The "F" word

No, not fuck. Friend.

I have this problem surrounding friends and friendship that I don't even know how to talk about, so apologies in advance for any jumpy starts/stops or disjointed thoughts. The main problem that I've already hinted at is that I don't know when it's socially appropriate to call someone a "friend" rather than someone I know, an acquaintance, a colleague, or a peer. It's like I want to sit down that person for a Relationship Talk or something, just to make sure I'm on the right wavelength with them.

Some of this might be old depression/anxiety fleas that are lingering, or sperglad exfun that's been a thing all my life, or something, but I'd say that part of it is lel why would you even want to be friends with me. Like, I want friends, but why would they reciprocate? And why would I call someone a friend unless we have a friendship, a mutual relationship of friendliness?

There's also a concept that I've been struggling with for years and years, and that's the concept of Someone Else's Friend. Here's how it normally happens: I have a friendship with someone. That friend has other friends. My friend introduces me to their friends. However, I cannot be friends with those people. They are already friends with my friend, and I can't impose on my friend's other friendship relationships, that's not right. I told this to a therapist once and she was like "oh honey no" but I don't understand why other people think that's wrong.

Also, when does a friendship even happen? Apparently you're not supposed to have The Talk with friends, but what's that moment? Is it when you make them laugh for the first time? Is it when they ask you for advice the first time? Is it when you talk every day about some interest you share? Is it when you exchange gifts or "I thought of you"s with each other for the first time? I have no idea how this works, please send life vests and floatation devices before I go completely out to sea.

I get the feeling that this isn't normal, but I don't know just how not-normal, or where this comes from, or whether anyone else has these feels. For potential assignment to particular brainweird, I'm fucking insane lel: depression, anxiety, probably-BPD, mightbe-OCPD, needpapers-autistic, generally "neurotic" phenotype. I'm so introverted that if you pushed in on my navel hard enough I'd probably turn inside-out.

 

I have something along the same lines, though my motivation is more like... there's less chance of getting hurt if I don't say the F word, because saying that you're friends with someone leaves you open to rejection, therefore never count as friends ever unless you are talking constantly and the other person makes all the effort in reaching out/organising outings and all that good shit. It's... not really a great way to think about things, haha. I struggle with it a lot unless the other person refers to us as friends first. I have no advice on the situation or when people officially become friends because I have no idea myself. The other people's friends stuff is also hella weird for me. Brain y r u so dum.

 

I feel the same way about not knowing when somebody becomes a friend and I definitely like to have the "relationship talk" before I count somebody as a friend.

I also have a problem with, like, the SECOND conversation with a potential friend. I know small talk/getting to know you stuff and I know deep friendship/share all your secrets/show them every funny or cool website you find stuff but I have no clue how to get from one to the other. What is in-between those things??

 

Hmm I can try to explain friends-of-friends thing?
Basically it comes down to everyone, given the spoons and inclination and time, has limitless "friend" spots. By becoming friends with your friend's friends you aren't imposing on a relationship or taking up a limited ressource for yourself, you are simply entering an existing relationship so you all can be part fo a big happy friendship ball, together!
eta: i'm sorry i sound like a drugged up kindergarten teacher rn i spent spoons on cooking so my coherence level is stuck at morning kiddie tv

 

@pixels It took me literal years to get comfortable calling my closest friend's SO a friend, because I didn't want to assume anything and we don't see each other or talk that often. But we're friendly when we do so I guess? We're friends? I also wasn't comfortable referring to another person as a "friend" until I hit my mid-twenties because when we met it was through my mom, so that meant she was my mom's friend and also Too Old and Respectable to be my friend.

...She's like ... three years older than me? Maybe five? I don't know. Brain, y u so dumb.

Anyway, I don't know when it's socially appropriate, either.

 

I'm not sure how to make close friends but I'm pretty good at general friends. In that if we converse I generally will consider you a friend (if I don't find you interesting I won't go out of my way to talk to you). But once you're in that category even a little bit I'll do what I can for you. So I guess people I'm willing to talk to and will help out when they need it is how I define it.

 

@pixels FWIW, I would consider you a friend.

 

I'm- fairly certain that I'm morails with friend-in-rl-John.
Maybe? But like- actually asking if we're best friends almost feels like imposing even though he's stated it.
and he's moving to ohio gross sobbing

 

I'm pretty sure official friendship starts somewhere around 'starts singing the pokemon theme at you in public to see who chickens out first' possibly it only starts when both of you soulfully shout the entire thing at eachother.
friendship courting rituals of 90s kids

 

I really worry about how many of the people-I-know count as actual friends. So much so that I don't consider my spouse's best friends (who I've known longer than him since they were my cousin's friends too) as my friends. They are his friends, and I'm... an afterthought?

I've been really cagey about people since a whole slew of my "friends"* in my early twenties just completely stopped communicating with me when I broke up with my college boyfriend - including my best friend from primary school, and we'd been inseperable since age six. Just... ouch.

*forgive the scare quotes I'm just fucking bitter as hell about it

 

Aaa this thread makes me weirdly happy. I'm not alone! :D

This is something I've always wondered! How can you tell when someone is your friend? Aquaintance? Close friend? When is it appropriate to chat/text/hang out outside of the context you usually meet (like school)? Won't they be horribly offended if I count them as a friend without their explicit consent?

I guess a lot of this comes from my complete inability to imagine that someone would actually like me enough to consider me a friend, which is pretty depressing.

 

Part of my personal angst also has a backstory that I'm probably not giving enough weight and no one here really cares about so it goes under a spoiler.

Spoiler: bleurgh

My best friend growing up lived two doors down from me. I spent a ton of time at her house. We went to the same school and we were in the same classes and everything, we had the matching friend necklaces and everything. She was my absolute best friend (even though we had a group of about five that would meet up and do things) from second grade to graduating from high school. I wrote her letters from summer camp and college for a while. I went to every single one of her dance recitals and performances, and there were maybe four a year. It was important to me. She was my best friend, y'know?

Problem was, I was never her best friend.

Her best friend was someone she met through dance. She had a key to their house; I never had that from her. Whenever she wanted to do something specific with only one person, it was always with them. They were Jewish yet my best friend was making Christmas and Easter cookies with them. No, I'm not still upset and betrayed by this, why do you ask?

... I'm also currently dating like my best (only) friends haha wow. I mean, there's other people that I talk to, and enjoy spending time with, but I'm not calling them "friend" until they do it first because I don't know how they think of me. Maybe others' opinions matter way too much to me? I don't know. For romantic or sexual affection you sit down and have The Talk with someone, right? Platonic affection is ??? like how do you make friends. How do you keep friends. How do you make sure that someone is your mutual best friend.

Spoiler: more emotional vomiting ~*~ follow for more soft emesis ~*~

I've had best friends, but I've never been anyone's best friend. Apparently this is making me much more upsetti spaghetti than I originally thought it would because I'm like fucking crying about this just thinking about it and typing it up wow I'm in a mood or something.

Like, even my two best friends right now, who I am dating because I'm a fucking genius (sarcasm). They have, like. Other people that they talk to, IRL, that they spend time with, and that they're closer to. I'm not the one's "friend," I'm xeir "pornfriend." That's how we met, writing porn for each other. That's what I'm good for. That's all I'm good for. The other polymate was xeir friend for like two years before xey introduced me to her. There's so much history there that I've missed out on, and I can't even hope to catch up. Like, they'd miss me if I wasn't there in that relationship with the two of them, but they'd be totally fine on their own. I'm sufficient but not necessary.

They have moirails. I've never had anything like that. Like I really like Homestuck's quadranting system but whenever I see on someone's blog that they have a moirail I'm just so jealous. Like, viscerally physically upset, will start to choke up and want to cry about it jealous. I've never experienced that. There is no one who would ever have kept me from murdering someone or who would step in front of an oncoming truck just to push me out of the way. I guess I should say I've never experienced that from someone else directed at me. Ever. I've definitely felt like that about other people but it's never been reciprocated.

I try to be nice, but if nice were the same as friendly then there wouldn't be two different words for that conduct. I'm autie-horrible at talking to people. I remember being totally bewildered that people in law school were meeting up at each other's apartments/houses to study, or to have movie night, or play Cards Against Humanity, or whatever. How did that happen? How did they make those friends? I was right there. I was talking to these people every day. We were in the same classes. What did I miss? What is it about me that is unfriendable? Am I really that weird? Or the dreaded combination of weird and yet still somehow boring?

Whatever the case, it's pretty clear to me that I'm the common denominator in all this, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong and why I can't make friends when I clearly want them. Maybe I'm just being selfish. Or clingy. Or dependent. Or otherwise emotionally disgusting and borderline abusive. Everyone already has friends of some sort and I don't feel needed anywhere or with anyone.

# haha crying too hard to read my own typing # sorry for typos

 

I tend to move around a lot schools-wise (never actually moved), so I tend to gain and lose friends erratically. I'll fall out of touch with people, and then attempt to reconnect a year or two later. I can't afford to let that happen right now; I have maybe one friend at my current school, and since we haven't even had a full conversation in at least a year, I think she's maybe more of an acquaintance now. Because my actual Friends and I have vastly different schedules, I see them almost never. Because my parents restrict my internet, and I'm uncomfortable calling people and I have friends who can't talk on the phone a lot of the time, I don't get to even talk to them much.

I feel so alone, and when my train pass runs out in a month, I'm going to be stuck in this town where I don't know anybody despite having lived here my whole life, and I don't know what to do. I can't live through the internet. I don't want to. But I don't know what else I can do.

 

am here

 

@pixels i'm sorry to say i know how you feel, especially this part

Spoiler: this maybe got kinda long idk

like, people talk about making friends in university and i try and introduce myself to a couple people in my classes, but they all already seem to know each other (i took two years off) and while they're not rude or anything it never gets past "oh hi how was your weekend?" and i just... don't know what i'm doing wrong or how i'm failing to connect.

what bothers me more is my job. we're all in more or less the same age group +/- five years, and when i was hired i was told about all the social activities they'd do together outside of work, and... well, at first i was working overnights, so ok, people weren't asking me if i wanted to come because these things generally happened while i was working. ok. but now i'm on days, and while i make an effort to talk to people and not just be in my little bubble of workworkwork, i still feel like i'm just... there. it's not that i get the impression that people dislike me, more that it wouldn't make a difference either way to them if i were replaced with someone else who knew how to do my job. and it makes me feel like i'm doing something wrong because there's people who get hired and make friends within like a month so why can't i?

there's one person there i think of as a friend (like he actually talks to me outside of work) and he's leaving on monday. it's gonna suck.

idk; how do i friends?

 

Boy oh boy do I feel all of this.

I have never found a friend group on my own. I've always been dragged in the wake of a stronger personality into their group, and I continued to think of it as their group and not mine for years. It doesn't help that there have been many times when I misjudged and thought someone was my friend when they weren't, so my brain is prone to deciding that someone is bored or annoyed with me and just being polite. And then I withdraw, because I don't want to annoy or bore people.

It also doesn't help that apparently my social presentation is strange in some way - I hear that I seem detached or like I'm silently judging people? I'm not silently judging you, I'm just quiet and that's just my face. :(

 

@budgie those feelings you mentioned in that spoiler are my life. Especially the first paragraph outside the quote.

I just moved to a new apartment and my roommates know I don't do anything all night and they ask their friends to go out drinking all the time, even those who are under 21, but I haven't gotten an ask. I'm worried it might be because one of them works at a suicide hotline and as soon as I heard that I told her my own negative experience with a hotline so maybe she thinks I'm too unstable? Surely her job there would make her realize the people who call those things are humans too. That and she probably heard me badly singing the Pokemon theme song in my room when I thought the apartment was empty, so she might think I'm babyish?

I've talked with my roommates a decent amount over the past week. Do they think it's rude that sometimes when there's a lull I head to my room to play video games?

Or maybe it's how clumsy/messy I've been? I threw up all over the bathroom when they gave me alcohol to get drunk for the first time (though I cleaned it up), I knocked over a can of hot chocolate powder all over the fridge (I started cleaning but a roommate finished because I was taking too long), and I cooked a plate too long in the microwave and it broke.

Or perhaps it's because I don't do my part enough? One of the roommates recently made a kitchen cleaning schedule. She said I wasn't the only one not cleaning, that the other roommate didn't clean either and therefore she felt like she was doing it all herself, but I've only been here a couple of weeks and suddenly there's a cleaning schedule? (For the record, I never thought it was dirty enough to clean). And only recently did I take the dog out for the first time, but, like, they never asked. I had to ask to take him out. For that matter, why does my roommate ask her friends to take time out of their days to drive over and take the dog out when she'll be gone when she knows I'll be there the whole time?

Maybe this "going out for drinks" thing is a lot more of a close friends thing than I thought? It doesn't seem like it from the way they talk about it, but while I'm looking for reasons they don't invite me, I might as well throw that one out there.