Lex Didn’t Deliver On Its Promise

I’ve done a lot, and I mean A LOT of cleanup when it comes to my relationships with people these past few years… However, this year has been the most eye opening and deep inflection point of my life when it comes to relationships with people that there is no going back to what I tolerated before. 

Therapy and my Masters (yes I’m going to say it often on my blog because I’m proud of myself for doing the work) have revealed so much to me on my journey, along with my own self-reflection and application of psychological frameworks, that I see the world around me differently. Making sense of the old and toxic “friendships” and family members I associated with has been paramount for not only my freedom from trauma, but also paramount for my survival. I have been to the end of the earth and back thousands of times to find new data points I’ve missed along the way. For example, I realized that a toxic “friendship” I had with this one person since college for almost 20 years was only possible, because I had allowed the same abusive patterns from him to happen to me that my own (possibly) Narcissistic and emotionally immature mother was doing to me. Another pattern I had realized recently was realizing that not everyone can hold space for you or has the bandwidth for you. To understand and have depth with you. 

A lot of these revelations have led to why I’ve always been “The Fixer”, and why I’ve fallen into many abusive cycles with people without knowing these people are cruel, emotionally immature, incapable of being reciprocal, self-absorbed, selfish, and even entitled. And while I thought I was finally making strides to more healthier and reciprocal friendships this year, I would soon grow to learn that not every thing or everyone is what it seems…

Lex: The LGBTQ Social Media

Upon trying to put myself out there (again…) and try to find new friends as a Black transmasc queer, it’s really hard to find spaces where people will… make space for you! You would think that well I’m in Atlanta, Georgia that I should have somewhere to go, but if there is, it’s hidden to high hell! Previously, I tried volunteering at AWA (Anime Weekend Atlanta) in the Manga Library to try and fill the gap a few years ago. The experience left me hollow and emptier than I came in with as some of the friends I thought I made had basically ghosted me on discord afterwards… never mind being misgendered… Then I made an online friend on Reddit a little bit after the convention. This was while I was going to therapy and working on my masters. The friendship ended up where she used AI to process and respond to me in a flattened way when I finally stopped masking and told her my truth (and also that she could not hold these truths about me, especially when I opened up about my CPTSD…). 

All of this hurt, and I thought I had no other options. But then Lex came up when doing an AI session for something that I trying to figure out. It suggested I try using Lex to find and connect to similar people or people like me! I was intrigued by this unicorn social media app (that of course had a paywall built around it…). 

My anxiety started to build as I filled out my profile, and I looked around the app trying to figure out its mechanics. I did the best I could trying to fit me into a small character limit and identities they gave me to add to my profile. I was ready AND frightened! What if the person turns out to be someone from my past that I allowed to treat me like shit? What if they get to talking to me and I’m too much (… and they have to use AI to respond to me…)? What if they don’t even READ my profile and just go in with zero context? For the most part, these things did unfortunately happen lmao… I can laugh about it now because I deactivated the account for now. However, those that came from it were… not giving me the hope I thought this app would give me. 

Lex: The Results

I made a little over 3 1/2 friends on there. The 1/2 comes from someone contacting me to talk about friendship, even though I say I’m only looking for friends and their profile doesn’t even mention anything to do with friends. It was literally the exact opposite on their profile. They eventually ghosted me and yeah… which funny enough they were a they/them too so… yay me…

Another friend I made, we had great (deep?) conversations on the app. I thought it was going well until it moved off the app. Mind you I had to eventually, because there is a pay wall and if this is going well, why stay there? We hit up discord as an alternative. I was giving a lot back and forth, but I noticed that their reciprocal nature and communication literally nose-dived into hell. Like I cannot make this up. They (yes another they/them) were also going through a lot it seemed, so I wondered if either one of us had bandwidth for this between us. I was giving way too much after a point, and they were just only asking me “What fun plans do you have for the weekend?” TWICE since we got off the app. That’s the only questions I got after asking about them and checking-in on their cat and mentioning I have one and what not upon everything else I mentioned. Also, they would ghost me for a week at a time! Here we go again. I’m not saying it had to be daily or whatever, but that’s how much I didn’t matter: they waited a week to respond when they get online almost daily to play games and I see it and only ask me surface-level questions. Bye.

The next person I made friends with had a richer background and was Black. I thought I finally found someone. I almost cried. Again, on the app, there was depth being traded back and forth I thought. I’m already on edge trying to balance being reciprocal and not too much. We even seemed spiritually aligned talking about Reiki and other things. He also had a similar schedule as me for work and a sense of humor! He asked how my week was the prior week. I was like wow RECIPROCITY!!! I literally gave him depth, I mean DEPTH. And he also asked for my number to offload from this app because he, too, hated the app and wanted off. I gave him literally all of the depth + my number and lmao his response… “here’s my number” and then makes a joke about his area code. Bitch excuse me?! LMAO. I say so much and some of it was a little painful with me battling my partner’s brother in that. And all he can do is not only give me his number but never address what I said. AT ALL. EVER. He could have text me first. I gave him the fucking number FIRST. So I text him with an introduction. Huge mistake. He never, ever gets deep with me again. Makes it all about himself. And even worse never picks up the conversation from Lex. EVER. This, by the way, is a person who is a professional cuddler, Reiki instructor/healer, and learning to be a yoga instructor?! Are you kidding me?! Bye. 

The last person I became friends with on Lex, her name is Jam. She found me after I turned off being searchable on the app to get a break from even others randomly messaging me with no depth nor context. She was great and we exchanged PSN accounts. I’m still learning my way around friendship again. She was reciprocal and warm, so I figure I’d at least see where it goes. We may not have much in common perhaps; however, it is nice to have someone seem like they care about you and want to connect. It’s still new, so here’s hoping. 

In The End…

I’m hoping that my muscle for learning to spot real reciprocal friendship with depth gets stronger. I also hope I can find emotionally mature friends as well. They don’t have to be anything in particular honestly… just wanting to connect and show up for each other. I didn’t think it was that hard… but maybe it really is…