That reminds me of how in one of my two main groups of friends it’s very normal for people to openly pass on invitations to things because of where their mental health is.
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I just contacted an acquaintance I know in my city – we were best friends in 7th grade but drifted apart. I think we would really get along now, so I asked her out for drinks this week and she said yes!
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I reached out to someone from my book group to say I was here if she ever wanted to talk (she’d been discussing some parallels with her life that sounded really hard), and she sent me a lovely message today. Yay friendship inspiration!
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Went grocery shopping with Baby Gay last night, then we both decided it was too late to cook what we had planned on cooking (because it wouldn’t be done before I had to drive home) and got tacobell instead. And then I introduced her to The Patriot Act, specifically the episodes about billionaires and retirement (current season).
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Inspired by @darlingpants question:
- 0-1 Times a week
- 1-2 Times a week
- 2-4 Times a week
- 5+ Times a week
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voters
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Aw yepzies I’m the oddball here. :3
Does it help to distinguish friends from friendly acquaintances? I find that I have many many friendly acquaintances, but many fewer true, close friends. The people who I can go truly deep with are a small group and they are very, very important to me.
Imo, friendship is looking for life long partners – just more of them, and without the sex. 
Obviously not everyone you hang out with is a ride or die, just like not all romantic partners are ride or dies, but for me, that’s the type of love and commitment I want to make with friends. I’m willing to put in the work and it turns out that when I put in that work with people who are good fits, it’s real. I have many friends who moved away years ago who I’m still close to – we talk several times a week, support each other, etc – even though we’re thousands of miles away from each other. There are many ways in which I’m closer to Bestie than I am to Wizard; her friendship is one of the top five most important things in my entire life.
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This is a good point! I guess I do ideally want longterm friends so I should apply similar standards. The whole casual versus close friend thing is helpful but I think even with casual friends I’ve not been at all discerning in the past. I definitely don’t expect everyone to become a close confidant!
Friend date was ok. If it were a romantic date I would not want to see her again, so…I guess I shouldn’t see her again? I’m kind of confused tbh.
I’m a mess, lol.
(Sorry for all the edits, posted something personal and lost my nerve so I deleted it. LOL.)
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Turned down an invitation yesterday because it was way too late at night for me, but arranged a dinner party with the person instead, thus working on both my goals of accepting that I am an incurable early bird and strengthening a new friendship.
Loving this thread! My partner and I currently have a joint goal we call the “100 Friends Initiative” (inspired by a Naruto episode, I must sheepishly admit) in which we do at least 1 activity with friends apiece a month, and framing it as a goal really helps me maintain my energy and motivation.
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I’d say that your gut is probably right there 
You know there are people out there who are a better fit- its not in either of your interests to force something
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As an adult I’ve tended to have almost stricter parameters around friendships than I do romantic partners. With a romantic partner, I know we have the shared goal of life together so there will be lots of opportunities to grow together. With friendships, I don’t usually see people as often as I would a romantic partner so it’s almost like there needs to be a higher level of compatibility at the very start, because there are fewer opportunities to settle in to the spaces where we don’t quite fit.
I have no idea if that makes sense.
ETA – Disclaimer: I recognize not everyone is physically intimate in dating relationships, and there is a huge range of what sex is within relationships, but I’m going to totally make an assumption, @AllHat, that when you’re discussing romantic vs friendship evaluation that this would have been a factor for you in dating. Um, based on how awesome you and your husband are together. Anyway!:
In early dating days, for people who choose to include physical sex as part of dating, I think there’s something to be said for using sex to determine a lot of the compatibility questions. Not just sex itself, but how someone acts before and after and in the days after that. There’s not one easy comparable thing in friendships that allows us so quickly to expose our vulnerability, or expose inequal power dynamics or assumptions about them, or how someone reacts when things don’t go as planned. And most importantly what someone would choose to make a new friend for breakfast and would you bring them coffee in bed
A lot of people have a mental checklist for potential dating partners, too, and we don’t as often have as much clarity around potential friends.
OH! I just realized my longest made-as-an-adult friend brought me coffee in bed the first time we traveled together! Haha!
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One of my long distance friends and I have started watching a Netflix show together (Love is Blind – highly recommend for great bad TV viewing) and texting during it. It’s really fun and makes me feel like we are closer together.
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It’s soooo bad/good!!! Haha, just started watching it!
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I’m so invested now!
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Whoa this is fascinating and brilliant to notice! And what you said after, too.
This gives me a quite a bit to think about in my own relationships.
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MWP (my partner) grew up with Gemstone; their moms had worked together for years. Gemstone had a baby this last December, Sapphire, and MiL was a) gushing over baby pictures and b) chattering about not understanding they/them pronouns over Christmas dinner (relevant because these are Gemstone’s pronouns and Sapphire’s until Sapphire is old enough to decide they/them doesn’t fit).
I did my best to explain to MiL, who sort of gets it, and tries to respect and use their proper pronouns when she’s thinking about it. (She’s a good egg and is making huge changes within her state agency to collect data to benefit the rainbow community and advocating for them in the workplace.)
All this to say she also pushed me to reaching out to Gemstone now that we live in the same area!
We met once in January, it was a little awkward at first, but we have a lot of overlapping interests!
We’re trying to set a date sometime next week to hang out and talk about art projects. They want to put together a helpful sex ed zine to distribute freely throughout their home town (major issue right now - huge white nationalist invasive presence and banned sex ed in that school district), and I want to get back into drawing and printmaking.
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You’ve got three possible friend contacts (of which 2 still seem to viable). It seems perfectly reasonable to me to work through those and take a breather in the meanwhile, and doubly so if you have limited bandwidth right now for people who will need your experiences and views explained.
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Are you going to go see Pretty Strong? If so, it’s super good.
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Reached out to a few peeps over the weekend. Have plans set with two folks, one that’s probably my closest friend currently and the other that I think could become very close (partner of a friend who I’m already quite close with but hasn’t had much bandwidth for people lately). Two more folks want to get to know me better but are a bit too busy right now to make plans as of yet.
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Thanks, I think so too @diapasoun 
I don’t even know what’s playing @LittleWanderer I just got invited and said yes! Haha, I’m a good go with the flow friend in that way I guess
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@AllHat Agree with diapasoun. It’s not just about the number; it’s the nature and depth, too. So happy for you that you found Twinfriend (and Climbingfriend)!
I’m an introvert, and there are only a few people (outside of a structure like work or school pick-ups) I’d actively want to see every day or even once a week, and those relationships are incredibly precious to me.
What I’m doing today to create community for myself: I’m posting here!
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