Between the two: Why Dylan Couldn't Say No to Eric

I know this dosent really have anything to do with this but .... With eric's broken nose ... Forgive me if im wrong but if his nasal bone had gotten pushed up far enough it probably would have snapped him back into reality it would have hit his frontal lobe which controls emotion feeling pretty much our identities and Who We Are

Well it didn't really snap him back in a good way but more like made him woozy and disoriented, so they stopped at the library and went back down to try the bombs again. In a way thankfully perhaps it halted him from shooting more.

I don't think anyone could have stepped between the 2 once they had guns. Their friends all said it was basically the 2 of them all the time. They did associate with others and have other friends but I don't think they spent a lot of time with anyone else.

Freezingmoon wrote:

I think Dylan suffered from Avoidant Personality (this theory is backed be some doctors) and people with this disorder have a very difficult time with "healthy" confrontation and saying "no" to other people. I don't think Dylan was necessarily intimidated by Eric and I don't think he was afraid of Eric.  He just simply couldn't say no to Eric. Maybe he felt some slight pity for Eric too, because it seems that Eric didn't have quite as many friends as Dylan.

The dynamics of their friendship fascinate me because they were so loyal to each other, and it's hard to imagine a teenage boy being that loyal to anyone.

Quite an interesting theory.
It is true that Dylan seems to had shown many avoidant tendencies, but many doctors choose to not give a diagnose of any personality disorder at such a young age. (They say that through adolescence, one's personality might change a lot. For example, something that is considered as - let us say - histrionic personality disorder for an adult, might be a temporary, but normal behaviour for a teen.) The tendencies must be very intensive to give such a diagnose to someone under 18 years.

I would rather say that in general, Dylan had clear Cluster C characteristics: yes, he had many attitudes that we consider as AvPD traits; but I think that he had some Dependent PD tendencies too. Relying on others and not being able to say no are typical among dependents too.
These two come very often in comorbidity.
An avoidant is practically the parody of the "stereotypical introvert" behaviour: distant, self-conscious, awkwardly focused on not being critized or not giving others reason to critize him/her; usually has only very few - but really close - friends; polite but distant towards others. In such extremities, dependent tendencies might occur: these very few people become extremely important and so the patient becomes dependent of them.

Yes, Eric did not have so many friends - this might strengthened their relying on each other. I do not believe that Dylan was afraid of Eric either.

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