> I agree :D. It's my best formulation to be explicit so far. How would you say it in more natural way to still achieve the same end result?
I think you can't ask it, at least not without self-selecting yourself out of further contact from the majority of people.
> Most people are clueless and will never do anything in return if you're implicitly expecting them to behave in certain manner.
This is somewhat dismissive and maybe warrants some self-reflection. Most people broadcast their feelings extremely visibly and will have expected you to have understood their feelings without having to explicitly explain them to you.
Relationships, healthy ones anyway, are a two way street & need to be nurtured. Like OP I realized over time that most people are lazy and expect a lot out of their relationships without putting any effort in. I like the way OP put it as them being "passive" passengers in the whole relationship journey. It can make for some very exhausting interactions if the bulk of your relationships are like this.
There is a cultural aspect to this. In my opinion American culture because it is so individualistic and market-driven encourages transactional, superficial relationships.
OP's approach might not be palatable to everyone but really any tactic that allows you to filter these people out is going to lead to more satisfying relationships. Just my 2 cents.
On the other hand maybe OP filtered people to group that like that kind of feedback in some way So maybe it did work ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yeah, agreed! It is selecting for a certain type.
Just don't want the GP to fall into the trap that the others were clueless as they commented, because that normally indicates a blindspot on the GP's side, not the people with whom they've interacted.
I have thousands of connections I’ve hanged out during my twenties.
Ive arranged countless parties. People have met eachother in those and are happily married nowadays or have made friends during those events. Somehow the relationship between me and them formed into one where they were expecting me to arrange and include them everytime without offering help or asking me in return. Ive done all the things both of you mentioned and you’re definitely right that this does filter out plenty of people but I dont mind that nowadays.
The ones that get filtered through are the ones I feel like I should spend my energy and I have strong feeling that some of the effort does echo back to me during the times I dont have energy to be the one who arranges. It feels very nice but again we have different needs and YMMV. This works for me and I should have been more explicit about my background in the initial post as well.
That is awesome! I wish I had a friend like that in my twenties. Yes that kind of connections wearies you down. It is better to have contribution but people always were lazy and will be lazy.
I was organizing few parties here and there myself. I was organizing movie Thursdays for example. People were complaining but attending. We did watched few good movies like Nebraska. When I stopped organizing them they did not were organizing anything like that themselves. This is just how people are.
>This is just how people are.
This is just how most people are.
There are counter examples like I mentioned above but they are rare. These are the people I should have prioritised much more and way earlier. It took me way too long to realise that quality >>> quantity regarding relationships.
I hope you will still arrange movie Thursdays sometime in the future even if nobody else will :)!
Also I'm happy that you have the few good friends for 15+ years. Grass might always be greener on the other side but I would trade those immediately for the thousands of acquittances.
Okay, I think some significant self-reflection is in order here.
> There are counter examples like I mentioned above but they are rare.
Those counter examples you mention also behave this way (and you likely do too), it's just they enjoyed your company and were willing to reciprocate. Those who didn't aren't clueless or anti-social, they just weren't willing to reciprocate with you.
> It took me way too long to realise that quality >>> quantity regarding relationships.
That is true, but be careful in defining quality as equal effort. You will self-select for people for whom friendship is transactional rather than emergent, and those "friendships" (in quotes because many including me would consider those to be acquaintances rather than friends by definition) tend not to endure hardship, where friendship by definition becomes unbalanced in effort.
> Okay, I think some significant self-reflection is in order here.
This feels hurtful even though its hard to disagree. Self-reflection is of course useful and I’ve done it for countless of hours and been in therapy for years.
Your boxes for transactional or non-transactional relationships are too simplistic. You maybe feel like you can compare me to someone you know and try to fit this example to your own experiences. All relationships have at least 1 person who is doing some effort to keep it going. Good ones have 2 persons.
Its of course too early to say if my methods will form long-lasting ones or not but it feels like theres a chance and so far so good. Please link me long-term studies which prove this wrong ;)
I wish you all the best and I hope you can self-reflect on your own assumptions too :)
Fair enough.
> Somehow the relationship between me and them formed into one where they were expecting me to arrange and include them everytime without offering help or asking me in return.
That is signal. They were communicating.