TL; DR: my friend called a new acquaintance exhausting even though my friend instigated most of the conversation. I'm on the spectrum and I want to understand why so I don't repeat the same mistake. I felt like this lady did everything you're taught to do
Full story:
I recently took a ladies road trip where my friend's husband drove us the full 10 hours out and back. There was one new acquaintance. She was interesting, had good things to say (I thought) and after the initial "how are you? what kind of things do you like?" banter, this lady did not answer any questions that she wasn't asked by my friend
From my backseat perspective, the lady kept trying to pull up her phone and answer emails, but my friend kept asking questions so she eventually put the phone away and talked. Same with the trip back
I was actually worried my friend was gonna irritate her so much that she wouldn't come on any future trips! Without her chipping in, I don't think we all could've afforded it. We've had other friends take road trips who didn't pay their share. So I like this lady and I want her to come back
I was really surprised later that my friend started bad mouthing her for talking too much and being full of herself. I never could get a straight answer out of my friend why she would keep asking questions if she didn't want to talk to the lady. There are other people she could've talked to 😊
All I could get out of my friend is "she's exhausting!"
I'm on the spectrum, so when I hear stuff like that, I really want to understand because it doesn't naturally make sense to me. People often act like I am exhausting, even though I've learned to do the conversation things this lady did (not talk about yourself too much, keep your answers short, ask about the other person)
What do you think was happening here? Could there be an element of anger that we needed this lady's money to make the trip happen? What would make an otherwise good person seem exhausting to another person?
8 comments
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Your friend was probably hoping that this person would engage back, ie ask your friend questions or show interest and build a connection. If on a trip be present with the people you are with. It’s rude and rejecting to not follow with your own questions back if someone is showing interest in you. This lady with the very important emails 🙄 sounds uninterested at best, self-involved and rude at worst. When in a group, engage with the group and get off the phone. At the same time, if people want to be aloof jerks to people, it’s time to stop trying and let them be a sulking cloud in the back seat.
Was your friend trying too hard? Maybe but damn, y’all sound like a tough group to be around. Lighten up and connect with each other. Show curiosity and balance questions with stories. Nothing in the virtual world is worth ignoring those around you unless you’re curing cancer or working a very important or urgent job. If working, say so and maybe evaluate your work/life balance if you can’t take a moment to make a new friend.
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Negativity. Thirty seconds into hearing them talk and they’ve switched into negative mode.
I think your friend may have been annoyed that the new friend may not have engaged in conversation as much. When meeting someone new I try to make conversation with someone specially if we’re gonna be on a long roadtrip together. If I have to carry the entire conversation it could be exhausting.
But I wasn’t there so I don’t really know could be that she’s being judgmental too
One of the biggest issues I had growing up is I kept taking social advice from other socially inept people. IE your badmouthing friend
The badmouthing friend has something going on with her. Nothing the other friend could’ve done to prevent.
MAybe the old friend was asking questions because the new friend was not engaging in reciprocal conversation. Like, answering the questions but not giving back questions or enough detail so that the old friend could build off the answer.
What are you doing this weekend? Oh, just relaxing.
Versus
What are you doing this weekend? I’ll probably relax by watching my favorite show [show name]. Have you seen that one? It’s so good!
Huh, I was going to suggest maybe the new acquaintance wasn’t asking questions back, but if she *was*… yeah, beats me.
I’m not seeing any obvious lessons in what you could do differently here based on your friend’s reaction. However, I do have a couple other suggestions.
Firstly, consider gently discouraging one friend talking to you about another friend behind that person’s back. (I don’t mean directly telling your friend not to, I just mean…seeming less interested in that topic of conversation than other ones, or reframing it as your friend personally just not liking new acquaintance (a quality of *your friend*, or of the dynamic between the two, whereas “she’s exhausting” frames it as as quality of the new acquaintance.) “I was hoping you’d get along better, I’m sorry it was a bad experience for you.” You can validate the feelings — your friend feeling frustrated or tired or annoyed — without agreeing with the label.
Going on a multi-day trip that involves hours in the car with anyone is kind of a big deal (long duration, people are relatively likely to be irritable on a trip, if a fight breaks out people can’t just get away from each other), I’d say it was a situation that was high risk for people deciding they really can’t stand each other after. That doesn’t mean it was a bad idea, but I think it’s worth being aware that there *is* a risk there. It could have gone a lot worse than some complaining after the event.
>I never could get a straight answer out of my friend why she would keep asking questions if she didn’t want to talk to the lady. There are other people she could’ve talked to 😊
>All I could get out of my friend is “she’s exhausting!”
It’s definitely possible your friend wanted you to agree with her that Acquaintance wasn’t great, but I think mostly what she *needed* was probably 1. a sense that you thought it was OK that she didn’t have a great time trying to talk to Acquaintance on the car ride and 2. probably some reassurance that she’s not going to have to do that again if she doesn’t want to. People often say things like “Person is x” when what they mean is “I didn’t like interacting with Person very much, and would rather not repeat the experience.” It is completely OK that you like Acquaintance and Friend doesn’t, in the same way that it’d be OK if one of you really liked a movie and the other hated it. People have different tastes.
I hope you had a good time on the road trip, and I hope you have many good trips with friends in the future.