A request: If you make a commitment, keep a commitment, for the sake of people like me.
OK, so Iām not the most fun person to be around, I donāt hang with the biggest groups, I like one-on-one intense bonding, I like planned and specialized experiences as opposed to off-the-cuff new things. Iām not an amazing social butterfly who can show you an amazing time around town, you canāt get lit with me at a bar, Iām cautious and also sometimes mentally draining for others. Right right right, I donāt have a lot to my name.
But when you make plans with me, I carve out time from my schedule to spend it with you. I guarantee that nothing short of a catastrophe will get in the way of whatever event it is that I likely planned for us from start to finish. I have dedicated time to ensuring I know whatās going on and what to expect so thereās no unforeseen roadblocks to having a good time. I anticipate and plan meticulously so all you have to do is show up. I have not double-booked, so I will not bail on you to hang with someone more fun who came along, even if I donāt get to see another person as often. I donāt make back-up plansĀ ājust in case.ā Up until this point, I have made plans with the expectation that whoever agreed to those plans wanted to see me just as much as I wanted to see them, and whatever it is I was going to do with that time on my weekends is now specifically dedicated to that activity with that person.
If you bail on me, that time means nothing now. That planning now has no purpose, there is no way to reuse it for something else. Thereās no way, especially at the last minute, to re-dedicate it to anything else than sitting inside, thinking about how someone dumped me again, and whoopee I get more time for homework. Guess Iāll sit alone with my calculator and a pint of ice cream and re-evaluate for the 52nd time that year why I donāt seem to be successful with friendship and try my damnedest to change whatever the fuck it is Iām doing wrong because nobody will tell me straight. (But, and this is kind of the point of this isnāt it, I donāt think itās entirely my fault anymore, as entitled as that sounds.)
Generally, I take this in relatively good spirit. People have shit come up all the time that they didnāt anticipate. People get unexpectedly busy, they have accidents happen, I get all that. But when I canāt rely on anyone to follow through on plans, when it gets to the point where every fucking person I have made plans with for the past god damn year has bailed on me 9/10 times, and the only time Iāve actually had shit Iāve wanted to do follow through has been when I finally joined this club on campus, and even then, less than half of the people who signed up for these events shows up - whatever attitude that is really bothers me.
I canāt change jack shit, especially if everyone else seems perfectly fine and has backups ready to go at a momentās notice, everyone else seems fine with all this, but I just want it made public somewhere (and I know Iām not alone) that I fucking hate being the backup. I hate being bailed on because your cooler friend became available last minute, I hate being the 10th person asked because your other 9 friends all bailed on your plans for their cooler friends, I hate, in a very specific and recent incident, being left to sit on a fucking sidewalk because you got distracted by whoever you were with and decided to do shit with them instead of walking like 15 minutes to follow through on vague plans and a simple request - all without remaining in contact with me and being honest with what the fuck you were doing instead, I hate having you show up for those plans having already ruined half of them and making the rest vaguely uncomfortable due to your actions and then making me feel like the guilty one because Iām vaguely annoyed that Iām again the backup, and the burden to deal with because Iām not the āfun friend.ā I hate having to swallow my annoyance and make you feel better and having to use my limited emotional energy to keep you from feeling sad about being a shitty friend, and I hate the manipulation that goes into people wailing apologies all the fucking time and making a big deal when Iād much rather they accept my actions at face value and drop it and meet my honesty on the level I deliver it at.
Iād rather have an honest friend who doesnāt consider me a top priority, than a dishonest one who constantly shortchanges me and then deflects the guilt onto me.
I also hate that this is the way things go these days, and I canāt retaliate or make a statement without losing everything anyway, because this is just the way things are and if I do that then I just straight wonāt have friends. So whether I accept it or confront it, neither really improves the outcome. So this is really more complaining to thin air than an expectation that these few words will really have a wide-reaching impact. But Iāve also been really sour about this for a long time and any time itās come up, itās been too close to someone else doing something that I risked friends feeling personally attacked; YāALL do this in my immediate face-to-face interactions, itās not just one individual doing this shit to me, it is a rare exception to the rule that I meet.
TL;DR: If you make plans, keep them. If you canāt keep them, be fucking honest about why, so your low-priority friend can stop wasting emotional energy on doing shit with you and can instead make healthier choices for themselves instead of constantly second-guessing motives and future plans. If you actually want to do shit with your low-priority friend, try being the plan-maker for once instead of expecting them to do all the work and then ultimately dumping it in the trash.
