Hi, crawford

I haven’t experienced quite a similar situation as you have. I have, however, been in a situation countless times where I felt like I wanted to have attention from someone and didn’t end up getting it.

Sometimes I end up acting a little strangely to get attention from an interesting person. Afterwards I  tend to feel guilty of my strange behavior. Sometimes I tend to shut down, do nothing to get attention. Then feel bad about it afterwards, as I might have missed out on a lot of happiness.

I am a bit of a quiet and considering person, so I tend to lean towards shutting down and doing nothing.

All I can say that all of this is very human. Perhaps it’s worth it to try and get attention anyway? If we do it too much, though, we can come across as horribly needy and our behavior can be seen as inappropriate.

Perhaps try a couple of times to get attention from your friend? Then if you fail to get it, accept it and move on.

This is really difficult.. We must find ways to come into acceptance of what we end up doing.

Dear crawford,

There are numerous questions you should be asking about this situation with your friend and one of them is ‘is your friend like this with other people, not just with J’? Is she usually like this with you? When you’re together, just the two of you, is she the one usually the one dominating the conversation? Is she the one who will make certain comments/opinions expecting you to agree with her? Is she assertive by nature, with a too big ego/self-confident sometime? Does she like being in charge/in control regarding your interactions/conversation/meet-ups?

There are plenty of people who like being in control of their situation and that sense of control usually extend towards people. With E, she is uncomfortable around J because J does not withdraw from confrontation like you might do. And E does not like that because she is used to being the one in control, or so the situation portrayed. And it seems J has solid self confidence/esteem since he didn’t flinch under the constant canon balls being fired his way. J threatened E somehow, which means her ego was telling her that she needed to prove herself. But J pushed back against E which led to the sarcasm and put down that ended with teeth induced rotting ‘oh I’m just kidding, you know that’. What you saw was probably them having a barb wired word match to see who was the better person and you got caught in the crossfire. E knows you, and to let out her frustration, lashed out towards you who usually does not push back against her. So no, it’s not you, it was E having a love-hate war with J, if they are actually friends.

The above is only my interpretation to the situation so take it with a grain of salt.