Friendship is Hard
May 17th, 2010 by heidi
I’m an introvert. I don’t intend that in an Introverts Anonymous way but just as a (slightly proud) statement of fact. I like being around people much of the time but then I need to hide in my Introvert Cave [tm] to recover.
These days I play the extrovert much better. At our Myers-Briggs workshop here at work, people were genuinely surprised to discover that I was an introvert, because I have to be extroverted when I cover for our receptionist, or when I’m dealing with people’s problems. I have to act as if speaking to a stranger is the highlight of my day and act friendly. Most of the time this isn’t a problem – but it does mean that when I get home in the evening, I’ve learned that I absolutely have to take twenty minutes to myself to get energy back or I get impatient with my family members.
I hate the phone, most of the time, except when talking to very specific, very special people, although I can cover that up very well at work (a temp sitting next to me once commented that I was just SO professional on the phone and she’s right – I’ve learned to play that game well, but that doesn’t mean I like it).
For all that extroversion, I find friendships these days to be much harder. When you start working instead of being a student, suddenly exposure to people in a meaningful setting decreases dramatically. My very best friends from college all lived in my house – we saw each other nearly every day (even if the sum total of that interaction was watching a friend march in and upend sugar into her coffee, or watching another friend steal bagels from the supply by the toaster). My friend Michelle and I specifically scheduled classes with each other because we liked having discussions with each other about them, even when we disagreed, which was frequently. We’d head down to Haymarket or the Fresh Pasta Company and, over hot chocolate or pasta alfredo (for her) and a chicken parm sandwich (for me) and cannoli, served by Fergus the cool waiter, would commiserate about annoying people in the class and discuss aesthetics, or religion, or those ANNOYING ADAS IN THE FRONT ROW THAT NEVER SHUT UP!
In graduate school, I found my “movie friend” that I hung out with on a regular basis. We’d go see movies a couple of times a month, if we could, and have dinner at our favorite pasta place, or tempura cooked by her partner. I had other friends there too, with whom I could spend time between classes gossiping, talking about classes, or complaining about politicians.
It was easier to make friends then. Having lived in five different places since I graduated from college, I have struggled to find friendships to match those. I move, or they move, and it no longer seems normal when you find someone you like and invite them to do something every weekend. They have lives, I have a life, and I look obsessive if I ask a friend for cake one weekend and then to a movie the next weekend. After all, come on, Heidi, don’t you have any other friends? The sad, boring, annoying answer is that no, I don’t. Most of them live a long way away and I miss them. A lot.
Friendships at work are different. There’s the “young” mid-twenties clique of girls that I like…but have nothing in common with (and I’m not sure they’d consider me someone I like. Feels JUST like high school). The mid-thirties folks all live too far away, or have shown little or no interest in doing anything more than having chats at work. As ever, I don’t fit in and it feels miserable.
I know more about friendship these days, too. I know how far I’ll go for a friend and how far I won’t. I know more about how to maintain a friendship long-distance, and how hard it is to do.
And I know how much I miss having several good friends nearby. Friends to craft with, and see movies with, and hang out with, who don’t mind if my house is a mess and are as reluctant to leave as I am to have them go. I wonder if I’m ever going to have clusters of friends like that again, where I am aware of having several people nearby who care about me and want to be with me. I hate that I have to work so hard to build networks like that, only to lose them when I move again, as I inevitably will. I find myself not wanting to bother…why find best friends when I’m just going to be brokenhearted when I leave?
I don’t miss college or UT. I do miss the networks of friends I had there and it seems like so much work to try to find new friends to help fill that void of friends far away.
i know the feeling – my best friends live in my computer, and i havent really found many casual-hanging-out friends.
i wish you lived closer!
I know exactly what you’re saying. I have had various circles of friends since grade school, but for various reasons am no longer in touch with any of them. It’s as if, once the situation that brought us together is done (high school, college, a job), that’s it for the friendships. I mean, there are emails here and there, we might “keep in touch” , but no close friendships. I’m very good at small-talk, and get along with people, but I have never been good at keeping close friendships going for the long haul. Maybe some people just have a knack for it.
Thanks you for bringing up the subject. It’s nice to hear that other people feel the way I do.
DJ – I still have some of those friends from grad school/college (Facebook and Livejournal have helped with that) but it’s *hard* to keep in touch with them and it’s just NOT the same as having a friend that you can call up to go hang out with for an afternoon.
I have lots of long-term friendships but they’re all REALLY far away. How to meet and keep friends close by seems to be my problem!
I’m the same way (introvert) except that I’m stuck on the front desk all day. By the end of the day, I’m just mentally and emotionally exhausted. When our new department chair arrives, the first order of business will be to get him to talk the Dean into a new receptionist or not to have anyone at the front desk. I want a door. Not that I would keep it closed a lot, it’s more the thought of a door that I can close and not being out in front of everyone. Even when I put up a sign (or 2) saying to please see another person in the office, the faculty just ignore it and say “But I need you” I’ve been talking about putting up fishing wire and beads as a “door”
I moved to my city close to 15 years ago. I have 3 friends here. All three of them are married and have lives. I know there are events I could go to where I could meet people, but sometimes by the end of the day, I’m pooped and really don’t want to deal with people. But then I don’t have anyone to go to dinner with, to walk around the malls windowshoping with. I have friends in another city, but it’s 1 1/2 hours away and it’s a big production for any of us to drive to the other. It would be better if I had a better car that I was comfortable driving back and forth, but I’ve got what I’ve got.
I am reading a book on self esteem that is called (funny enough) Self-Esteem. I was reading last night about silencing the inner critic and the part that spoke to me the most was using affirmations. Normally I think those are goofy, but these were good. I can’t remember what they were, but they weren’t all platitudial like the ones that most self-help books push. “I’m human and I have a right to exist and I’m doing the best that I can” I think I’m going to have to read that page every night for a while.
So, right now, I’m doing the best that I can. I know what I need to do to work on making new friends and I know that I can, I’ve done it before. But right now and for the time being, I’m too busy putting one foot in front of another and when there is a moment or two available, I’ll work on the whole friendship thing.
QA – is your name from the Keltiad?
I can’t tell you how angry I was when I had my door closed and someone knocked on it anyway. Complained to my boss and now have signs on my door like “Platform 9-3/4 – do not try to run through this door. It will not work, as we are Muggles” and an out of service sign from our building landlords that I’ve modified to say “Heidi is Temporarily Out of Service.”
So far it’s worked. I’m so grateful not to be on reception full-time anymore, as I remember the sheer exhaustion of those days!
All hail Fergus! And alfredo.
Those were the days. I can only imagine what he thought of us. 😉
And now we are older than dirt, and Fergus is over the hill.
Why hasn’t one of our brilliant alumnae invented a teleporter yet?
When I win the lottery, buy a small nation, and make myself queen, I shall send my private, royal jet for you every other weekend so you can come and visit. Maybe I’ll even make you nobility…
(It’s been a long week, and it’s only Monday. Fantasy is diverting…)
Seriously though, I echo your thoughts completely.
You don’t suppose the good people of Seattle would consider relocating their fine city to the Northeast? I’ve heard that Massachusetts is quite lovely.
Great post! I’ve been struggling with this myself.
[…] Posted on May 18, 2010 by living400lbs This was originally on Formspring — after Heidi’s post on friendship I thought might be interesting over here. My question–are most of your friends fat or thin? […]
First, thank you for the laugh. It’s already being a long, hard week (bureaucracy for the LOSE!) and the memories of those rare, horrible early mornings, when the only thing that brought life was half a pot of that asstacular RADS coffee and a whole sugar bowl… *laughs* Oh, and the a.m. growling, that went along with the sugar dumping.
This post is a good and timely one. Not just because I was thinking about you today, but because the friend network and relationship building stuff has been more to the forefront. There are folks here I’d like to get to know better, but our paths cross rarely to never; then, there’s contact issues (should I really email her? What if it all goes pear-shaped? What if we don’t truly seriously have anything to talk about? Etc., etc., down the road of ‘omg what if aiee?’) Oh, and right on with not wanting to overwhelm the friends one does make (I am kind of in that situation now… actually, we both are, and so it’s kind of like a dance where we both know the steps, and are trying like hell to not both be the leader at the same time. Dang, that sounds overly cryptic, but can’t really think of a better way to put it… and ridiculously long parenthetical statement is ridiculously long!) It’s as though the longer one does not make that effort to reach out, the harder it is for one to do so, when one wishes to… and that’s difficult to get past. Add loneliness for the folks who really know/love you on top of that, and it’s a wonder anyone (well, anyone not an extrovert) tries to make friends past college at all.
In conclusion: you have said a lot of stuff that’s been on my mind also as of late, plus encouraged me in owning up to my own doughnut craving. Glazed old fashioned/sour cream for me, thanks, or some lemon berliners or chocolate long johns stuffed with pastry cream.
Yes, my name is from The Keltiad. It’s still one of my favorite series even though she’s not writing it anymore (although on her blog she says she may finish the series as self-publish)
Tonight is a big event for one of the programs in my department. My department chair is in an executive meeting all day, my approver who only works part time is not in, I’m still getting names for the name tags that are pre-printed and now I found out that I’ve got exceptions on some of the purchases for this freakin’ thing because I didn’t realize until it was too late that the plaques are momentos and those have to have the Dean’s approval. It’s raining and I’m really ready to sit down and have a good cry. I figure I had better get the cry overwith sooner than later so my face has time to return to normal and I’m not all blotchy tonight.
If you ever think about going to work at a major university, DON’T! Ph.D.s are the biggest babies in the world (next to federal judges) and about as useless as something really useless, which I can’t think of. Between the emails from the Development department who suddenly want to get involved because we are bringing in actual money to the faculty member who dumped all this crap on me, I’m going to need a new place to hide the bodies, my normal dumping ground will be full soon! 🙂 (That is a joke BTW, just making sure everyone knows that)
I have a whole list of things for our new department chair starts. That’s if we didn’t scare him away in the interview process. First one on the list – Office with a door!
Thanks for letting me rant.
I totally get this, I had a great group of friends in school, was never at a loss for companionship and we were always getting into trouble. Then I had to move away and upon moving to a new country to Colorado, I started a job as a live-in caregiver 24/7 for a girl with cerebral palsy and then one with autism. 10 years later and I have yet to make one real friend in this area (I feel like my socializing skills are totally dead and gone) I do the odd thing with some of the older people from my church, and do activities with a few teens I mentor, but no real friends like I used to have where you could just go and be yourself and be crazy or just hang out.
I feel like I don’t even know how to do that anymore, I used to be quite an extrovert but through all this and a traumatic incident that happened about 6 years ago has left me quite at a loss. I don’t really know where to find friends, I am not into the bar scene, I go to school online and work from home and walking up to someone in a store and asking them to be my friend just doesn’t quite work lol. So right now my friends are online, and i keep in touch with friends from school through facebook and such and I am very glad for them all, but you know a person just needs friends with skin on sometimes. I am hoping I can find some soon, and when I do that I won’t come off as desperate lol.