>>96094>ruined potential friendships with people I think are cool by I guess being overly friendly.It's this. Of course, I don't know your exact circumstances, but what you're describing sounds like something I've been on the receiving end of so I can tell you how it looks from that side. First of all, though, I think you do have insight to why this approach isn't working, and that you've obviously thought it over a lot, but you're couching 'the problem' as a positive thing (I'm too nice/friendly) that's probably making it hard to really confront.
Basically, frankly, you're coming off as desperate. When you do these big gestures of affection for people to whom your connection is honestly quite weak, but because for you this is a massive thing feels to warrant such treatment, it's very offputting. It feels like you're trying to make an investment that the receiver is obligated to respond to, but that they didn't ask for. You say as much, right? You drop people who don't respond because you're expecting an equivalent or greater reward. It means your gifts come off as illegitimate and somewhat controlling, since they're not really gifts, they're down-payments, and people sense this and manoeuvre away.
I think you're also convincing yourself that you need to do 'more' than what the person is asking for. If so, that's also offputting. It means recipients can't really expect what you're actually going to do except that it'll be whatever was said, plus interest, plus the 'oh god please be my friend, I'm a good friend' bonus, plus the 'you better do this for me too btw (or you're a bad friend)' tax. Also, if you're the one initiating these gifts, and it seems like you often are, I think you're not considering what the recipient actually wants so much as giving them things you personally consider high-value, but that they might not really care about.
>I had a girl I thought was a close friend steamroll over my message saying that a family member was extremely ill to start talking about her own relationship problems to me in paragraphs.This does suck pretty bad. This is also a consequence of you establishing yourself as an open vent box who will actually entertain stuff like this even if you're not in the mood for it. I'll guess, did you patiently let this friend get out their whole spiel? If
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.