I have a new friend that has talked to me twice now about us having "plans" but they are never concrete. Like it will be "Okay after church I will give you a call and we can do something with the kids" or "after my exam tomorrow I will call you and we can do something". But to me those count as pretty much not plans. I am a planner and to me I am only technically scheduled if you say something like "Okay meet me at this restaurant at this time on this day". The whole open ended "okay I will call you" thing bothers me. Because then I am waiting around just in case the plans actually come to fruition.
I need to just straight up tell her "I need concrete plans. It is hard for me to be spur of the moment." I am going to do that next time this type of convo happens. I just hope she is not the type of person that is incapable of making and keeping concrete plans. I feel like if it stays like that we will never actually get together and it will always stay theoretical. Also not sure if it is a blow off tactic or what. It does not seem that way at least.
Edited to add: the reason I don't think its a blow off is we talk on facebook a lot including her talking to me when she is upset and coming to me as emotional support. She also invited me and the kids to her son's birthday party. She also invited me and my husband to her birthday party. Since those were set plans with a set time and date, I was able to attend and we had a great time. She also invited us to a graduation get together for her this Sat. Again set day and time. So when it comes to that, we hang out and it is great. It is the more less set in stone things that don't work out when we try to get together.
I wonder if she is waiting on me to call her or what? Since I am kinda lazy slob when I don't have plans I pretty much just wear no make up and yoga pants and don't fix my hair etc since I am just hanging around the house and doing housework. So another reason I would like to know ahead of time when plans happen so I can at least make sure I am wearing real clothes and fix myself up a bit LOL.
Any insight?
-- Edited by Balloon Animal on Wednesday 7th of May 2014 09:04:08 AM
I would try making concrete plans with her. I know I don't like to be very scheduled on the weekends, generally. If I want to go to the farmer's market, I might make plans to do something after that. But I don't want to have to rigidly schedule, "I'm going to get up at 7:30 so I can go to the farmer's market and I'll leave the farmer's market a 9 am so I can do X at 10 am." But I don't expect people to wait around for me either.
But I'm also not suggesting you wait around for her, either. When she doesn't call, you can call. "Hey, I'm free today from 2-4, do you want to meet at the park?"
And BTW, the talking and leaning on your for emotional support doesn't mean she's not blowing you off regarding actual plans.
Ophelia: true about the emotional support thing. That has crossed my mind. But as of right now I am okay with it. Since she did invite me to her birthday party and her son's party and her grad party. So I am at least getting some recriprocal stuff going on. I also vent to her every once in awhile too. We both have kids with autism so we bond over that.
The odd part though is she talks to me about her other friends or best friend that she has known these people a long time blowing her off and upsetting her. So since I am not really a part of that group even though I happened to go to high school with a lot of them, I guess I am a safe place to vent about such things as I won't go run my mouth about it to them, you know what I mean? I am fine being that for her. The odd part is when she is upset they won't hang out with her so I am like "Hey I will hang out with you, what are you doing tomorrow?" and then I get the open ended plans. That is the part that I am kinda quizzical about.
I think next time I am going to try to nail her down to exact plans and go from there. It is 10 now and still have not heard from her today and we were having the "I will call you after the exam" plans today.
With more information - this is rubbing me the wrong way a bit. BA, I suggest you don't let yourself get too invested in this friendship just yet, and maybe pull back on being her listening ear. Not saying cut her off or anything - but maybe just redirect the friendship away from support and counsellor.
