We're both female. I'm 30, she's 24. I'm introverted. She claims to be introverted but has a lot of social energy. Despite that, we get along very well. We have a similar sense of humour, same down to earth attitudes (for the most part haha), and despite only knowing each other for about 2-3 years, we've had a lot of similar experiences in our lives prior to meeting.
Obligatory warning that this is a long post, but there is a TL;DR at the bottom!
I've had to push this friend away once about a year ago. She got hung up on a guy she met on Tinder, and despite him telling her outright that he wasn't looking for a relationship, she still insisted that he "wasn't being clear" and kept digging deeper for him to basically confirm what he wanted. From my perspective, she's not the best at picking up on social cues (queues?). She didn't know how to understand that this guy wasn't as into her as she was into him, and for some reason this was completely lost on her when it was so blatantly obvious to me. I also tried to ease her off of talking about her longing for him..."you have to let him go" types of kind words. Or just outright changing the subject at times. She was beating a dead horse and I enabled it. The "digging deeper for answers" thing has some significance with the main reason I'm finding her annoying now.
I think for simplicity's sake I'm going to call this friend "C".
The two of us (plus a third friend she went to high school with) recently decided to get a table at a small convention to sell some artwork. C and I have worked together before (at a retail job - none of us have ever sold art before). I was basically her superior (she wasn't in my department at our workplace, but she spent so much time there that she reported to me). She knows I have a "get it done yesterday" attitude, don't communicate more than I need to, don't really socialize casually on the job until all my tasks are done. We're all excited to be selling our art for the first time ever. I'm just burnt out that C might be over-preparing for the event.
Usually I'm in touch with C once every couple weeks, and usually it's by text message. Maybe once every month or two we will go for lunch and spend a day together. She has a large social circle and I like to keep to myself so that level of frequency with contact is perfect for me. But since this convention has come into our scope of plans, C has been messaging me significantly more. It was almost daily up until about a week ago. On top of that, she has set up these "meetings" to discuss the convention and our plans roughly once every two weeks. I'm drained just thinking about the upcoming "meetings". This is going on until the end of September (convention is the last weekend of September).
Our first official scheduled meeting felt lackluster. We had a few questions, found solutions almost immediately, and then the rest of the day was spent just being casual. I have nothing against a casual outing, but I just don't want to do this every two weeks. I'm very much concerned that I'm going to get sick of C or resent her by the time the convention happens.
I mentioned earlier that C doesn't really pick up on social queues (cues?). Usually when she spends time with me, it's until the last bus out of the area runs for the night. Doesn't matter if I say I'm tired or want to be home alone, or even audibly yawn (not on purpose - if I hold in my yawns my eyes start to water so I figure the yawning itself is less awkward than actual tears). We get along well so conversations can last long, but she tries to make them last longer. When there's nothing left to say, she'll start this weird habit of saying, "But, um...yeah." And I know whenever a sentence starts with that, she just doesn't want the moment to end when it probably should. And she can "but, um...yeah" for literal hours.
As far as the convention is concerned, I have my merch ready. I have my budget for stuff to help display my merch (we're doing shopping for this as a group sometime in August, which is the only "meeting" I can justify out of the eight or so C has scheduled). I have researched the demographic and turnout of this convention. I've done all my number crunching. I did most of this within two weeks of registering the table. It only took one "meeting". C recently met with another friend who sells at conventions regularly and tried to get some advice, and texted me, "I need to do more research". That was followed by some very elaborate texts about everything from popular art styles at this convention to display advice to how many people actually attend, and how many of those attendees actually buy things. So I asked her, "do you have any questions left unanswered regarding the convention" and she said she's confident all her questions are answered. But in the same breath she said she needs to do more research. I saw it as another example of her digging deeper for information that was explicitly given to her, or beating a dead horse. This exchange was part one of me coming to realize that I'm getting annoyed. Also, this conversation was at about 1am. I generally go to bed early. Also, I keep my phone by my side on full volume in case my dad has an emergency overnight and needs to reach me ASAP (it's happened before). C knows that I'm an early bird for bed and why I have my phone with me at all hours. My closest friends know not to text me late at night unless it's an emergency because I will likely get woken up by casual texts and be a little grumpy that I was woken up by something that wasn't an emergency. Problem is, if texts do happen, I'm awake after hearing them, and have nothing better to do than respond at that point, so I guess I bring it on myself if people continue to text me overnight. It's not uncommon for C to spend most of a day texting me, and she even does the "but, um...yeah" thing by text (she actually types that phrase). I've told her that I have to go to appointments or call my dad or run errands and she keeps texting. Usually this doesn't bother me as I'll get back to her when I can, but since the convention talk it just seems excessive. I feel more compelled to check/respond in case she actually wants/needs to talk about the convention, but majority of the time it's just casual stuff.
The "meetings" are the second part of what's caused me to be annoyed. We have a meeting this upcoming Friday, which is fine. We also have a meeting three days later, on a Monday. It's the only meeting that's not on a Friday. And it's the only specific Monday I'm not available. I'm going to a concert, and have a VIP pass to meet the artist, get a photo with them, and get their autograph. It's the first concert I've gone to in eleven years. Because there's a photo op, I'm getting my hair, nails, and makeup done before the show. I'm literally unavailable that entire Monday. C has known about this concert from the day I bought the ticket, which was quite a few months ago, and it comes up in conversation regularly. When I reminded C that this upcoming Monday is the day of the concert, and I can't meet up to talk about social media promotion for us being at the convention (the only purpose of this meeting is to talk about when to start using hashtags related to the convention), she said I could be part of a conference call on the phone instead, or we could text each other. I personally don't see why we can't just discuss the social media stuff this upcoming Friday and I can have an actual day away from C and the convention stuff the Monday of the concert. From my perspective, I'm giving C and this convention so much attention and the one time I can't, it's still demanded. It's making me resent C a little. Still excited for the convention, though. I'm working on a comic book and most of the merch I'm selling is related to that comic book.
So here's my dilemma:
C is one of my only friends that's currently in touch with me. I was in a car accident a little over a year ago and 99% of my friends coincidentally vanished at the same time when they all heard the news. Occasionally a friend will pop in, apologize for being a "bad friend" for losing touch with me, and then vanish again for months at a time, or ghost me when I ask to hang out. That's fine. The car accident has taught me which friends are strong enough to "deal with" me while I'm recovering. C is definitely one of those friends, and I thanked her for being one of the only people to stay in touch with me while I'm off work and recovering. I'm concerned if I tell her to tone down the social stuff regarding the convention that I might distance myself too much from one of the only people that still wants to be in touch with me. I understand to an extent we need to be in touch about the convention, but I just feel that it's way too much right now. I'm glad I got most of my art finished early because I wouldn't have time to draw regularly with the amount of contact we've been having. I don't see a need for meetings every two weeks. It's expensive for transit/food and I'm on a limited budget being on sick leave, and it's socially draining. I still have appointments with doctor's/specialists regularly and legal correspondence and whatnot, so despite being off from work, I have a pretty saturated schedule. Also, I have some post-concussive issues so I have these weird instances of sleeping for 19 hours straight if my brain decides it's over-stimulated. My last "meeting" with C triggered one of these hibernations, as what I thought would be a meeting over brunch for a few hours ended up being a ten-hour social day until after midnight with C.
I got SOME peace and quiet starting about a week ago. C's hours got cut at work (same place where I used to work with her). She went into some shock as if this is new to her, but this workplace cuts hours every summer due to business being slow. She said she will be busy for the next little while because of job hunting/interviews. So over the last week I've heard from her only twice because she has other things to distract her. I respect that she's busy and am not texting her, unlike when I tell her I'm busy and she just continues texting.
Also...I don't know if this adds much to this entire situation, but we have a mutual friend who is incarcerated at the moment and can only communicate by snail mail. This friend had C's mailing address and got in touch with her first. I had been asking for the return address to stay in touch with this friend. It took almost two months to get said mailing address (literally asked for it while I was at C's house for one of our "meetings" - told her to pull out the letter from the friend and I'll copy the address). I wrote my friend in jail and she responded saying that C never replied to her initial letter. Somehow that upset me more because C is giving me all this attention when she knows I have a breaking point and will get fed up from being so social, but our friend who is open to written letters gets ignored.
Oh, and the third girl doing the convention with us? She has a two hour commute (four hour round trip) into the city for each of these meetings. I don't know much about this third girl as I just met her, but she too seems pretty quiet and has a lot of stuff going on in her hometown that keeps her busy. I'm not entirely sure how many of these meetings she'll end up attending in-person. She has asked C for information in out group chat and C said she's not saying anything until actual meetings because most of what she wants to talk about is "in-person only" stuff (I get that for art critique but not for the convention planning itself).
Am I unreasonable for being annoyed? Is my friend an attention vampire? I don't want to bring up the over-socializing until I know for certain I'm not just being a grumpy introvert.
TL;DR - Friend has quadrupled the time we spend together on arbitrary "meetings" for a convention we're planning to sell art at. I'm not the type of person who likes to be social so frequently, so this is overwhelming for me. Friend has admitted she has no unanswered questions regarding the convention, but still wants to dig deeper for information regardless. Friend also wants me to be available by phone/text three days after our upcoming meeting, which falls on a date she knows I'm not available. I'm becoming annoyed/resentful but don't know if I'm overreacting.
Thanks in advance for sorting my thoughts out!
Submitted July 02, 2019 at 03:57PM by MeSecretThrowaway https://ift.tt/2xrvh6c
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