I’m someone who craves (and thrives) on intimacy and closeness. I’m never been afraid to be vulnerable (I’d actually had to learn that I shouldn’t be vulnerable with everyone). I love it when someone is really passionate about something, even if that thing bores me to tears. I love hearing about peoples’ hopes, fears, dreams, opinions…
But I often feel like people hold me at arm’s length. Like they say, “OP, I like you, you’re interesting, but stay right there.”
And it doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of following the “relationship journey” either. It seems like eventually I hit a wall of someone not wanting me to come any closer. And it hurts.
Being neuroatypical I do realize I have an intense personality so people may not know how to interact with me. That may be part of it.
Anyone else experience this? How do you cope?
Yes, it happens to me all the times. I actually have only 3 ‘real’ friends in that regard.
All the others as soon I finish business with them (a projects ends, change job, no longer frequent a place etc…) I just lose them.
Also, every time I think I found a new group of people that seems to accept me, at some point they just vanish (?) without even a reason, like it never happened. This is the thing that hurt the most.
And how I cope with it, music and just go on with whatever you are doing. But it’s never pleasant or easy.
Yeah, those “friends” that just vanish are the the most confusing. You spend like 3 days wracking your brain trying to figure out what you might have said to set them off.
But I’ve found it’s better to just move on. If they dumped me because of something I said then they weren’t interested in becoming friends in the first place (but by the same token, if they were kind enough to share with me I said something that offended them, I’d change the way I interacted with them).