Reply to I make friends easily, but it feels like once they get to know me, they don't want to be friends

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[quote=Anonymous]A woman I worked with once told me this same thing. I couldn’t be honest with her because we were colleagues and NOT close friends so it would not have been appropriate. But maybe what I would have told her could be helpful to you. I’m not saying you have this same issue (odds are that you don’t) but this is the kind of thing that could be going on.

She had a “mother hen” thing going on that she viewed as a positive part of her personality snd would even reference (“oh that’s just me being a mama bear!”). When you first met her this came off as somewhat charming and sweet— she seemed to really care about people and was attentive and would do little favors. But over time this behavior became grating. She gave lots of advice and was always asking very personal questions even when I’d made it clear that I didn’t want to talk about a subject. And her advice sometimes seemed controlling, not helpful. Her motherly helping actually came off as perversely needy— she needed you to need her. That was almost flattering at first but soured with time. She lacked boundaries and when other people tried to set them, she’d get really offended and double down on her behavior, which just pushed people away more.

All of this was why I kept her at arms length at work— she actually reminded me a bit of my own mom and I knew enough to know that was not a dynamic I’d enjoy. But I watched her do this with almost all of our colleagues, to varying degrees of success, but it pretty much always soured. Ironically, I think she came to see me as HER mother figure because I stayed more distant (I never socialized with her outside work, and I kept my own private life mostly to myself beyond broad strokes) so she’d confide in me. I wished I could have been blunt with her about this— I think she needed therapy to figure out why she was so dependent on others in this way. I hope eventually she figured it out.[/quote]

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