Moving on from Friends that Use You

We meet a wide range of interesting people in our lives, at school, sports, parenting groups, through travel and at work. Some turn into life long friends and some are only in our lives for a short time. There are also the friends that are just emotional vampires, draining your energy with negativity or pure laziness, making no effort in the friendship.

Is it in your nature to plan and organise things? Are you the friend that always plans the outings right down to the last detail. You book the holidays, pay with your credit card, designated driver, the conversationalist, the introducer, the one that brings the joy and the fun to every outing.

One day you get tired of being the one that makes all the effort. You sit back and wait for your friends to invite you to things, at least if they could try to plan an outing. It would be nice to be asked out, picked up in the car and chauffeured all night so you can down a few drinks. Maybe even sit back at the bar, let them break the ice with new people.

You wait and you wait...it rarely happens. Worse still, you see some of your friends out with other friends and you never get invited. Maybe they were invited and that is the reason or maybe they just use you for when they have nothing to do.

Maybe they don’t know they are using you, but that is how it feels sometimes. You have made veiled hints and jokes, still nothing changes.

Or the times when you go from being single to getting a boyfriend. You still have to contact your friends to plan catch ups. Eventually, you find that they only wanted to be your friend when you were single and moaning about the negative aspects of their lives.

Your happiness about your new partner has to be contained. A mere mention of your weekend with the boyfriend and their faces cloud over. You realise you only had one thing in common, it was being single.

These are the single fun times only friends. Possibly it isn't in their natures to be an organiser or maybe they are a bit shy. Either way, if after all your hints and even straight out telling them your thoughts they still don't make an effort, you may need to move on.



I decided that if my friends would be so slack, I would join social groups and make new friends. Then I could let someone else organise things and just turn up. I joined several social group websites, one being Meetup . There are hundreds of different Meetup groups depending on what your interests are from Tennis, Kayaking, Cycling, Bushwalking, Cafe lovers, Art & Culture lovers, Travel Lovers, Writers, Poets, Bookworms, History Lovers, Social Singles - you think of an interest and you will no doubt find a group you like. I joined several groups, most are free or you pay a nominal amount like $5 if you turn up to an event. There are plenty of free events to go to or you simply pay the expenses on the day.

I suddenly found I could be as busy I wanted to be in my free time and I never had to be the organiser meanwhile making new friends. These groups had one or two organisers that loved to plan interesting outings. I did so many fun things and the people were great. The great thing about Meetup is that the site is not just for singles, quite a few couples had moved from interstate or from overseas and were trying to make new friends. So if you are partnered up you could both go and make some new coupled up friends.

It finally dawned on me that there are some people that come into your life for only a short time. You realise they are only there for you as long as you have something they need. When you no longer serve a purpose to them or have a common thread of interests, they disappear.

The good news is, if you take control of yourself for a change and try new things you’ll eventually weed the negative slack friends out of your life. Eventually, you will be left with real and new uplifting friends that do make an effort.

#Friends
#Moving_on_from_Friends_that_Use_You
#Making_New_Friends
#New_Friends
#Singles
#Making_Friends
#Relationships
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#Friendships

%trulyheart