I have a theory that life moves in four-year cycles, much like the Olympics, American presidential elections, or pleasant interactions with your extended family. Think about it:
0-4: You’re a baby, your consciousness hasn’t really turned on
5-8: Your consciousness turns on and you’re in school for the first time
9-12: You finish grade school and you’re almost a teen
13-16: You transition to high school and, at least in the US, learn to drive
17-20: You become an adult and you go off to college or start your post-education life
21-24: You can legally drink in bars (at least in the US) and, for those in college, you graduate and move on to a job or further education
It’s a rough timeline, sure, and your mileage will vary based on where you live. But generally speaking, our early lives in the United States are made up of these multi-year stages. Like most stages of life, they’re mostly defined by change: Bodily change, hormonal change, social change, career change, location change, you name it.
If you’re anything like me, these changes take place right as you’re starting to settle in and get comfortable with the routine. The upshot It keeps things fresh and dynamic! You’re essentially placed on a moving walkway of human experience where you’re constantly introduced to new people, places, things, all the nouns you can imagine. And don’t forget about proper nouns, either. You’re likely to make friends with people in the same bucket as you, people who live in the same neighborhood or go to the same school or have the same job or play the same sports you do. Most of my current friendships were forged somewhere between grade school and middle school.
But you’ll notice that list up above cuts off at 24. Obviously it’s not a formal list, but I think most people would agree that, although major changes continue to happen, they’re less predefined and more random than before. Moreover, we tend to settle in to more of a routine. As planned changes slow down, predictability takes its place, and we tend to put down roots with the people we love most in the places we currently live.
All of which is a long way of saying: Man, whatever happened to friends?
Actually, let’s be clearer: I mean whatever happened to my friends? I can probably count the number of close relations I have on one hand; I’m lucky in that my wife is truly my best friend, which is wonderful, but my day-to-day life sees me working from home, running errands, and then relaxing … at home. My old high school and college friends are all still alive (which is, uh, good), but most of them live prohibitively far enough away that regular hangouts would be hard even without competing priorities. Even the ones that live closer have jobs, significant others, kids, again, all the nouns. It’s hard to find time to hang out the way we used to.
That’s not to say none of this is my fault, mind you. Or, more accurately, most of this is at least a little my fault. Or, even more accurately, I am terrible at cultivating and maintaining friendships. I always have been, actually. I never take the initiative to call people, rarely take the initiative to text them, and I’m possibly the most guilty person ever of making plans with zero intention to solidify them. You know what I mean. The “We should totally get coffee sometime!” person. The “This was great, let’s do it again!” person. That’s my move. I didn’t invent that move, but I’ve essentially perfected it.
There’s a pretty obvious question here that I think makes sense to dive into: Why? Why do I do this? I suppose it probably comes from a place of childhood low self-worth and self-esteem. I always felt like I was burdening people when I asked them to hang out. Why would they want to hang out with me? I’m sure they have better things to do. It also comes from a place of being deathly afraid of rejection. Even if a person has an airtight reason, I’ve always taken declining plans as a deeply personal social invalidation. Yes, I understand that your family is flying to Spain for a wedding, Portugal for a funeral and Andorra for the wedding of two funeral planners who met at a wedding, but I feel like the real issue here is you just didn’t want to hang out.
What’s more, all this anxiety I’m prone to made it even easier to fall into the black hole of addiction, and a key component of my addiction was The Drunk Text. Reaching out to people — people I desperately missed and genuinely wanted to talk to — was too hard when I was sober. But when I was plastered? All those pesky inhibitions disappeared and suddenly, I was social. It gave me the illusion of interaction, all from the comfort of my home, and I could get as drunk as I wanted while I was doing it. It was perfect!
[Arrested_Development_meme.jpeg: It was not perfect]
It turns out there was a lot wrong with that plan. Shocking, right? I thought it was pretty bulletproof, but then again: I was drunk when I came up with it. And uh, drunk when I executed it, revised it, and continued to execute it for years. It’s like the old adage “write drunk, edit sober” only you do all the parts drunk and publish your book anyway. I believe Jack Kerouac tried this in 1958.
Since entering recovery, though, I haven’t tried this plan, and while I wouldn’t trade the mental clarity and overall improvements in my life for anything … it does mean my social life has suffered, even if that “social life” was horribly misguided. Let’s also not forget that we recently lived through a global pandemic. Sure, early 2020 was full of jokes (from myself and plenty of others) about how introverts had been practicing for social distancing for years. But weeks made way for months, which made way for years. I don’t think it’s melodramatic to say life has been irrevocably altered due to COVID-19, and one of the biggest shifts is in how — and how often — we socialize.
Put it all together and the conclusion is pretty clear: I need friend(s).
Friendship
I know I’m far from the first to struggle with this issue, but making friends in adulthood is surprisingly hard, if only just because of proximity and opportunity. In high school and college, you get to meet hundreds of different people all the time. They’re constantly circulating in and out of your life: you’re in classes with them, you live near them, you literally cannot get away from them. Trust me: I tried as hard as I could. It didn’t work. Yes, many of those friendships were ones of convenience. Sure, plenty of them are just acquaintances or drinking buddies or people who hold more of a temporary place in your life. That’s all certainly true. But it still counts as socialization. It still means you’re getting out of the house, talking to people, screaming obscenities at opposing football teams with people, going to parties with people, working out with people, etc. Not that I ever yelled obscenities at anyone. In fact, what I think I remember saying was “good luck yourself, Matt Leinart!” I just wanted what was best for that guy.
That’s early adulthood. Later on in adulthood — say, when you get into your mid-30s — things get to be a little different. I’ve worked a handful of different places in my life, and I’ve made friends everywhere I’ve been, but that’s limited to 2-3 per workplace. Then it’s incumbent on us to keep in contact when one of us leaves, and as we’ve established before, I’m terrible at that. And hobbies? Most of my hobbies are done solo; the others are ones where talking to people isn’t necessarily forbidden, but it’s not exactly welcome, either. I’m talking gym, coffee shops, even just walking the dogs around the neighborhood. There’s potential for a social element, but most people are there for their own reasons, and intrusions aren’t always welcome. In case that’s not enough, even The Gray Lady agrees that loneliness and isolation is on the rise. (As for the cure being Pickleball, well … I’ll take my chances with crippling depression, thank you very much.)
So what to do? Well, seems like an obvious starting point would be putting myself out there in some capacity. For instance, what am I doing right now? (Besides pretending to work, of course.) Writing! There are, I’m told, writers groups that exist in the world, where writers gather to … write … together? I don’t really know — maybe that’s why I need to check them out. The idea of getting in the same room as other creative people, especially as someone whose day job veers pretty far away from artistic creativity, seems pretty nice. For that matter, it reminds me of something the wonderful Molly Knight offers to paid subscribers called The Lab. It’s essentially what a writing group sounds like to me, plus there’s some baseball talk. Cannot recommend Molly highly enough, BTW:
Another option I hear brought up a lot is volunteer work. This isn’t always the most accessible option, especially if you have to invest your time and money into anything, but it can be pretty rewarding. Having volunteered before, I know this to be true, including the accessibility part. It’s not exactly something you can go do from anywhere. It can also be emotionally draining, depending on the nature of the work. But the more I sit and reflect on it, the more volunteering seems like a great option both for my mental health and to theoretically make friends.
But this wouldn’t be Quiz Pop without some sort of test, would it? Let’s consult something called Psychologies.co.uk! This test isn’t exactly about how I should make friends, but it’s whether or not I know how to make them. Does that difference make sense? It’s like Googling how to fix a computer problem. I want to solve the problem, but I also want to make sure I know how to use Google in the first place. I’m not sure that analogy helped make it clearer. Oh well, no time to go back, there’s a test to take!
This one was 11 questions about how I handle different social situations among my friends. The result?
Well, yeah.
Digging a little deeper, this answer makes a lot of sense to me. I do crave solitude — I’m writing about needing friends literally right now! I am pretty self-sufficient, overall. The part that really stands out is this:
For you, having lots of friends implies a certain degree of obligation that you don’t particularly want to be burdened with.
Maybe that’s the crux of the matter. It’s possible that a lot of my perception about being a burden comes from feeling like others are a burden to me. It might also be true that the people in my life take my introversion and social anxiety as disdain or indifference. I do like my friends! Really! I’m just terrible at keeping in touch with you all.
The upshot at the end is what I like best: opening myself up more might be exactly what I need. And thankfully, I have a few ideas of how to do that. Even more thankfully, I have therapy in 25 minutes. Phew! Quizzes really do have all the answers, don’t they?