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dolorosa_12) wrote2020-12-18 11:35 am
dolorosa_12) wrote2020-12-18 11:35 am
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Friday open thread: making friends
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?
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject