I was bullied as a kid, and people would tease each other by saying, you know, "Leah wants to date you," "Leah wants to be your friend." There were people who were happy to see me in some situations, but would be absolutely cruel if I even waved to them in front of their real friends. I've really stopped hanging out much with people that don't give me some of that planning energy back. To me, that signals that they're shouldering some of the planning and are invested in making this work.Īnswer I'm not happy with: "Yeah, sounds cool" 2 days later. Or even, "I'd love to but not sure what days I'll be off, can I text you Tuesday?"
#Tired of being the initiater free
Then I'm happy with an answer within a day that says "sure, I'm free Thursday and Friday, how about you?" So if I text "hey friend, want to have dinner next week?" My way to gauge interest in people who don't initiate is to see how promptly and concretely/practically, they respond.
However, yes, there is a cultural divide and I accept that as an initiator I'm a minority. I'm an introvert, too! I'm super-busy, too! I, too, have social anxieties! Yet somehow it's always up to me to initiate? I feel like it's incredibly rude to always wait for me to initiate. If you're on the receiving side, how do you know your non-initiator friend or partner actually wants you in their life?Īnd people for whom a balance of initiation feels important, what do you do when a person you care about never reaches out? posted by danceswithlight to Human Relations (25 answers total) 35 users marked this as a favorite Non-initiators, do you ever actually experience interest/desire? If so, how do you express it? I'd like to understand a bit more about the other side's style. I'm starting to think this is something of a cultural divide, similar to ask/guess or extrovert/introvert. Since they don't initiate on their own, our interactions just fizzle out entirely, which feels quite sad. And if I try to dial down my energy to match theirs, what ends up happening is they further dial down their energy to match mine. I end up feeling unwanted due to their perceived lack of interest, and also like I'm doing all the work and it's very one-sided.
accommodating me, putting up with me and my desires. On the other hand, if this pattern of matching but not exceeding my energy goes on for long enough (and I'm talking weeks or months), I will eventually feel like they're just. On the one hand, we usually have a good time doing whatever I said I wanted to do. When this happens I feel quite conflicted. They will happily say yes to whatever I'm proposing, and they do appear to genuinely enjoy it, but they will basically never suggest something of their own accord. But I've encountered a number of people who just never initiate. I tend to think that a healthy relationship between two people has a fair amount of variation in terms of who initiates (suggests a plan for tonight, says something about how their day went, calls/texts, offers a hug, or whatever).
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