Friday open thread: making friends

[dolorosa_12]

Welcome back to another Friday open thread — the second-last for the year! Today's prompt is from likeadeuce:

Talk about the process of making friends or what takes a connection from casual to friendship.



I'm actually really interested to see other people's answers here, because making friends as an adult is really hard, in my experience! I can tell when someone is a friend, but the process is a bit of a mystery to me, and I'm not sure if it's a single, uniform process, or rather something that varies from friendship to friendship.

Pretty much all the friends I've made as an adult are people I either met online through fandom, or people who were students with me in the same department at Cambridge while I was doing my MPhil and PhD. In my experience with both sets of friends, our friendships developed through a process of (over)sharing very deeply personal stuff with each other. I'm not sure everyone else is like this, but I find it hard to be friends with people who aren't prepared to be open about their emotions and personal experiences (and aren't comfortable with me sometimes talking about mine), at least to a certain extent. I'm sure some people have fantastic friendships built solely on the foundation of shared interests and experiences, but for me this isn't enough — we need to have some degree of shared outlook, and it's only possible to really understand this outlook if both parties are comfortable talking about things other than shared interests.

I don't know if that makes sense — as I say, friendship is a bit weird and complicated!

This is a bit outside the scope of the prompt, but I would also add that I have a fairly healthy attitude to friendship. Some friendships endure, whereas some are very context specific, and once that context disappears, the friendship withers. If this happens, I try to have a sense of perspective, value the friendship for what it was while it lasted, but don't really mourn or stress about its loss. We may drift back into each other's lives and pick things up where we left off, but if we don't, that's still okay.

What about you?

Comments

[author_by_night]

but I find it hard to be friends with people who aren't prepared to be open about their emotions and personal experiences (and aren't comfortable with me sometimes talking about mine), at least to a certain extent

I think that makes sense. In my experience the leadup to personal things can be gradual, but that's also when a close friendship begins. I made a close friend because we started talking about more personal things, whereas before, we had common interests but that was it. It was when he opened up about some deeply personal things, which allowed me to open up about mine.

One of my challenges making friends is that I don't have kids, which seems to be a key way you make friends as an adult. I've seen "girls' night" events that looked fun, only to realize they were more Mommy and Me events. Which is great for people looking for ways to socialize with kids, but I'm not looking for that as I don't have kids. Another challenge is that everyone has opposite schedules when you're an adult, and sometimes they completely change. In college, weekends were the only time I could really do anything, and everyone was busy on the weekends. For a time after college, weekdays were better. Now it's once again that weekends are the ONLY time I can really see people, but everyone has family obligations or just wants to catch up on sleep. Which I get, but that's really the only option I have. So that makes it hard.

I think in the end, it's largely about making friends who are willing to make the time, and vice versa. It's hard when you can't find many people in the first place, but I do think a lot of it is prioritization. With the close friend I mentioned, he's often invited TO family obligations. In fact, last time we had family in town, they requested his presence. Meanwhile, we have family friends I love seeing. So I think that's a huge part of it, making friends you can blend into familial obligations, OR making friends who become found family in their own right. I think it just happens organically.

[dolorosa_12]

You're so right that it's really hard to make friends as an adult if you don't have kids. Most of my friends made in adulthood are people I met when were at university together — I think it's just easier when you have so many shared experiences to build on, and you're artificially thrown together for many hours each day (and often living together as well).

I also agree with you that it's hard when everyone's schedules are so incompatible. I know people this year who've had much more vigorous social lives than ever, because moving everything online meant far fewer problems with conflicting schedules (so they were having dinner or cocktail parties via Zoom, or playing boardgames online and stuff like that). For me that would be exhausting, and my social life has really tailed off — I've barely seen anyone other than my husband since February!

I think in the end, it's largely about making friends who are willing to make the time, and vice versa.

This is definitely true. (And regarding the 'found family' thing: I'm an immigrant, and most of my friends here are also immigrants. We sort of became each other's family by necessity, as our biological families are all very far away.)

[suncani]

This is a really interesting question/thought

I agree with you that sharing personal things is usually a good signifier, although sometimes I have no filter so I will just say things without it being reciprocal - something the internet tends to enable.

I do find determining whether people are friends or acquaintances hard - I won't be the first to declare someone a friend its usually the other person doing that for better or worse.

One of my challenges making friends is that I don't have kids, which seems to be a key way you make friends as an adult This is becoming more apparent in the last couple of years and makes maintaining current friendships in person harder.

One thing COVID has shown me is how much of my current in person friendships were based on common experiences/doing things together rather than shared interests/thoughts/outlooks. Which means when things relax a bit for in person meetings, I'm going to need to make a concerted effort to make more friends that do, and that are close enough to see more regularly.

[dolorosa_12]

sometimes I have no filter so I will just say things without it being reciprocal - something the internet tends to enable.

Haha, me too! I think I'm a bit better at it these days, but ten years ago I was a terrible oversharer online.

I do find determining whether people are friends or acquaintances hard - I won't be the first to declare someone a friend its usually the other person doing that for better or worse.

This is really interesting! I'm not sure I've ever had a moment where I made a conscious decision that someone was a friend or a close friend, and I'm sure I'm in friendships where the two of us have mismatched ideas about our respective closeness, but I'm kind of okay with that.

[suncani]

'm sure I'm in friendships where the two of us have mismatched ideas about our respective closeness, but I'm kind of okay with that >>>> ooof that's the stuff of nightmares for me, but I think that's because I'm not good at judging it.

[pauraque]

our friendships developed through a process of (over)sharing very deeply personal stuff with each other

This has been a pattern for me too, but in my experience it can be a double-edged sword. It's a fast track to feeling close to someone, and sometimes that works out, but I've also had it happen where it led to a degree of closeness and oversharing that began to feel smothering to me. And once you're there, it's not the most comfortable thing to try to walk it back and bring the friendship down to a lower level.

So, I've tried to cultivate a more gradual style of developing friendships. A little sharing about personal stuff here and there, but not jumping straight to pouring our hearts out. For me this works better and seems to lead to more lasting friendships rather than ones that are intense but flame out quickly.

[author_by_night]

This has been a pattern for me too, but in my experience it can be a double-edged sword. It's a fast track to feeling close to someone, and sometimes that works out, but I've also had it happen where it led to a degree of closeness and oversharing that began to feel smothering to me. And once you're there, it's not the most comfortable thing to try to walk it back and bring the friendship down to a lower level.

That's an excellent point. Or it's oversharing without any authentic closeness, which can be dangerous - but even if it's nothing more than irritating, it does mean you may have become more of a support system than a true friendship. A true friendship should allow for the balance you mentioned.

In retrospect, I had one that definitely went very quickly to all personal all the time. It did become necessary - we both went through some pretty awful things, and I'm glad we had each other's backs, but there was a level of codependence and an inevitable mini-fallout.

I agree that a slower burn leads to more lasting friendships.

[dolorosa_12]

This has been a pattern for me too, but in my experience it can be a double-edged sword. It's a fast track to feeling close to someone, and sometimes that works out, but I've also had it happen where it led to a degree of closeness and oversharing that began to feel smothering to me.

Oh yes, I totally agree. For various reasons, I often used to end up being the person who various friends (both in-person and online) who were going through really terrible psychological and emotional difficulties would come to for help. A lot of the time, I was completely out of my depth (I literally had to talk people down from multiple suicide attempts, which looking back is completely horrifying — I was in no way equipped to deal with that, and it's a miracle the people in question are still all right). On other occasions, the situation was less severe and it was something I was perfectly capable of handling, but it left me feeling the other person had assumed a level of closeness that I didn't share, and made me feel like I was being used.

So, I've tried to cultivate a more gradual style of developing friendships. A little sharing about personal stuff here and there, but not jumping straight to pouring our hearts out. For me this works better and seems to lead to more lasting friendships rather than ones that are intense but flame out quickly.

This seems like a very sensible approach.

[forestofglory]

Forming friendships seems to involve a combination of luck and repeated interactions. It seems to be really context dependent. Most of the places one goes to meet people as an adult seem to be very noisy which I don't enjoy at all. So right now my very few local friends are people I've known since grade school, and most of my socail life is online. Which I guess is ok, since I can't see anyone anyways, but before the pandemic I really wished for more local friends.

[dolorosa_12]

Forming friendships as an adult is really, really hard I find — lots more effort than in childhood, or even university, where by virtue of being in the same space for hours every day, you build enough shared experiences as a basis to form a friendship.

I know some people kind of replicate this in adulthood by being friends with their work colleagues, but the thought of that fills me with horror. I like most of my colleagues well enough, but I like to have a rigid wall between my work and personal/social lives.

[corvidology]

Erm... this is an interesting question for me in that for most of my life my loved ones, including MG, have worried that I don't have enough friends. My mother and older brother are world class extroverts. MG is concerned I'd turn into a hermit if widowed... unusual thought for him as he's definitely the optimist in the house and being American, he's better qualified for it. :D

I'm the sort of person who has an enormous number of acquaintances, many of whom I think consider us friends. And I've certainly had more than my fair share of the 'context specific' friends you mention, people who at the time I thought I would know for the rest of my life.

I think the differing POV of my acquaintances is based on the fact I'm a very reliable person, who knows how to keep a secret, is up for an adventure and is reasonably good company. Perhaps that's what most people are looking for in a friend?

I am, perhaps, too comfortable being alone. I have a lot of trust issues left over from childhood so it takes more to win my trust and loyalty but once earned it's practically indestructible and that's my definition of friendship. So, I have five people I would consider 'real' friends apart from MG - I've know one since birth (cousin) and another since we were four years old.

[dolorosa_12]

It seems to me that you have exactly the number of friends that suits you — it's not as if you're worried by the current state of affairs.

I agree with you that people often have different perspectives on whether they are acquaintances or friends — but unless one person actually directly asks the other whether they see them as a friend, I'm not sure it matters. As long as each person is satisfied with whatever they're getting out of the relationship, does it matter if one person thinks of the other as a friend and the other thinks they're acquaintances? (I suppose the problems would only arise if expectations became mismatched.)

I'm very different to you — I tend to rush into friendships pretty quickly and share a lot of myself. I do try to gauge how people react to this, and if it's clear that we have mismatched expectations I step back. I also have a sense of perspective about all this, and don't take things personally if someone doesn't seem to want to rush into a close friendship — I just accept that we have mismatched perspectives, clashing personalities, or don't view our shared context in the same way.

[bruttimabuoni]

Oh, this is interesting. I used to be terrible at making friends - fine at school and uni, and then nobody new for for 15 years or so, other than mildly cheerful relationships with colleagues and flatmates.

The internet has absolutely transformed this for me - and specifically twitter, which I know isn't your thing. I've made *so* many friends that way. Not generally people I have no connection with, but it's been a wonderful way of deepening conference/yoga hellos into something where you know enough about one another to share quite a lot. People can have terrible personae, and be utterly fake online, but it's hard to do that under a consistent account for a long time among people who do know you a little bit. I've gone on holiday three times with people I know 97% through social media, but with just enough reality that I know they are for real. It's always been excellent. And some of them have been rocks in this last year, whereas people I know through more conventional routes haven't all been great. I guess it helps to skip those middle phases of "person who seems pleasant but is there a terrible thing I have yet to discover"?

I think you're right about the need to get to a shared sense of values. It builds warmth - not that you have to share everything, but you have a bedrock of comfort in their company. (One of the few genuinely good things about the last few years has been anyone who I knew in June 2016, I know whether or not we have some basic worldview in common.)

[dolorosa_12]

It's nice that you're able to make friends through Twitter. I have met a couple of great people that way (to be honest mainly through shouting Remain-y things constantly over the past few years), but for the most part those brights spots are drowned out by a deluge of stress. So it's really great to hear that solid Twitter friendships can be done.

I've gone on holiday three times with people I know 97% through social media, but with just enough reality that I know they are for real. It's always been excellent. And some of them have been rocks in this last year, whereas people I know through more conventional routes haven't all been great.

This is my experience with a lot of internet friendships, although my equivalent would be the people I met through Philip Pullman fan forums thirteen years ago. I've travelled all over the world and stayed in the houses of these people, gone on holiday with them, helped them with uni stuff — one of them was my bridesmaid at my wedding. If you meet the right people online in the right circumstances, the result can be incredible.

One of the few genuinely good things about the last few years has been anyone who I knew in June 2016, I know whether or not we have some basic worldview in common.

Oh, indeed. (And, because I know how people voted in my constituency, I know that I'm not walking around day by day, surrounded by frightened racists. 73 per cent of voters — which obviously doesn't include the large number of non-Commonwealth immigrants who couldn't vote — share my worldview. That was enough for me to know that this place is home.)

[rekishi]

Hm! This is a good question.

I am...not very good at friends. I want to be! But I'm not. My problem is that I'm a natural loner and when the choice comes to inertia vs action (i.e. go out and meet new people) the choice is invariably inertia. I'm better at online friendships than real life ones, because I can maintain them from the comfort of my computer. But I'm not the sort of person who says "oh let's go out do X", either I do X by myself or it's simply not something I will do (have a beer in a bar by myself, go to a club by myself, etc.; go on vacation by myself or to the cinema or a play? sure, anytime!).

I've become, as an adult only, relatively okay at what you call context specific friends. I had a lot of trouble with friendships when I was in school (I'm an only child and didn't grow up in a neighbourhood full of kids so I always acted older than I was), but it was pretty okay in university. But those sort of went away when we finished. Moving to a new place for grad school was hard, but I was lucky that I fell in with a group of people who basically forced me to go out (that's when I really experienced what university student life was like, but with some disposable income!).

I stay in touch with some of them, and consider two of them real friends, but most of that also withered away.

I think part of my very specific problem is that I go through phases of depression/dysthymia when I simply Can't. (I'm not clinically diagnosed for Reasons, but I'm have good reason to believe it's the case.) I remain very functional at my job, but I simply Can't socially (also because I interact with tons of people at my job, it ises up all my social mojo). I've had a few lengthy stints of unemployment in the past ten years and as you may imagine that doesn't help, it throws you into so much uncertainty and it's not what I want to talk about then either. But then the communication goes dormant and then simply stops. The same thing is often true for friends-originally-from-fandom, while also here people may go away with context disappearing or life happening, coming back is a bit easier. Though I've taken a long leave of absence from fandom for reasons related to grad school and unemployment as well, when I wasn't even good company for myself let alone other people.

Actually now that I say that, I've actively tried to cut friends out of my life because of that way of thinking (not being good company for them) and it took me until just a year or two ago to figure out that some of those people might know that and still choose to be my friend because they can protect themselves and don't need me to do that for them. (Well, and then there are friends I'm very conflicted about, I think I told you about that 'wedding snub' from a few years ago and it sort of soured me on the whole group. But they also now simply lead different lives, married and with kids, I want to talk about other things than husbands and kids.)

I've had one friend at grad tell me point blank "you never say anything about yourself!" which...hurt but isn't wrong. However, part of that is because I don't always want to talk about work and at that point in my life, work and the shitshow that was going on with my supervisor were the only things going on aside from a low key fannishness. And I don't bring fandom, and the fic I write and my ideas on canon et al, into most areas of my real life if it's clear the people I interact with aren't fannish themselves. I'm chronically single (very much by choice), so I don't have my own woes about my partner or sex life to contribute so........ Idk.

But the bottom line is, I'm pretty okay by myself. Sure, there are times when I would wish there were more people in my life who I could talk to and who were physically closer and would just give me a damn hug, but it's not often or dire enough that I actually...do it. Besides, I'll be moving away (would have already, had the pandemic not interfered) so that whole process needs to start again one way or other and we'll see if that leads to a fresher start with more motivation. And now that I've found my way back to active fandom engagement, matters also are different. I do prefer the online community anyhow.

Also, making friends as an adult is *hard* when you're an introvert who doesn't like to go places.

[dolorosa_12]

Moving to a new place for grad school was hard, but I was lucky that I fell in with a group of people who basically forced me to go out (that's when I really experienced what university student life was like, but with some disposable income!).

This was the same for me too! My undergraduate years were really awful, because it was basically four bitter years of realising that my childhood and teenage friendships had been entirely context-dependent, and not knowing how to adjust and make friends in the new university context. (I moved city with my family and went to university there, while almost every friend from my home town remained there and studied there for univeristy.)

But then when I emigrated for postgraduate studies I was forced into a situation where I knew no one, had no family to fall back on, and had the great fortune to end up in a really friendly, sociable department where most of the other students shared my worldview, interests, and generally socialised in ways that I liked. Most of my non-internet friends are people I met during that time, and they're wonderful.

But the bottom line is, I'm pretty okay by myself. Sure, there are times when I would wish there were more people in my life who I could talk to and who were physically closer and would just give me a damn hug, but it's not often or dire enough that I actually...do it. Besides, I'll be moving away (would have already, had the pandemic not interfered) so that whole process needs to start again one way or other and we'll see if that leads to a fresher start with more motivation. And now that I've found my way back to active fandom engagement, matters also are different. I do prefer the online community anyhow.

It sounds as if you're in a situation that works for you, and that's a good thing. But yes, I totally agree with you that making friends as an adult is really, really hard.

[rekishi]

I think it is better to call it a temporary equilibrium. I made a post a few years ago that I must have deleted because I can't find it in my archive of very sporadic posting since 2015, but it was basically to the effect that intellectually, I'm very well aware that humans are social creatures and it's to my detriment not to maintain local relationships. It has real consequences for the immune system and also for ones mental state (oxytocin feedback loop) not to.

However, intellectually I know a lot of things I don't act on (like that exercise is good for me). So I remain in this holding pattern, very aware that it is not more than that. But I also think as long as I'm aware that I'm just getting comfortable in limbo, not all is lost. And as I said, the whole thing needs a reset anyway once I move.

[charlottenewtons]

This is an interesting question. I too find it difficult to make friends as an adult. Even before the pandemic, work was the only place where I got to meet new people. I tend to categorize between close friends, work friends and online friends. Close friends are people who I went to school or university with. Work friends I count as people that I would choose to socialize with out of work. I consider anyone I speak to online on a fairly regular basis a friend.

[dolorosa_12]

This is really interesting, because you're the first person so far to mention work friends. I like most of my work acquaintances well enough, and in non-COVID times will quite happily have coffee breaks with them at work, go to the staff Christmas dinner in a restaurant, etc, but otherwise I try to keep a very rigid wall between my work and social/personal lives. (I have colleagues who have added each other on Facebook and stuff like that, which makes me recoil in horror!)

You're right that it's very hard to make friends as an adult. The only people I know who have done so (in an in-person sense) are all parents, or they're very involved with shared hobbies.

[charlottenewtons]

I actually feel the same way about keeping boundaries between my work and social lives and think it is very important to have non work friends. (The Facebook thing makes me recoil in horror as well. I am friends with some people from work but only because they added me). Most of my work friends are from my old job. The working conditions were quite difficult which some of us bonded over and kept in touch when we all moved on to other jobs.

[trepkos]

I was quite lonely as a child, so when I make a friend, I try very hard not to let them get away. I fear this might be smothering to some! I hate to lose touch with people I like/love. I like the description of friendship in "The Little Prince", though I guess it doesn't work for everyone, and is a bit impractical.
If I have decided unilaterally that someone is destined to be my friend, I will usually behave as though we know each other slightly better than we actually do - it generally works. But it is harder as an adult, to find times when they can meet you.
I think I am a bit dysfunctional as a friend. But I have friends from school, university, kids who lived down the road when I was at uni, from a goth club I used to go to in York, various gay scenes, past jobs in the photo-lab, Zoo and the Arts Centre, holidays I've been on, and fandom, and people I've met in cafes/at clubs. And I miss them all, and wish I could visit them all.

[dolorosa_12]

That quote from The Little Prince is beautiful.

It sounds as if you've got a great lifetime's worth of friends, from all the major moments in your life — but, as you say, it's very hard to make time to meet friends when you're adults, unless they're work colleagues or people with whom you're otherwise spending lots of time. And yeah, the pandemic doesn't help.

[skygiants]

I think I've got better about making friends as I got older, actually, which is not at all what I expected but is rather exciting! I spent quite a lot of my childhood/teens perennially terrified of shoving myself where I wasn't wanted or making a nuisance of myself, but the older I get the more confident I become that people do in fact want to be friends with me, and thus the better at actually making and taking advantage of opportunities for friendship ... since moving to Boston I've made friends through work, through book and writing groups, and through getting to know other friends of the people I knew when I moved here, and I definitely have never had as wide a social circle both online and in person as I do right now.

It still usually takes a while for me to feel confident defining a relationship as a friendship rather than an acquaintanceship, though! Usually once I get a signal that someone wants to spend time with me specifically, in an active rather than a passive way -- a conversation moving from general Twitter to DM, a specific invitation to an event that they're hosting, a shift from [structured activity or context through which I first know them] to [unrelated just-for-fun activity] -- is when I start to think 'wonderful, it seems we're friends.'

(This year has surprised me because I've actually made some rapid-fire online friendships during the pandemic (mostly through zoom theater) at a much more rapid pace than my acquaintanceship-to-friendship process usually takes.)

[dolorosa_12]

This is really lovely to hear — most people commenting here seem to share my opinion that it's hard to make friends in adulthood, so it's nice to know it can be done!

I spent quite a lot of my childhood/teens perennially terrified of shoving myself where I wasn't wanted or making a nuisance of myself, but the older I get the more confident I become that people do in fact want to be friends with me, and thus the better at actually making and taking advantage of opportunities for friendship

I relate to this a lot, although I still don't think I'm great at 'taking advantage of opportunities for friendship' in person, though I find it quite easy online.

Usually once I get a signal that someone wants to spend time with me specifically, in an active rather than a passive way -- a conversation moving from general Twitter to DM, a specific invitation to an event that they're hosting, a shift from [structured activity or context through which I first know them] to [unrelated just-for-fun activity] -- is when I start to think 'wonderful, it seems we're friends.'

This makes a lot of sense to me. I'm just terrible at being the one who sends the signal!

[thawrecka]

I'm someone who is a lot better at making friends as an adult than I was as a child, but that's mostly because of things I learned as a child with added patience. For me, patience really is half the battle, and the other half is just regularly reaching out to people I find interesting.

I think, because my family moved around a lot as a child and I had very different experiences at all my schools, I had to really figure out how to make at least a superficial rapport happen quickly and not just rely on instinct, which serves me fairly well these days. Offline it means saying yes to a lot of things when I'm in a new situation, but in both spheres it means a lot of figuring out everyone's boundaries and managing that. Patience and time, though, really are the main things for me.

[dolorosa_12]

It's so nice to hear that there are some people who find making friends as an adult easy — for me it's a complete mystery, although obviously I do have friends I met in adulthood. But I can't explain how it happened!

I think, because my family moved around a lot as a child and I had very different experiences at all my schools, I had to really figure out how to make at least a superficial rapport happen quickly and not just rely on instinct, which serves me fairly well these days.

That makes a lot of sense, and also helps explain why I find things so difficult: I lived in the same city from the ages of three to eighteen, I went to my local preschool, then the local primary school, then the local high school, and then the local college (in Canberra the last two years of secondary school are in a separate 'college' rather than being in high school) — so basically I grew up surrounded by the same bunch of people for my entire childhood. I did change and add to my social circle during those years, but there was no need to do so at speed, and I always knew more than half of the people in my year when I moved from one school to another.

It really sounds as if your childhood experiences served you well and helped a lot when navigating friendship in adulthood.

[likeadeuce]

This conversation is all really fascinating to me and one thing it makes me think about is that as an adult/post college -- whether online, IRL, or hybrid -- I've pretty much always made friends in groups? clusters? I don't mean that I met everybody at the same time and place, but that for whatever reason (an active fandom, a highly social job, heavy involvement in a cause or project), I got into a successful friend-making groove, and often I was a conduit for connecting those people to each other.

So I suspect it was partly about the surroundings but also partly about my behavior and attitude -- I was in a mode of actively listening and actively sharing; JUST trying to get people together based on common interests (book clubs, classes, writing workshops, meetup groups, whatever) have yielded some fun times in the activities themselves, but never turns into people that I reliably communicate with or talk to outside of the activity itself.

I like your comment about sharing personal things a lot, too. That makes so much sense. Over the past few years -- 2017 to 2019 or so -- I spent a lot of time at public meetings and organizational events and the like, and I decided to make a point of reaching out to people that I saw occasionally to actually make time and sit down with them one on one, ask about their personal story and share what felt important of mine. Not all of these get togethers led to deep personal friendships -- sometimes I realized 'this person is on a fully different page from me in terms of priorities -- but some of them did.

I think the failure mode of personal sharing is scaring people off with oversharing and talking too much (which I know I've done both IRL and online) but for the most part I've learned not to take this too personally. That might not have been what person was looking for at the moment, but it's balanced with a lot of people I would not have gotten to know if I hadn't taken those steps.

It's funny that I think I submitted this prompt to you a few months ago when the 'going out and meeting people the "normal" way didn't feel AS far off as it does right now, and now I'm struggling with how to maintain those relationships without the real life connection (it doesn't help that I've gotten off Facebook for the most part, which has mostly been a good decision, but which was helping to maintain some of those local friendships in the background even when we were too busy to see each other much).

I'll be interested to follow up on this thought process in a year when HOPEFULLY we'll be seeing more of a normal.

[dolorosa_12]

I really love the way you describe your own friend-making experiences, particularly the fact that you seem to be the driving force between connecting groups of people into new friendships. I am terrible at this, and it just seems to require so much energy! I think it's in part because I don't like being the one to organise events, because I have this horror of imposing or making people feel like they're obligated to attend social events, and so in the end I never organise anything! It's hard to be the social hub if you're terrified of organising events and inviting people to them!

I think the failure mode of personal sharing is scaring people off with oversharing and talking too much (which I know I've done both IRL and online) but for the most part I've learned not to take this too personally.

This is very true, and certainly reflects my own experiences. I think in most instances it's probably me being the oversharer, although there have been a couple of rare occurrences where I felt that someone was imagining a degree of frienship between us that I didn't feel, which is always uncomfortable.

I hope that when things return to something approaching 'normal' you'll be able to pick up those local friendships where you left off. The pandemic has had a strange, distorting effect on people's social lives.