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best friend with completely different interests and values

User Profile: determinedSea4370
determinedSea4370 14 hours ago

Has anyone dealt with a best friend who has totally different interests and values than you? I love her, we support each other big time, but... she's become a sparkly material girl while I've become more of an emo poet (and it's not like we're teens anymore- we're both almost 30) and lately this hasn't been working out.

Her current interests= gems, going shopping to look at 'all the things', lingerie, popular YouTubers. Her support style= validation and distraction. If something goes wrong, her default is to get angry.

My current interests= art, philosophy, psychology. My support style= deep dive analysis and planning. If something goes wrong, my default is to get sad. 

We balance each other out in a way, but lately things have been unbalanced and it leaves me feeling awful. Almost every hangout is me driving her to go shopping and she looks at gems and lingerie and then she shows me a whole list of YouTube shorts and I just feel so neglected (?) because whenever I try to bring up deeper issues about existing or the world, she just says she doesn't understand. I joke about wanting to dramatically smoke in the rain or cry on a swing set and she thinks I'm so quirky, but I just end up feeling like a fool. It always has to be a shopping center with her. I know she would never want to share a nature walk with me or visit a museum, so I'm at a loss about how to serve myself and her needs at the same time. I mean, I try: We both enjoy Marina and the Diamonds, so I tried to analyze this singer's new poetry book with her, because I thought she would be somewhat interested- but, it was so obvious that she didn't give a ***. I'm trying to blend our interests and find ways so that both of us feel satisfied, but it's too hard so I keep defaulting to only serving her needs and it is killing me.