Are my standards for friendship too high?

April 14, 2009 2:56 PM

Are my standards for friendship too high? I have a friend who seems to constantly, deliberately avoid hanging out with me, but was upset to learn I'd distanced myself from her as well.

A year ago, I met a friend on Twitter who ended up coming to live in my area. We have a lot of mutual friends, and we all generally hang out in a big group. Since moving here, she seemed increasingly less interested in hanging out with me personally, and we haven't hung out once individually since last September. I was hurt, of course, but hey, you can't be good friends with everyone. So I continued to invite her to group events, but stopped trying to make any kind of personal connection. Our interactions lately have been the occasional friendly IM message or group dinner, but that's about it.

The internet is a bad place to try to distance yourself emotionally from a hurtful situation, of course. I unsubscribed to her Twitter account a month or so ago, after continually reading about her hanging out with everybody BUT me. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes it seemed like bad timing, but a lot of the time it was her blatantly ignoring my invitations in favor of hanging out with other folks. I knew it was a little aggressive to remove her from my twitter list, but I was feeling hurt or upset with virtually every update she posted--there's only so many times you can be ignored or before it gets to you.

But as I said, I otherwise gave this one up as a loss--I'd complain to my mom about how hurt I was, but I didn't mention anything to the group, or to her, as I didn't want things to be awkward. Besides, publicly complaining about how somebody doesn't want to be your friend is sort of pathetic, IMHO. I don't want to be friends with people who don't want to be my friends, so I took it as a mutual, socially acceptable un-friending.

What's weird is her reaction when she noticed that I'd removed her from my Twitter followers list. She was upset! She seemed genuinely confused that I'd remove her, and when I pointed out that we hadn't hung out in months, she chalked it up to timing and "friends moving apart". We weren't great friends to begin with, but at this point, we have way more friends in common than we did when she first moved here. It makes no sense at all that we'd see each other *less* unless she was deliberately avoiding me. There's been no change in jobs, relationships, careers, school, or locations, which are generally the things that have led to a natural regression of friendship in my previous relationships. Don't get me wrong: I have a lot of friends that I'm not as close to as I once was, but it's generally always related to a change in situation, and we're still as fond of each other as ever.

So that's the backstory, and I still think I'm in the right to assume when somebody turns down thirty or forty invitations to hang out over a period of six months, they probably don't want to be your friend. But her reaction genuinely surprised me. What say you, folks? Are my standards for friendship too high?

posted by anonymous to human relations (25 comments total)

Sounds like she has the unreasonable standards, not you.

That being said, defriending people on Twitter (or delisting them or whatever) never goes over too well I guess.
posted by ian1977 at 3:03 PM on April 14

Eh, she's upset that you hurt her internet popularity rankings, not that you don't consider her a friend. Your standards for friendship, which seem to be "occasionally make time/express occasional active interest" are pretty evenhanded. I differentiate active interest as being making/returning phone calls, responding to or issuing invitations, etc, versus the passive interest of following someone on Twitter or Facebook. Let it go, don't engage the drama, and be friendly at the parties thrown by mutual friends.
posted by amelioration at 3:03 PM on April 14 [6 favorites]

1. People are very often too lazy or self-centered to put even minimal work into their friendships.

2. People like to think of themselves as good, thoughtful people, people you would love to have as a friend. This is true no matter how bad of a friend they actually are.

3. When 1 results in something that chips away at 2, they are hurt, because they couldn't possibly be a bad friend--after all, they're good, thoughtful people, people you would love to have as a friend!

It's not you, it's her.
posted by nasreddin at 3:06 PM on April 14 [12 favorites]

I'm coming from a place where I manage a lot of social anxiety. If I have to delist someone on Twitter or defriend them on Facebook to preserve my own mental health, then I will absolutely do it, even if it's at the expense of their own e-peen. My first responsibility is to myself. The part of your post that really pinged for me was:

I was feeling hurt or upset with virtually every update she posted--there's only so many times you can be ignored or before it gets to you.

I suspect you're over-thinking her motives a little bit, but that's beside the point. You didn't want to follow her Twitter feed because it made you feel bad, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Of course, I've never been the kind of person to get upset when people un-friend me, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
posted by muddgirl at 3:09 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Yeah, there's really no reason why you should be required to watch her talk about the stuff she's doing with other people when it (accidentally or otherwise) is painful or uncomfortable for you to do so. I doubt there's really any way you could explain this to her, but don't feel bad about feeling bad.
posted by notquitemaryann at 3:15 PM on April 14

Based on my experience, being "friends" with a person on a social networking website is very different than being friends with him or her in real life. Just think of people with over 500 friends on Facebook and/or MySpace—surely they do not know and maintain friendships with all of those people! This person you defriended seems to think that friendship is simply being on each other's friends list, whereas you are looking for something a little more fulfilling. I agree with the other people who have said that it's not you, it's her.
posted by Houyhnhnm at 3:16 PM on April 14

Well, if you're "moving apart", one of the symptoms might be the twitter feed. If she also says you're moving apart, it doesn't seem like she really wants to be your real life friend anymore either. You can say that your twitter feed was too busy and you just did a general prune, or you can add her back and stop inviting her anywhere so at least you don't see what she's doing in preference to your invitations just to avoid a fight. (If it will make you upset to read her updates just in general, of course, then just don't re-add her. Either solution might be useful.) You can also readd her and use a greasemonkey script to just hide all her tweets.

You did nothing wrong in removing her from your friend list. I only suggest the solutions where you add her back if you would like to avoid possible drama because you share a social group. If you'd just like to nod and say "yeah, I guess we're growing apart so I removed you" and end it there, go on.
posted by jeather at 3:17 PM on April 14

I had someone I barely spoke to after 2 years IM me because I defriended her from LJ. She guilt tripped me into adding her back and I've had to hear about her doctor's appointments during her second pregnancy and things that should not be shared to anyone especially over the interwebs.

I feel for you. It's her.
posted by spec80 at 3:18 PM on April 14

You have more friends in common now because she's made more friends in the area after moving from out of town. So she's now splitting her time between more people. While it might suck, it's entirely natural that the two of you might move apart. You were an initial crutch, the first person she knew in a foreign environment. Even if the two of you were really close friends, that was destined to wane as she settled into her new environment and made other friends.

You didn't take the passive stance of not caring and letting her fade out. By de-friending her, you made the 'friend break-up' official. You made it clear that you are very hurt by her actions and don't want to be associated with her anymore, even through a very passive way of following her twitter. You've essentially "publicly complain[ed] about how somebody doesn't want to be your friend" which you think "is sort of pathetic".

If you didn't want to have the discussion with her about how she still felt you were acquaintances while you've dismissed her entirely, you shouldn't have done anything. It's a perfectly reasonable conversation for adults to have. If you don't want to follow her Twitter, and you don't want to be her friend, that's fine. But expect that there's every chance of there being a confrontation about it. It doesn't sound like she's being unreasonable, it just sounds like she saw things in a different light and was hurt.
posted by politikitty at 3:35 PM on April 14

I have a person I've known for years, but haven't talked to in at least a couple of years. She lives in another state; we weren't good friends before that happened, but now it's like we don't know each other exist.

One day I notice we're friends in Facebook, so I remove her. I immediately get a mail -- the first in as long as I can remember -- saying "why did you unfriend me? what did I do? you made me feel bad."

So yeah, it's her.
posted by davejay at 3:35 PM on April 14

Some people want to "have friends" but aren't really interested in "being friends." It sucks, but it is true. Sounds like this person is one of those folks. I'd say your standards are fine, as is the mature way you handled yourself.
posted by wholebroad at 3:36 PM on April 14 [8 favorites]

She is an example of todays "frienships" where popularity is based on how many "friends" one has on Facebook, Myspace, or in your case Twitter, rather than honest to goodness face-to-face interaction.
Delphi's "Know thyself" is rapidly becoming "Show thyself"
Not your bad.
posted by Acacia at 4:02 PM on April 14

Uh yeah, Nietzsche is not the go-to guy on female relations.

I say you did nothing wrong. You are not obligated to stay Twitter friends with her unless you want to. You aren't really friends in real life, so why should you really care what she does with other people if that's all she twitters about?
posted by fructose at 4:15 PM on April 14

I've had friends stop following me on Twitter but that's mostly because I post often and sometimes on things that are of zero interest to her. I was bothered at first but we still read each other's blogs so its no big whoop.

In your case, it isn't you, its her.
posted by fenriq at 4:18 PM on April 14

Hell no, your friendship standards aren't too high. These social networking sites can really sabotage people's real life relationships, whether it's a friendship or something more. But honestly, she sounds like she would have been a flaky friend even before the advent of such sites.
posted by medeine at 5:16 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]

In cases where a friend is snubbing you but doesn't know it, it only makes more sense to abandon them as subscribers, and move ahead with your life. There's no sense wasting your time getting upset at something she has no control over. It's harsh but sometimes things hit people broad-sided and they react. You didn't do anything someone else wouldn't do in the same situation. You were the one that started her out, and now this? She's being rude, even if she's having fun or doing things and not even thinking of you. That's the point, isn't it? It's clear it's her, and not you.
posted by luckypozzo at 5:52 PM on April 14

Also, some people are more interested in being online friends more than anything. I live fairly close to a long-time friend and while we don't click in meatspace, we get along famously on the Internet. Perhaps that is what she is most interested in--an online friendship.
posted by theraflu at 7:50 PM on April 14

she chalked it up to... "friends moving apart"

Sorry, but it sounds like she doesn't want to be your friend anymore, and that sucks. She does however seem like (due to the unresponded 40 invites over 6 months) she thinks she still has some sort of friendship power over you, hence, as I'm reading it, the faux shock she expressed. And that is not someone who you want to be your friend anyway. Friends treat each other with respect, and while your detwittering (god) her could be considered aggressive on her part, I think you did the right thing. No, I know you did the right thing.

From your post you sound young. Listen, I'm 35 and I still experience this kind of rudeness, and it is rudeness and discourtesy not sending a quick email to say you're unavailable when invited, among people who I think are my friends. By their choice they're slowly writing themselves out of my life. So be it. I'll still occasionally send an invite their way but only to include them in the crowd that I would normally hang around with. Those invites will lessen over time. And then there will be the awkward accidental moments when you meet when a mutual friend has invited you both out, where as mentioned above, you can be civil and then leave it and go off and enjoy the party and forget about her.

On another note, to try and put this whole social networking thing in perspective, I've never used twitter but I have been on Facebook for a while, and you know what I did? I removed all those people who hadn't sent me anything or posted something I liked or linked to any thing or groups I might be interested in for the last 6 months; I cut my friend list in half (yeah yeah, mum's still on but I had to chuck dad). And it felt great. Gasp! I even threw off my best mate, tho I don't think he'd particularly mind. My point being that Facebook isn't about the number friends I have on there, its about those friends on there I have that love the things I love and will invite me to those things and post things I like. I actually felt invigorated and not at all ashamed by my action.

And you know what? When I was out at a gig last week put on by a friend of mine who'd invited me whom I've only know for 3 months, when I explained to her friends how I got rid of a load of FB friends, they were like What? Seriously?, and I made some good hookups that night with people who thought I was weird, some of whom might even become good friends.

Your standards of friendship are fine. Don't be discouraged by this one flaky friend. Don't be ashamed that you don't want to be her friend anymore. Actively cultivate the quality ones you have around you and you'll pull more amazing people your way, some of whom will end up friends with you, some not. Friendship's can be very wonderful and joyous and fun, sometimes they're just confusing and heartbreaking. I'm still working it out, still aiming for the former.

All the best.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 7:51 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Oh the off chance that you want to try one last time to salvage the friendship, you could come totally clean- "I untwittered you because I felt like maybe you were avoiding me so I took it as a hint. But if you're saying I misread you, well shucks, I still think you're cool, and I've missed hanging out with you, so if you wanna get together I'm totally up for it, here's my number and I'm free Wednesday and Thursday this week, wanna go for a beer?"

That said, though, from what you've written, she's the dink, you're reasonable.
posted by twistofrhyme at 7:58 PM on April 14 [2 favorites]

I think if you never hang out, it's kind of unreasonable for her to get upset at you for defriending you. Or rather, I could sort of understand why she might be upset anyway, but she should know better than to take it out on you.
posted by Nattie at 8:09 PM on April 14

You un-followed her because you no longer wanted to see the things she was posting.

Sorry, politikitty, but what?? That's not "publicly complaining." There's no "Anonymous has stopped following BadFriend" announcement. It would be pathetic to keep her on your list because you didn't want to hurt her feelings. You can't let her "fade out" if she's on your Twitter feed. This girl is basically doing what you were too mature to do. She, by her own admission, stopped being your friend (in real life), and you let it go. Since you no longer wanted to see her Twitter posts because you didn't like them, they were boring, they hurt you, whatever/it doesn't matter, you stopped being her friend (in fake life). She complained to you about it.

If "what should you say to her" is still an issue, just say that she's right, you two did grow apart, and you just have so much going on in your Twitter feed that you needed to do some pruning, and her posts just weren't really relevant to you anymore since you don't hang out (this is meant to be said without bitterness).
posted by thebazilist at 9:30 PM on April 14

*sigh*

Unless you make it really clear that you're 'pruning your friends list' etc, etc - in my experience, people take a 'de-friending' as a sign that you actually & actively *dislike* someone, and no longer even want to be an aquaintaince. They add everyone and their mother's dog to facebook, lj etc, so why would you be defriending them except if you really dislike them? And of course, want to know why...

In this sort of social mileu, to avoid drama-lama, either:
a) Post a notice saying you're pruning your friends list, before unfriending
b) On LJ, there's a 'custom friends-list' filter option. As far as I can tell, a feature implemented for EXACTLY this situation, it's so you can select a subsection of your friends list who's messages you actually want to read (so no Dr visit posts if you don't want to read them etc).

I don't read LJ very often. I only have about 6 friends I read semi-often out of over 10 times that many, and of those, they are very close friends and/or have a low posting rate.
I wish there was some kind of posting-tags I could filter by, so I'd still hear about events etc, but oh well.
posted by Elysum at 11:31 PM on April 14

Flaky friends are never a good thing, and I concur with most of what's been posted here, but:

I can't tell where your area is, but if it's big and urban and excessively multicultural like mine, this kind of thing is a lot more common than it seems it should be. I'm in Beijing, and there are 18 million people stewing around this huge metropolis, a lot of them very busy, a lot of them working in jobs that require odd hours. And so many of them coming and going at any given time that you can never accurately predict where they're going to be or even if they're still here! All of this contributes to an epidemic of flakiness unheard of in my old area of 60,000, where, really, if you didn't go see your friends, what were you gonna do?

After a couple uncomfortable confrontations early on, I discovered that no, not really, they aren't avoiding me. There's so much going on in this city that you get 6 invitations a day. People get inundated with events, and commit to none until the last minute. Come play poker! Come to the White Party! Come see this punk band! Come to slam night! Come shopping for ball bearings with me! ... Good christ.

I've given up on group invites. Now, I have a spur of the moment idea, call the people in my phonebook most likely to be down, and extend personal invitations for right now. It could be that your friend has fallen into the same patterns, it could be that this person has been really busy, or it could be that in the era of facebook and twitter and flash mobs, fewer and fewer people feel the need to personally alert you because they think you should just watch their feed and adjust your plans accordingly. Who knows? But there are any number of structural reasons that I'd assume are more likely that her just avoiding you.
posted by saysthis at 2:24 AM on April 15

After a couple uncomfortable confrontations early on, I discovered that no, not really, they aren't avoiding me. There's so much going on in this city that you get 6 invitations a day. People get inundated with events, and commit to none until the last minute.

No, they're waiting to see if a better offer comes up. Still rude.

OP, your standards aren't too high at all. You took her off because you didn't care to follow her feed when you never actually had any invitations returned or reciprocated.

Sadly, I've seen how easily people seem to share politkitty's views "you defriended me! you don't want to be associated with me at all! waah!" without actually checking to see if any of these assumptions are valid.
posted by canine epigram at 10:25 AM on April 15

I'm not saying that it's my view. I'm saying that it's a valid view.

Anonymous didn't stop following Friend X because she didn't care. They stopped following her because it was causing pain to see Friend X have a social life. They obviously has no problem following Random Strangers on Twitter, since that's how Anonymous met Friend X in the first place.

It's not a matter that Anonymous only wants to follow Close Friends via Twitter. It's a matter that they actively dislike following Friend X enough that we needed to cut off communication.

They now have a number of mutual friends, and un-following Friend X is going to be a known thing. Not just to Friend X, who we might not give a rats ass about, but the entire social group. A "Did I piss you off?" conversation is totally warranted.

If Anonymous doesn't want to be friends with Friend X that's totally cool. But if they're seriously going to be sharing the same social circle, and Anonymous wanted to quietly stop being friends with Friend X, this was a socially retarded way to do it. Instead the de-friending brought attention to the situation and it ended in a confrontation that just about anyone and their dog should have seen coming.

It wasn't even a bad confrontation. It wasn't like tires were slashed or names were called or anything. Just a conversation about "I thought we just grew apart". There are worst things that happen. She's not that into you, it happens, go find other friends.
posted by politikitty at 8:33 PM on April 15 [1 favorite]