It's Not Making Friends That's Hard, It's Keeping Them
I want to be a better friend. I really do.
The problem with saying, “I don’t have many friends” is that it’s complete bullshit on its face.
I know a lot of people. I have plenty of folks that would make plans with me if I asked. There are people who have reached out. I’m on a text thread with a group of incredible people who I talk to more often than most of my family. Actually, I talk to a lot of people more than my family.
The problem I have is maintaining close friendships. Friendships with people I can talk to about something other than video games or Marvel movies. I don’t have a lot of friends I can talk about when I’m having a shitty day. I definitely don’t have a lot of friends I can talk to about serious life problems. I’m not asking you to be that friend. I’m not asking you to comment on this that you’d be that friend.
It’s not the lack of people. It’s not mean folks being mean. It’s me.
I’ve never been good at it.
I’ve always wanted to be good at it.
I know it’s my fault that I’m not good at it.
But I’ve never been good at it. It’s a lot like watching most of humanity through a glass window as they understand how to interact.
Maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m sad Twitter is mutating into something inexplicably worse than before. I made friends there. Long term friends. I’ve reconnected with friends - in a way that Facebook and Instagram just never did. I’m not a camera-friendly person. I’m not entirely equipped to show everyone how bad I look as a way of proving my continued existence.
Twitter was a platform centered entirely around writing, and I was able to see what people I liked were doing. People I was a fan of. People I knew. It was the ability to say “hello” or “good job” or “please hire me” quickly without the need to make plans that you want to cancel at the last minute. I didn’t have to prepare myself to catch up with people. I didn’t need to feel bad about forgetting details. All that was in the record, easy to look up.
It’s not easy for me to maintain friendships. There’s no clear excuse I can provide. I wish there were. I wish I could blame that shit on something specific - point to a moment that made it hard for me to text someone to see how they are without the deepest dread. I have mental health issues, but so do most of the people who actively want to be my friends and are better at socializing. I recognize I’m describing social anxiety, but it feels more than that. And I’m certainly not dismissing the social anxiety of others.
There’s just a loneliness to not having a lot of close friends. It’s also, I’m sure, an extreme annoyance to people who consider themselves my close friend as I complain about not having close friends. It’s a very brain-divided thing. I recognize people care about me. I care about those same people. Yet somehow it’s nearly impossible to put those two together on a consistent basis. It’s hard for me to reach out, even as people assure me I should reach out.
Nor is it really a fear of rejection. I’ve been rejected most of my life. Sure, I don’t like being rejected. Nobody fucking likes being rejected. Well, that’s probably not true. The world’s got all kinds and if being told you’re not good enough makes you happy then let me be the first to say you are not good enough. You really aren’t. I hope you know that and enjoy it.
The strange thing is, again, I’m not bad with people. I’m decent at parties. At the end of a party, my brain feels like I’ve been taking a test for four hours, but I’m still not bad at it. People like me. I don’t fucking know why, but that’s their god-given right.
I guess when someone says they don’t have many close friends, it’s not always because they haven’t tried or that there’s something driving people off. There are people who might be happy to be close friends just a text away. It’s that wall, though. The wall between being able to connect with people past surface level shared interests. A wall that’s entirely artificial, but one I might not be able to overcome.
I want you to be my friend.
I’m just sorry if I completely suck at it.
I go through this, too. Especially with comedy, sooo many people come in and out of your life. I've lost touch with so many.
I'm terrible at maintaining relationships because my natural state is just to sink back into my little hole. I don't know the answer, but part of it (I think) is that people aren't judging you as harshly as you think they are.
Friendships need the regular recurring rituals that other relationships have. Like weekly family dinners, anniversaries, date nights, etc.
It's weird to have to create these for friendships because it's terrifying and kinda emabarrasing to make it a Whole Thing. I wish they just existed already so we could quietly slip into them and our platonic relationships can have their much-needed lifeblood.
This is also probably why introverts need to be adopted by extroverts, aka the people who don't think that making these efforts is a terrifying idea.