Friendships

I get you on that.

My psychologist and I worked on that a bit last year. Every relationship has terms of agreement. You are friends because they get something out of you and you get something out of them. If what you seek out of friendship is entertainment that's perfectly fine. It develops overtime. I also try not to see people very often and that helps.

The other thing that I have found fascinating is that literally no relationship or interaction is the same. Each one is unique in its own way. And I find that incredibly special.

I’ve developed more recently in my life aesthetic appreciation for interaction and relationships. It’s fleeting and I often degenerate but I’m learning it can be something beautiful and worthwhile for its own sake without always a utilitarian logic.

Oscar Wilde charms me here. It’s Art of Conversation and interaction. I enjoy him for it. De Sade has a way of constructing relationship dynamics in a pretty way too, as did a couple of Russians. My de facto state of mind is absence when lacking a goal but when I give it a chance there is an autotelic experience to be had.

Bellicose wrote:I've thought about it for a bit.

I genuinely care and respect them as people. In the past it was not the same but currently things have gotten better.

My one friend with BPD is suicidal. She wants to kill herself at the end of the month. Before I would encourage it just to see if she would do it but now I don't want that. She is incredible and the world would not be the same without her.

Interesting that you've learned to do that. I play people, all of the time. It varies as to how much, but I can't help myself and find it happening without even realising I'm doing it.

I do it with everyone, not just friends. I used to do it with therapists (good practice), the police, teachers, partners, family members etc. I do it to my wife.

It does vary though, I do have a couple of friends that I only really play with by accident but, at the other end of the scale, there are those who I keep around specifically to f*ck with them. Toys that don't need charging.

One of the reasons why this forum is interesting to me, is that it's based on anonymity and mistrust. It's one place that begins with everyone assuming they're being played, which is pretty much the opposite to most other forms of human interaction, as naturally people trust.

Therefore, it's a challenge to me to not try to play people. If I do, then there is no trust to break, so I'm not really playing anyone other than myself. It doesn't always work though; some people just beg for it.

^^its interesting that you should say that about the forum being built on anonymity and mistrust because that is exactly how I operate in my day to day life. I say very little about myself to anyone and I trust absolutely no one. I treat each and every person in my life with the mindset that they are playing a game. It's normal for me to be this way and it comes from spending part of my life with a sociopathic parent.

It means I see things in people's motives that other people don't see and maybe that don't even exist.

I watch every word I say and in my own way I play the game back.

I actually treat everyone as if they are a psychopath. I've never thought about it in that way before.

To be honest this place is the only place where I feel easy about not trusting people.

I’m sort of repeating myself here but I don’t think most people normally trust. I think they accept what conforms to the narrative in their head. It’s surprising both how agitated people can become over relatively innocuous faux pas simply because it doesn’t conform to their mental script and how much bullsh*t they will swallow if it does. The vast majority of interactions follow a script and typically social failings stem from either ignorance of it or unwillingness to follow it.

I don’t know that I play people as much as I weave narratives. Often people function better if their own internal narrative can be corrected/modified, which works better for me and in many cases better for them. Obviously it can also be used to retard growth just as it can be used to accelerate it. Whether that gets called manipulation, brainwashing, support or leadership is really just a matter of perspective and circumstance.

I think that, fundamentally, we couldn't survive day to day life without inherent trust. You'll drive down the road trusting that no one in their right mind is going to randomly swerve and knock you off the road. We ask for directions and assume that the person is telling the truth. We expect people to help, be fair and reasonable.

When people aren't, this makes the news. People are "conned" etc and it's a surprise, because it's not expected in face-to-face life.

Remove the face-to-face and it switches completely. Random phone calls, emails we're not expecting, internet promises etc, are all assumed to be false tricks.

Manners73 wrote:To be honest this place is the only place where I feel easy about not trusting people.

Probably because it follows the rules above; it's the internet so it's "ok to mistrust."

If we looked at our neighbours with the same level of scepticism that we view those online, we'd quickly become labelled as paranoid.

Trust feels like a weird word to use in the situations described above since most people won't think of the option of "betrayal" from either side, they just do it, if it goes wrong it's more like a failure and not a betrayal

^You don't expect the person next to you (unless it's a 70 year old Asian lady in a Prius) to drive into you, because of reasonable expectations. They have a car, probably a license, meaning they're probably competent enough to drive, and probably wouldn't want to randomly swerve into you, endangering their own livelihood. You help your neighbors get the engine running to win favor points. They do the same to you. You "trust" the person giving you directions for the same underlying psychology, and because it's the only option you have. Is it really trust at that point?


Maintaining contact is a problem for a few reasons. I enjoy power struggles, and toxic affection, mostly in romantic relationships, but also some platonic ones. Those relationships are often intense and short lived, and the amount of people willing to play that game is pretty limited to begin with. Most of my family members and partners fall under this category.

There's another kind of friend I keep in rotation for pragmatic reasons. This could be a colleague, training partner, or just a bro I can grab a drink with if I'm feeling conversational or whatever. I might be up for bowling. Don't know if grown men do that? I'm not invested in this type of relationship for any other reason than the momentary need it fulfills. After which, it leaves my mind until the next time I feel the urge, or the next time I have use for whatever pragmatic purpose it serves. I guess you can think of all relationships in that way if you have an ultimately reductionist point of view, the main difference between the two being that the pragmatic one is easier to maintain. Probably because maintaining a relationship with your colleagues to further your career, or an easy access conversation dumpster is something goal oriented, logical and based in reality, unlike the horny reptile brain telling you to punch every man that looks at your girl's ass.

Online friendships. Distance creates distance, and there's so much lost in an online interaction that can't be translated to text unless you obnoxiously spell it out, which defeats the purpose of it anyways. Though having someone you can anonymously write to on the internet creates the opportunity to share and get feedback on things you otherwise wouldn't, which might create a deeper or special kind of intimacy. I suck at maintaining these. Mostly because I fail to initiate any contact myself, which is kind of bleh, as I do find value in them.