My best friend and I have had talks at length about friendships and my issues regarding balancing them. She has suggested that perhaps I need to be more discriminating about the people I let into my inner circle. This didn’t really feel right to me. It was driving me crazy that I could simply chalk this problem up to a lack of “perception” on my part. I consider myself a good judge of character… what was happening? It must be something else. Something else must be going on.

Time to do some work.

The first step is admitting you do have a problem. And I am there. I admit that there is something going on. In a nutshell, it seems like I have an issue “moderating” friendships. This manifests itself in two ways:

1. I tend to not judge appropriately a reciprocal level of friendship.
2. People expect me to be their “best friend” and are hurt and surprised when I am not.

Either way, the outcome is a painful period of time when I am disengaging myself from the friendship – or wishing I could disengage.

So I have spent some time since June really trying to wrap my head around what exactly the problem is. It was really bothering me that we could chalk this up to a lack of perception on my part. I haven’t gotten it all figured out, but I do have some additional insights on why my perception is all screwed up. I feel like I’m getting a handle on defining the problem- which in turn will help me come up with solutions on how to deal with it.

One of the keys to me figuring out what was going on here was really thinking about timing. I never have had this problem with “friendship” before. There are several things that are different now then they have been in the past:
1. My kids are in school and I have more social connections.
2. I have more free time because I’m not working.
3. I am normal now… normal size.

So first we’ll talk about the appropriate judgment of friendship. The cues for me are all screwed up. The cues of what determined “interest” before as a fat person is not the same as it is for a normal sized person. People are acting more interested and I am having a rough time gauging interest appropriately. When people were this interested before they were like my best friends. Who knew there were different levels of interest and that “responding” to someone doesn’t mean I have to up the ante with responsiveness to get people to like me? Oh and by the way, all interest is not created equal. I now realize that part of the reason I have trouble with “new friendships” and thinking they are deeper then they really are is because people are reacting to me differently then they were when I was fat. But I am still viewing everything through a fat girls eyes.

Input is screwed up because I made different friendship choices when I was fat. There were only close friends really. I have never dealt with normal friendship interest before. I’ve never had a battalion of friendships that were based on “differing needs”. Because people who could tolerate hanging out with a fat person were either let into the inner circle or cut. Everything I learned before about processing new relationships was done dealing with the “disability” of fatness. I don’t know how to process yet the “difference” of how people react to me now as a normal sized person versus being a fat person. I need to learn a whole new set of rules and tools.

Then there are the friends who think I want to be their best friend. Why? Because I’m still overcompensating. They are normal, but because I’m locked into fat girl overcompensation mode, I am subconsciously sending off cues that I want a deeper level of friendship. Not only is my “input” screwed up misreading them, but their input is screwed because I am overcompensating. Cause in my head, I’m still a fat person don’tcha know?

I also think that I unconsciously tend to mirror people and that just becomes a vicious cycle that gets confusing and feeds on itself. The fat person ALWAYS overcompensated to make people like her and keep people liking her. The normal sized person doesn’t have to do that now. I don’t’ have to be extra funny, extra revealing, extra compassionate, etc. And I haven’t really yet learned how to let people just like me for me without throwing all that extra effort in. Interestingly, I can be closer to the real me and just let people who don’t like me fall off the radar. I’m not desperate for friends anymore.

It’s sad to admit but there is a wider net to pick from now for friends too. Gah, sad that people actually let physical appearance play a role like this isn’t it? But it’s true. I can be more “discriminating” because whether it’s fatness or different social circles, there are more options. It’s sort of like when I was fat, 2 out of every ten stuck it out to try to build a friendship. Now it’s like 9 out of 10. I always had to do all this overcompensating stuff… so the bar of “what do in a friendship” was really high. There weren’t that many acquaintances, so I didn’t really learn how to just “be” with people you hardly know. Not like the prom queen in high school who has her inner posse and a host of people who want to be her friend. I never had to deal with that. When I was fat, I didn’t think people were “staying away” because I was fat… but now in hindsight and looking at the way things are now.. I can see they were. People were just uncomfortable with my weight. I guess I was blind to it the same way I was blind to the fact that the extra 150 lbs was really as bad as it was.

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