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[quote=Anonymous]She is in college and has a girlfriend and has good grades. She has friends, although she has always been introverted. She’s not totally different with them but it’s a lot less so. Her friends have always been quirky—in a fine way.

It’s not just me. My family and friends notice it too and also feel like she’s uninterested and even annoyed or bored when we’re out doing things. My mom used to get really mad sometimes because it comes off as rude, but my father is very similar so we talked about it and she doesn’t take it personally anymore.

It’s very hard for someone to genuinely appear to be unhappy, bored, and barely talk. And then if you ask them if they’re ok they say yes.  But if she tells me she is then I don’t know. I guess I believe her. But that still doesn’t change that it’s really hard when I plan fun things for us to do and she doesn’t talk and yawns and generally looks like she doesn’t want to be there. I get really anxious that she’s unhappy and try to engage more with her, and that makes it worse.

It IS about me. I’ve read all about flat affect, blunted affect, etc….but nothing explains how a parent is supposed to deal with it on a day to day basis. I want to be able to have a good time when we spend time together. But imagine if the person you’re with barely speaks, looks totally bored, even annoyed. And then you genuinely try to understand what’s going on and they say they’re fine.

Do I just ignore it? Pretend she’s not acting that way? Do I try to talk to her when I get one word answers back? It makes me not want to spend time with her and that makes me so sad. From her perspective we don’t have a bad relationship. It’s just her expectations of what people do together are very different from mine. We could literally walk around together for an hour and if I didn’t talk, we’d walk in silence. [/quote]

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