A User Manual for Being Close to Me

I basically ruined all the friendships I had since I was a kid, and it is me who is the problem, not the people, although I kept myself busy to the point where I don’t feel it most of the time, alongside guilt and fear of making new friendships. I started to drop people before the cycle of me starting to get cold and avoidant begins, which would eventually ruin the friendships or relationships anyway.

I thought it was a problem related to understanding the person I am , which is a question that was always freaking me out, and you can see my failures here . I abandoned creating relationships and started to grind solo, as I’m naturally capable of doing, but some people are just there , waiting for me, and it is very bad to leave them hanging.

Meeting new people is always fun, but having a relationship of any kind with people is where I start to get anxious. This is not my playground. The good news is that I’m slowly starting to understand the person I am in relationships , and this has come after a long journey of self reflection and experiments. I’m not very happy, but I’m also a bit optimistic that I will finally draft something regarding this topic, about how you can enter my life, how my friends managed to penetrate my sphere, for a while I thought it was magic, that they were just there for me all the time and time made it happen, but in reality there is an explanation, a great part is the person who I’m and my needs in relationships.

A Reason Maybe

The best thing to do with me if you want me to be in your life or vise versa is: to never try, lol. If you feel my addition to your life is not adding any benefits, then don’t think about it. If you view my addition to your life as adding benefits, then it’s best to ask the next question: can I make use of Ahmed without being in a relationship? And most of the time the answer is yes. I don’t bite, and I love it when I can help people. Usually, I’m more helpful and useful when you don’t start tagging me with relationship roles (friend, coworker, lover(try your best),etc). so I think you need to have a reason, not everyone you meet on the street you should be friends with, and getting things from people might not necessary require any kind of relationships, although I lied to that one guy back in University about caring about him and considering him as a friend because I wanted him to keep helping me in clearing my head and reserve me a spot in the mosque, but you don’t have to be like me.

Allow me to introduce myself!

Almost many of the previous relationships I had would have been successful if I had given a heads-up disclaimer in words and not behavior. so far, I have no clear definition of what can help me introduce myself, but I’ve got the following recently and I think it will work:

The explanation I wished I could give to the people I met during the past 20 years of my life: I’m somebody who has to go through a caloric-control diet emotionally. The kindest thing is not to be “too kind” to me in an overwhelming way, not because I don’t want this, but because of the way I grew up.

About the chemistry

So I will start with this: although chemistry is real, I don’t think it is the condition to establish relationships. I can get along with all sorts of people very easily, and I once said I don’t have a type. If we vibe, we vibe , and that still holds true.

I remember I designed this poster back in 2022, where I was very frightened to be in a typical kind of relationship that requires me to spend energy on things that don’t interest me. All my friends know that I’m not so much into outings, fashion, or coffee shops, at least when I’m alone. My life is kind of quiet.

Suddenly, people seem less interested in materially demanding relationships overall, or maybe my circle is very narrow and that’s what gives me this feeling. Anyways, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Although I learned my pitfalls, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to change what I was biologically wired with.

My needs

• Space: I usually appreciate some space, not in the sense that bombarding me with messages or outing plans will disturb me. No, I’m always happy if it happens and you invite me to a place or send me a message. I’m just not used to this happening with very high frequencies. This capacity will increase with time, the more I get to know you and the more comfortable I become having you in my life. In short, I value having room for autonomy in relationships. This space is for other things like self-discovery and curiosity, which I spend most of my time learning about.

• Acceptance of emotional boundaries: Most of the time you will feel that I’m rational and independent, and a huge part of this is attributed to the fact that I don’t sit well with tension and that I don’t experience emotions the way you might. I may struggle with being open about my emotions, if any visit, or letting others in deeply. In a relationship, I might prefer to keep certain feelings and aspects of myself guarded until I’m fully comfortable. you will often translate my behavior as walls, name them whatever make sense to you, and this is not to tell you are not welcome, This can mean that I’m not someone to rely on in moments of emotional support, but I can be a very good listener and a logical problem solver.

  I also don’t know how to respond to emotional messages. Many of my friends send me those, and always mad at me when I react late, or never, not because I don’t care, and they know that, but because I simply don’t know how to respond. The closer we get over time, the less freaked out I am. If you tell me on the first day that you like me and that we should stay connected, I might freak out and end up ghosting you forever.

• Intellectual stimulation and curiosity: I can chameleon into talking about everything, but to be honest, what I appreciate the most is intellectual connections. They are very important to me. I’m drawn to relationships where I can engage in thought-provoking conversations and explore new ideas together. If you stimulate my intellect, we’re fine. but don’t worry about bringing topics that don’t seem to interest me, because this is very rare to be honest, usually I’m curios about almost everything, but don’t invite me to dedicate time to it, unless I told you so, it’s usually a combination of thoughts and frequent conversation with that I will (but very rarely) start hanging up on someone topics, at that stage you will feel that I’m not interested, because I will let you know, and you might not like it. I used to keep pleasing people forever, but not anymore.

• Growth-oriented support: Most of the time, I strive for personal growth and constant self-improvement, although I hate it, but I’m forced to it. A relationship dynamic that is focused on shared growth could be extremely fulfilling to me. This could mean supporting each other’s individual goals while also growing together as a team.

Until we get to know each other well, here are some notes

• no physical touches
• no personal questions
• no random calls
• no sharing information about me
• no putting me into the spotlight
• no invitations to places with people I don’t know beforehand
• no investigations or queries about my beliefs, faith, or political stances