a failure at friendship

i am trying to make new friends. i am a 47 year old woman who has a partner, and no kids, and no pets, and who lives alone. i am a 47 year old woman who has friends. and i love my friends! and i love my partner! and i love my family!

but… i’m trying to make new friends.

i’m an introvert. i would be pretty happy all alone on a mountaintop for 2 or three months. living in a tower, looking for smoke from forest fires or hunting for rare butterflies or whatever. most of my preferred activities are things i prefer to do alone. reading, listening to music. sewing, writing, staring at the wall. all excellent activities that i could happily do all the live-long day with very little company. i don’t really need more friends.

but… i’m trying to make new friends.

i have a full time job. i work 40 hours a week, i cook my own meals, i make a half-hearted attempt at housekeeping and gardening. i wash my clothes, i make my bed. i try to exercise and sometimes vacuum. i buy myself new socks when my old socks wear out. i have a lot going on right now and i don’t have a ton of leftover time.

but… i’m trying to make new friends.

i checked a book out of the library called “platonic” about how to make friends as an adult. it was a “lucky day” book, a popular title that the library buys extra copies of. that book is just flying off the library shelves! and you know why? because no matter how embarrassing - big baby in an adult body embarrassing - it is to say out loud, “i want to make friends”, i am not the only nerd in the world who would check a book out of the public library about how to make friends.

because having friendships is good for your health!

and there’s a loneliness epidemic in our country!

and social media is run by anti-social billionaires!

and the nuclear family and romantic relationships can’t meet all our social needs!

and having more friends makes us more socially resilient!

and we’re all working too hard!

and friendship is fun!

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one thing i learned from that book is that adult friendships don’t just magically happen - they require some effort.

and, i’m figuring out, like most things that take effort - making friends as an adult takes a high tolerance for failure.

sometimes i fail terribly in my little attempts to make friends.

let me tell you, making friends is hard.

i go to the show, or the party, or the art opening. i go alone. i barely talk to anyone. i forget how to talk at all. i go home.

sometimes a shitty shadow of a high school bully starts piping up inside my head “dude, you’re a grown ass woman, trying to make friends. that’s kind of a loser move, you should cut that out.”

sometimes i simply can’t stay up late enough to go to the show or the party. or i’m so excited to spend time with someone but by the end of the day i just need to stare at the wall instead, and refill that little battery inside me that gets used up by life.

if it’s so hard, and i don’t really need more friends, why am i trying to make new friends anyway???

i want to have more conversations with more people! i want talk about the weird, far-out things that you talk about in friend conversations. things that aren’t allowed in the captions or the comments. not-polite-conversation things. world-changing things.

i want very much not to find myself, 2 years from now, chatting with an ai to get my social needs met.

i want to make friends because in spite of the cascading displays of human cruelty - to each other and animals and the earth - we are a social species. friendship and solidarity are maybe the only thing we have going for us against the insane power play of resource hoarding.

really, when it comes down to it, i want more friends so we can all take care of each other as we get old and get sick and die.

cus we’re all gonna die, and it’s all gonna end in heartbreak anyway. the failure is baked in! you can’t fail if you don’t try. and in this case i can’t think of anything worse than not trying.

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treats for you:

Platonic by Marisa G Franco - if i’m 100% honest, i didn’t read the beginning parts about attachment theory, but the rest of the book is great!

What relationships would you want, if you believed they were possible? An episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast where he talks with Rhaina Cohen about her book “The Other Significant Others”. I have not read her book, but i very much enjoyed this conversation about relational possibilities that center friendship.

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. A book recommended at the end of the above podcast about a middle-aged woman caring for her best friend who is dying of ovarian cancer in hospice. you will never believe me when i say this, but it is a very funny book! and i also cried. i give it 5 stars for serving up that precious emotional combo.

this week i had the pleasure of visiting my friend rob in his studio and i’m very much looking forward to sharing the video interview of my visit with you all soon!