Am I a bad person for not being able to connect with my friend?

Asked by Mimishu1995 (23798

) July 19th, 2021

I realize that I’m having a problem with a friend recently. There is nothing wrong with our relationship. We are still very friendly with each other, and we still hope to meet up after the quarantine. But my problem is that I just… can’t connect with her emotionally. I don’t hate her in any way. In fact, I consider her her my close friend and I have nothing against her. She asks for my help now and then and I’m always glad to be of help. I can ask ask her for help too. The last time we met in person, we exchanged our birthday gifts and said our wishes. But I just find it increasingly hard to connect with her whenever we interact with each other.

She has been a very busy person for two years since she left her job to “open her business”, according to her. When she left her job, she was just busy with setting up the business and stuff. But now she is always busy with something: her business, classes she takes to improve her business skills or just for fun… As a result, she usually doesn’t have time to interact with me and our friends. We have a chat group on our messaging app and she usually makes very minimal effort to interact with our group of friends. Unless it’s something important, she either just throws around some emojis at best and makes no reaction to the conversation at worst. Our group of friends sometimes post our small accomplishments on the chat group and she rarely comment anything meaningful about them. Especially recently, the only time when she posts anything on the chat group is when she wants to promote something, either related to her business or just some random deals that she needs us to participate so that she could take a share of the deals.

The only way I can have a meaningful conversation with her is when our group of friends plan a meeting face-to-face. But even then it doesn’t guarantee I can connect with her either. My face-to-face conversation with her used to go pretty well, but I noticed that around this year it has become less enjoyable. This year she just discovered that support group that helps people with their business ideas, and now all she talks about has to at least related to her business and the group. And she would just go on and on about with without giving me any time to comment on anything. Our conversation would look like this (an actual conversation the last time we met in person):
Her: So, what are you up to lately?
Me: Nothing special. Still working on that story. How about you?
Her: Well, I just discovered this wonderful support group for entrepreneurs! Oh, I think you know about it already, we talked about it earlier. But anyway, it’s changing my life!
Me: Yeah. I heard that you are doing great with that group and the online classes they opened. What did you learn from the classes.
Her: Well, I learned so much! I learned that you have to be kind and nice to your students so that they would come to learn with you. I agree with them completely. Nowadays teachers are so mean, they only teach because of money and nothing else. I heard this horror stories from a student of mine. It goes like this blah blah blah… I can’t believe how they still treat students like that blah blah blah… The classes told me that blah blah blah… I would never be like blah blah blah… yeah you get the picture

As much as I want to, I find it incredibly hard to be interested in her venture, especially when she just goes on and on about it and I don’t have any say in the matter. It’s not that I’m not happy for her, but I’m expecting our conversation to be something more general and light-hearted, something that I can engage in, instead of everything about her work and classes.

I feel so guilty of not being able to be engaged in her venture, especially when I know it’s something she’s so passionate about. And I also know that she is busy with her work and doesn’t have as much time to talk with me and our group. Am I asking too much from her. What should I do in this situation?

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9 Answers

It sounds like your friendship has run its course. You have probably noticed by this time in your life that some of the people you were good friends with in high school and college have drifted away from each other because you really have nothing in common anymore. That sounds like what has happened here. Some friends drift away for a few years and reconnect later in life. Maybe this will happen to this friendship. But in the meantime it seems you both are struggling to have conversations because you have nothing in common.
I wouldn’t make an effort to connect with her, but if she texts, text back. It costs nothing to be cordial.

chyna (51601

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I have a numerous friends come and go over the many years. It is tough to keep momentum going for friendships sometimes.
If she is worth keeping, tell her how you feel. You don’t have to go into a lot of detail, but just state that since shutdowns you have been feeling cut off about life. Then ask if she can find a couple of hours to spend together, and help you regain some balance.
Otherwise, expect things to fizzle, fade, and soon be gone.

Patty_Melt (17519

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No, you are not a bad person.

Friendships wax and wane, run their course. Some from when we are in our teens will last a lifetime, some will disappear by the time we are 20. I have college friends for over 40 years that I talk to regularly, others that I have not talked to since we moved away from University.

zenvelo (39546

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No, in fact, I’d say she is being the bad friend if anyone. No one likes a one-sided conversation and it makes it much harder when one person is being impolite and making it all about them.

“Listen more than you talk.

Avoid conversational narcissism. Ask those you converse with interesting and thoughtful questions. People love to talk about themselves. Don’t ask what someone does and leave it at that. Ask them what the hardest part of their job is, how the future of their profession looks.”

KNOWITALL (29886

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People want to talk about things that are new and exciting to them. When someone has a new baby they tend to talk about nothing else. A new job or new career works the same. This may be temporary or maybe you’re simply moving on to a new phase in your lives. Only you can decide whether the journey is worth it. When I went back to school to get my degree, I was in my 50s. College classes were new to me and I was excited to get my degree after all these years. I talked about it a lot and that gave me the incentive to keep going. Did I alienate some of my friends with my incessant drivel, I don’t know. It was a phase that got me through.

Jaxk (17748

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@Jaxk were you interested when people talked about their things? Did you turn the conversation back to your courses when someone attempted to talk about something else?

Mimishu1995 (23798

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Sometimes you just grow out of friendships, or other relationships. I had a friend that I used to talk to all the time. At least two or three times a week, and often more, we would just talk on the phone for 2–3 hours at a time. We were both weather geeks, and had a lot of other interests. But then we drifted apart a bit and when I would call her up, she had become one of these people that just complains about everything all the time. I also noticed, that she would make borderline racist statements about groups of people and I was totally turned off by that. And so I just called less and less, and she really didn’t call me anymore, and that was that. Maybe I would be more sad if she hadn’t seem to be turning more racist, which is weird because normally you don’t go in that direction at that age of your life. I don’t know. Sometimes I think back about how much fun we had talking to each other and I miss it, but if somebody changes and you no longer share the same values or the same enjoyment of things, then should you really be sad about it?

Lonelyheart807 (2927

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@Mimishu1995 – I’m not saying your friend is not being a jerk, just saying that people tend to talk about new interests. Maybe its just a phase or maybe you’re just drifting apart. Same can be said if you’re not interested in your friends conversation.

Jaxk (17748

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@Jaxk but even when excited about a new topic, etc., a good friend wouldn’t monopolize the conversation.

Lonelyheart807 (2927

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