I think I'm becoming aplatonic the older I get
This is a tiny bit long lol. But I want to vent and I wonder if anybody has ever felt the way I do.
I have always had close friendships. Very, very close. To the point of codependency. Even in my adult life. I'm autistic and as a kid, I would generally have one friend at a time, who I was very jealous and possessive over. If a new kid tried to join us, depending on the situation (school was where I had this problem. Neighborhood kids I played with but weren't really "friends" with, I didn't care) I would try to sabotage it or run him down to my other friend. This sort of thing went on until middle school until I was able to handle letting a third person join. This would often lead to serious drama and jealous behavior. It was incredibly unhealthy. Once I hit high school and I left my old friends who in all honesty, were just as toxic as I was, I stopped being like this and I relished being in healthy friend groups of 3-4 people, which then lead me into being with even bigger groups and making many friends.
Even today, I can make a friend, like him a lot and then regret it because now he expects something of me. Take my neighbor who's my age. Great dude. Love talking to him for 20 minutes at a time if we're both outside smoking a cigarette. Once we exchanged phone numbers and he started texting me asking to hang out I was like "Dammit." which made me feel bad. He's a great dude and I like talking to him. I just don't want him to expect me to be consistent. It's like I'm fighting between two personalities. One really cares about people and their lives and hates hearing that anybody is going through hardship, and the other is totally callous and wants to live his life without people expecting anything of me socially or emotionally (not saying that being aplatonic is callous, I'm saying I can be)
As an adult, I have been codependent on multiple friends. One of them, for 4 years, would already be at my apartment when I got off work. It would absolutely exhaust me. I helped him with his long term toxic relationship from beginning to end, his heart issues which were very scary and experienced a friend committing suicide which he in particular was very close to. He would figuratively (and literally sometimes) fall into my arms anytime there was a crisis. I have absolutely no boundaries and especially didn't back then, and it would completely dictate the way my life was going.
I don't know what it is about me, but I have had multiple male, straight neurotypical people absolutely try to enmesh themselves with me over the years as if I were their partner. Like, these are guys who are gym bros and far more traditionally masculine than I am. It got to where I actually had to shake them off me like they were a monkey on my back. People who were boring as hell, materialistic, shallow with absolutely NOTHING in common with me would just latch onto me and suck my energy dry for 2-3 years, trying to guilt me to do EVERYTHING with them and then acting shitty when I finally put a boundary up. Like, getting angry because I don't feel like drinking when I agreed to go out a week before. Or expecting me to show up to an event outside of town that he told me about 3 months before, getting mad that I already had plans that day. It got to the point where I had to say "Dude, I am NOT your girlfriend." Like, these are the same guys who would think I was a freak or make fun of me in middle school, now being completely codependent on me for whatever reason. They liked that I processed the world different than them, being autistic and high functioning, but they added literally nothing to my life other than obnoxious obligations and a painfully shallow perspective on life. I am so, SO careful with who I let in my life now because this world is full of energy vampires. And that's the thing. They don't mean any harm so I feel bad saying this. They struggle making connections and I get it. High school is long past and they're lonely because they have little personality or depth. I am a very empathetic person that will offer a connection if somebody asks for it (not talking myself up, this is genuinely makes people latch onto me) and what's worse, sometimes I connect with people personally while I'm masking. I have nothing in common with them so for some reason I talk on a personal level because well, anybody can talk like that if they're open enough. Then we "connect" WAY more than I want us to. I didn't want to share myself. I just didn't know how to talk to you and now I've overshared, thus making you overshare and get attached to me in some way when really, I was just reaching for an easy defense mechanism to get me through this until I can leave.
These days, especially the past few years going through opioid addiction and SEVERE burnout, I just have no capacity for friendship anymore. I haven't seen my best friend of 17 years since April. I haven't seen any of my close high school friends since I went through my breakup, which was short lived but very traumatic and ended in an emotionally violent way. When I met her, I realized that I value that sort of connection FAR more than a platonic one. Which, as much as I have WANTED to be left alone following the grief of that ending, I can't help but notice that all that energy I gave to my friend, basically being a mediator in his LT relationship, bordering on making decisions for him, was absolutely not given back to me when I could've needed it. He cared for a week or so and then moved on doing stuff with the rest of the group. Now, since I don't want that attention I shouldn't care. But it's another thing that adds to my sentiment of "Why do I even want all these friendships?" Like, if my years of energy and effort of making my friends' lives better can't even be followed up with a simple message checking up on me at all within these 3 months (especially knowing I had just gone through severe depression and suicidal ideation after my detox) then I literally just do not care about keeping these bonds alive.
I don't dislike them and I don't want to cut them out of my life, but I simply don't give a shit. I don't miss them in any capacity. If anything, all I do is feel guilty. We always said we would be best friends until we died. And because we've been friends for over 15 years, I feel like I HAVE to keep it alive. I genuinely miss our old mall more than I ever miss any of them. I miss those old days and the times we spent together in the past more than anything. I'm very sentimental... but I only miss them in very specific moods. But after all this, them knowing how badly I've struggled this past year... they just don't give a shit and that's totally fine. They love having me around and they're always really happy when I show my face again. I genuinely do love these guys like family. I've known them too long not to. But I don't miss them. And they're so distracted with each other (it's a big group) and their hobbies that it just makes sense that I'm not a concern and it just makes it so much easier to detach.
I work with 3 of my best friends and my cousin who's more like my brother. This is all I have capacity for. I cannot escape these guys. But I also love having them in my life. 2 of them are moving to Detroit within the year, and I can actually say I WILL miss them. They're the very few people that I can say, this will leave a void. But we're all neurodivergent and just get each other. However, I know I'll get over it. Because I just can't miss people for too long (romance is different) I have very close internet friends 3 states away and have been friends for 15 years. I have all but dropped out of their orbit for 4 months. Now, alot of this has to do with my complete withdrawal after my breakup. But this has been in the works for some time now. After the breakup I was completely lost and relapsed back into addiction (Yeah, I am PISSED at myself and am back to draining my bank account and am once again stressed about money) and sought comfort on reddit with strangers, because I can make tiny connections in the comments with people also dealing with trauma or heartbreak, make them feel a little better and then completely withdraw.
I connected with a certain girl though from the UK and she is the most beautiful soul I've ever met. Within days, our dynamic was strange. It wasn't platonic, but it wasn't romantic. We tried not crossing too many boundaries but we each had a very deep, dark void we were trying to fill. Not that we were using each other, but we completely soothed our nervous systems which had been screaming for months at this point. Usually, I can't stand doing back and forths with people I meet on here. I'm not looking for deep connections and I'm DEFINITELY not looking for a person I feel obligated to keep up with. She is different though. We talk for 6 hours at a time. Sometimes 8. Sometimes all throughout the day, it will accumulate to 10 hours. Because of the ambiguity of this relationship between us, I completely attached myself to her and so did she. It started off with her helping me send once last message of closure to my ex, but then things got very complicated, mostly due to her fear my ex will want to try again (I guarantee she won't) which will end our friendship because she was possessive. Not only that, but we would have to change the dynamic of our friendship and completely dial it back, or it would be emotionally cheating. We spoke very intimately but not QUITE romantically, but it was damn close. Random stuff like her complimenting my appearance... then it quickly turned into "I wish I could hold you in my arms right now." and I still have no clue how it got that way so fast. Once I came home to a message saying "I really missed you today" (which I absolutely loved and missed coming home to messages like this) the lines got blurred and lead to arguments and constantly questioning our boundaries and what the outcome of this was.
We were both so confused as to how this happened. I absolutely hate making new friends. I do not want people I have to keep up with. The idea of multiple people constantly being in my inbox just drives me insane. But, I looked at that aplatonic bingo card somebody posted, and the desire to have a non-romantic, non-platonic relationship seems to be a part of this. Because this isn't just a friendship. We actually decided to take a week break from talking because we both became so codependent and after a fight we had where we didn't talk for 20 hours, we both got genuine separation anxiety where her chest was hurting, and my head was aching. Even now, it's been less than 24 hours since we talked (I caved and told her that she was missed just in case she was feeling sad... and because I miss her) and this is still hard. It's so strange like, this year has made it abundantly clear that I have codependency and attachment issues, but it's reserved for literally one person. When I met my ex, only one other person had ever seen the side of me that I gave her, that being completely vulnerable and showing that soft side that I never, ever want anybody to see. Now I've done that with my friend and it feels safe. But this is absolutely not platonic. This feels so deep even if we haven't known each other long, we both agree that there are deep psychological reasons that we were both drawn to each other this way. We want to take the attachment test and figure out the root at how in the hell we ended up emotionally throwing ourselves at each other. Especially since I'm a dismissive avoidant when it comes to platonic relationships.
Sorry for the long rant. Thank you to anybody that read this.