best friend with AVPD

Hello, my best friend of 1 year and 2 months has avdp (I guess) and I struggle to maintain a close relationship with her. She’s a very interesting person, very cultivated, smart, a great job, a world-traveller, but she’s lonely, is not married, had no boyfriend since years, has few friends that doesn’t meet often. I’m a little bit of an exception in her life, as we talk to each other almost every day, through Whatsapp, as we live in 2 different countries (we know each other in real life too). But honestly, I am the one who initiates most conversations, I am the motor of the friendship. I am also the one that discloses information, that talks about feelings, introduces topics, I tell her almost everything that happens to me, and she’s a great listener, and gives great advices.

Unfortunately, when it comes to her, she needs to be constantly pushed to speak, I have to ask her lots of questions as she doesn’t say much spontaneously, and never shows vulnerability nor deep feelings. Despite this, I've been close to her all the time, never let her down, never reproached her anything. I’ve told her many times that she’s my best friend and that I deeply care about her, but she only replies: that’s great, or thank you. Few times she told me that our friendship is very important to her, and it was all I got.

When we get too close, or talk for several days in a row, she suddenly disappears for some days, doesn’t answer messages, and then comes back. Once she told me that it was exhausting for her to answer my questions or talk a lot. Of course, for me it’s difficult to just wait in silence while she withdraws, or to accept her “I don’t know” answers, when she doesn’t feel like talking. Her behavior creates a lot of insecurity in me, as I fear she could walk away and never comes back, and also because I fear she doesn't care too much about me.

My questions to all of you would be: how can I maintain a close and meaningful relationship with her? So far, I kind of managed to balance her need for distance and independence with my need for closeness and intimacy, but it came at a great cost for me, as I always have to walk on egg shells, and I'm not sure I'm getting as much as I'm giving. It’s exhausting for me, in the long run.

Any advice from you guys would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

I can see this from both sides. My (one and only) friend is also an Avoidant. I would like to be much closer to him but he finds it too difficult. It's not necessarily that he doesn't want to be closer to me, at times he does. But it's too scary for him to go there. It makes him panic and feel all sorts of awful feelings. He then draws away from me and sometimes disappears. He's not out having fun and forgetting about me, he's stuck inside his head, frozen and unable to reach out. He has similar behaviours to your friend - it's hard to get information out of him sometimes, he hates to talk about his feelings and when I try to show him affection (he's a long distance friend so this is all via instant chat) he doesn't show it back and says things like "that's weird but thanks for the sentiment". He can appear very cold, although he's not really a cold person. So I completely understand how you feel.

But I'm an Avoidant too, so I also understand how your friend feels. She needs a LOT of time to herself to recharge after being at work or in some other social situation. Conversations can be draining, especially if you already said a lot to that person the day before. It starts to feel invasive and, for me, triggers a state of high alert so it's not relaxing at all, it's very stressful.

I think your friend does like you because she comes back to you. So I think she does want to be your friend. She is feeling pressured though so I think you need to contact her less often. I know that's not what you want to hear and you'll find the idea upsetting. But with less pressure she will be more relaxed and more likely to contact you first. This worked for my friend, I stopped being overbearing with him and after a while he came back to me and we have been getting on much better. We don't talk as often or for as long as we used to but he is more active when we do talk and it's made me less insecure because now I trust him to come back to me.

Thank you very much for your answer. Reading what you wrote made me think that i'm almost "lucky" that she didn't walk away yet! I mean: she has her days off where she doesn't want to talk or gives cold answers but it never lasts too long.

I have thought about giving her more space and contacting her less often, but I'm afraid to transform myself into one of her so-called friends that talk to her once a month and add little value to her life. The big difference between me and her other friends is that I'm always there, by her side, I check on her almost every day. So my problem is how can I have a close relationship with her without her feeling overwhelmed or me feeling ignored, how to keep close and warm, but not threatening to her.

It is completely inappropriate for you to "diagnose" your friend. How would you feel if she was doing the same of you? Labeling you codependent or something because you need to talk to her all the time? And actually your description isn't avoidant at all, but rather someone who just doesn't want to talk to you as much as you'd like. What you describe is someone who either is introverted or she just isn't that into you.

The thing to remember is, you don't get to call all the shots. You don't get to decide, this is how much interaction we should have, and she should be required to meet your requirements. Your way is not automatically the best way.

What you need to decide is, is this friendship working for you or not? If you want more than she can give you, then you want a different person in your life. That's all there is to it. If you want her to change in order to make the friendship comfortable for you, then it's not working for you. The choices are, accept what she can give you without expectations that it will ever be more than that, or drop the friendship.

Hello.

I think that the definition of "meaningful relationship" can vary a lot from people to people, I find. It can be difficult when you want to reach out and be close to someone but they have a different idea in mind.

Being there for someone works differently depending on who you're dealing with too. The problem when there's a dissonance on that level is the fear of inadequacy or someone feeling like they're left to the side.

You can try to figure out how to best be with your friend. Maybe they need to get to you on their own. If they trust you with a lot of personal stuff, then you can be pretty sure that they do consider you as a friend, at the very least. However, there are some people that won't have the same need for you to find someone to be close to, like a lovebird. Others are like lone wolves.

Be mindful of what others might need when it comes to connections. The best you can do is try to be excellent to others and, in their own way, if you find good people, they will do their best to be excellent to you.