Cycling goals ruining friendship

[ny biker]

Sounds like you've gotten a lot of great feedback--

I just wanted to add though, just because Sarah has a different idea of group rides or different goals for cycling, it does not really mean she has "emotional problems." A lot of people don't like getting dropped, it can be demoralizing (to them), and maybe her feelings were a little hurt by being excluded in the past. I think a lot of us have been there once or twice at some point.

I think you put it great, to explain that cycling is your "happy place" and to simply say that you need your alone time to train... but you'd love to meet up after or for a later ride.

Happy training and good luck!

She has a "vendetta" against people who stopped riding with her because she got too upset about being dropped. That is not an emotionally healthy response.

[jp4995]

I thought this was an interesting article, relevant to the discussion at hand:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/perso....html?hpt=Sbin

[shootingstar]

I thought this was an interesting article, relevant to the discussion at hand:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/perso....html?hpt=Sbin

Depends on the personality of the person-- male or female who have acquaintances to share common fun activities but aren't really close friends..and are able not to mix up the distinctions between activity acquaintances and close friends.

In a way, no different from having different 'friends' to share different facets of ourselves.

My closest friends do not even cycle much at all. But they are the ones who have known me for several decades. THough they are on slightly different paths, most interestingly on the health/fitness side, each of us have separately found our own individual paths to finding different types of exercises/sports and foods to help ourselves. We don't spend much time talking about this facet because that is not the original /real purpose of such close friendships have with these women. They will be there for me, even if I should lose interest in cycling (which I hope won't occur for the next few decades.).

Doesn't preclude other cycling-related friendships from developing further, but if a person feels at all slighted/competitive, the friendship will not deepen nor become closer for quite awhile, if that.

[PamNY]

I thought this was an interesting article, relevant to the discussion at hand:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/perso....html?hpt=Sbin

That is interesting -- in recent years, I've developed "special interest" friends and it's a lot of fun. But there are boundaries. For me, this was through birdwatching.

Hawks in NYC are a big deal and there is a huge emotional investment in the individual birds, so we shared some very emotional moments. I consider these people friends, but the friendship is limited. I was confused at first but now I'm really enjoying having this group in my life.

Thanks for posting that article. Also thanks to the OP; this has been a good discussion.