just the "it's never MY fault that my friendships die" attitude that I find stupid, which I might have wrongly inferred from your posts. Sorry.

>>4870
>I definitely don't buy into that. Maybe close relationships are important to health, but I already do lots of unhealthy things on a regular basis. I'm not going to force myself.
https://www.ahsw.org.uk/userfiles/Research/Perspectives%20on%20Psychological%20Science-2015-Holt-Lunstad-227-37.pdf

>That's a pretty negative way to describe inner-monologging.
Well, I think it's the most truthful way to describe it, because that's essentially what it is.

>People should be thinking to themselves regardless of how much feedback they get from other people. It's not a bad thing.
You're right, it's not inherently a bad thing.

>I don't really see how the necessity for outside input necessarily connects to consistent relationships. I don't think you need one for the other. Even a book can provide outside influence. You're still intaking new information that comes from another person.
The fact is, you can tell yourself that that's how it is, but your brain still knows exactly what it wants, and if it wants deep and personal relationships with others then it will make you severely depressed, anxious and give you a mental hell until you get it what it wants - no matter how much you tell yourself that you can get everything you need from a book.

A book is quite simply not the same as socializing because it's not interactive, there's no back-and-forth exchange of ideas for both parties to affirm or challenge, imageboards, or writing letters or emails are things that more or less resemble socializing.

>That's what happened near every single time. What do you do then? It's not a fair deal if I have to bend over myself to keep people's attention. I don't want a, "deal".
You're asking to be able treat a relationship casually while getting total conviction from the other person, again, this isn't exactly what you'd call a mutual relationship, but I don't blame you, it's typical of people who feel like they were regularly wronged somehow by others, so they just start to invest less in people socially, but you have to remember, the other people you deal with also have to bend over, they also have to make an effort and they also might get hurt while doing so, it's not an easy thing even for them. It's like putting your hand out to someone to high-five and the person just ignores you, you know how embarrassing it is, right? But it's necessary for both parties to put themselves out there, potentially getting hurt in the process, in order to try to connect on some level, that's if you want to connect, and chances are, if you're depressed right now then you probably do.

Your hope is to find better people to socially invest in, as well as ways have ways to filter out assholes, don't make the mistake of becoming someone's best friend and giving them your all right off the bat, just do what you're doing right now and give people the exact same amount of social investment that they give you. If you don't want to interact with people at all anymore, then I don't know what else to say, this was just my advice for you, you can take it or leave it.

If you aren't familiar with what it is. Read up on the Hedgehog's dilemma, and also check out the research cited at the end of the article, lots of informative stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog%27s_dilemma

>>4873
Yeah, i'm fine with dying sooner. It's not worth it.
>You're asking to be able treat a relationship casually while getting total conviction from the other person
I already said twice that that's not what i'm asking for. I don't even know what you mean by treating a relationship casually. I don't make those kinds of distinctions. A relationship is just a relationship to me.
>the other people you deal with also have to bend over
How? How did I ever make people bend over for me? They say something to me, and I always listened and responded. That's it. Even if they didn't say anything to me, I would still opt to be around them. They could just be silent the whole time and I would be fine with that as long as they responded to me. Maybe i'd be confused.
>But it's necessary for both parties to put themselves out there
I never complained about how people establish relationships. Sure, you have to put yourself out there. My problem is with how you have to keep putting yourself out, and keep jingling keys in their face so they don't turn away. I think relationships should be binary and perpetual. Once it is created, unless there is some very good reason for it to end, it remains. Forever, and in the same state. That it what I want. I want somebody with no spines. I don't want to waste energy playing touch and go and getting pricked. I don't want to deal with that, even if it's detrimental to my health.

>>4831
>I was too dull and quiet to entertain anybody for long. Too dull to give your cellphone number to. To dull to stick around with. I was thrown out like a used tissue. I'm not making this thread because i'm bitter towards one person, i'm making it see if anybody else can see what I see. I'd like to hear about any similar experiences.
Thanks for relating your experiences, OP. I can see things like that too, but at the moment I do not want to type it all up. Too much thinking.

I really, really like the contents of this thread. That is all.

I found this whole thread to be extremely relatable. My friendships throughout my life have been very similar to yours, OP. Even if I spent hours talking to someone, at some point they would get bored of me and we'd just stop talking. If not that, then they end up hating me for whatever reason, they get sick of me, and I never usually find out what it is I did wrong. This has been a repeating cycle in my life. One of the best examples I can think of is a girl I knew from primary school messaged me on Facebook a few years back and we started talking again. We spoke for a month or so, before eventually she started giving me dismissive short responses, or just didn't respond at all. Then someone else I knew at the time messaged me about her, and showed me that she was now talking to him the same way she did to me. I simply stopped being entertaining to her and she latched onto the next guy who would give her attention. I don't understand how you can just drop someone from your life because you're bored with them, like they're a toy you don't want to play with anymore. I will never really understand neurotypicals and their sociopathic way of thinking.

>>4828
I enjoyed this thread a lot. It was really interesting and thought provoking to see you recap your friendships throughout your life. Makes me think about my own history of friendships and current ones.