is it just me?

At some point in your life, making new friends becomes a lot like dating. When the time comes that you meet people at work or in other settings where there is no natural social interation, but you still want to interact socially it takes more effort. You start agonizing about what are appropriate activities to invite people to, you worry when they don't call you back, you wonder if they like you. It's really awful. It's hard for couples to find other couples where all four of you get along, and and it's also hard to find singles that you enjoy.

A lot of awkwardness results from this process. And it is truly remarkable how similar the process is to dating. For example, there is a woman I met through a committee that I am on. She seems nice. Good sense of humor. Smart. Since I was a graduate student when I moved here, and now work in the same department, I don't know many professional women my age. I have made friends with a couple of them in my neighborhood, but it's always good to know more. So I decided to see if she wanted to get a drink after our next meeting. I decided this was a good first step. Like going for coffee if you work together. I emailed her and she said she has to go to a fundraiser after the meeting, so is unavailable. She invited me to the fundraiser, but also offered a rain check. This seems like a positive response. I accepted said raincheck, but now have to wait for her to contact me, right? I think the ball's in her court. Having not dated anyone but my husband since 1998, this is foreign territory for me. Any advice on navigating it is greatly appreciated. Also: When did this happen? And is there anyway to avoid it?

The good thing is that if you get together and you don't have fun you don't have to make excuses. That can just be it. But of course there's the same problem of one person having fun and the other one not. Or if one person is always asking and the other is always busy, then the non-busy one feels like a loser. oy vey.

On a related topic, while not having to break up is a distinct benefit of friend dating over regular dating, there are times when it would be useful to be able to break up with friends. Just say, "you know what? I am really not getting anything out of this friendship anymore, and I think we should just call it quits." I mean, of course that happens all the time. But it is often a long, drawn-out affair where you get together a few times and it's not fun, then you take a little longer to respond to emails and phone calls, until finally you never see each other on purpose. But it would be nice to sometimes just make a clean break. Especially with those people that are really good about keeping in touch, not necessarily because they want to but more because they compulsively keep in touch with everyone. And instead of occassionally getting together and feeling really bored, you could just break up with them and no one would have to feel guilty and you wouldn't have to suffer.

Here's another one: I have a few old friends that email me every once in a great while to say "are you still alive?" I dutifully respond with any interesting tidbit I can drag up about my life, and then I never hear from them until 9 months later when I get the same one line email "are you still alive?" I find this very tiresome. Either you want to know or you don't. But don't just keep me on your list because it makes you feel sad that you're not friends with anyone from college anymore. If you don't care about my life, that is totally fine. I don't mind. I don't feel sad. I don't feel rejected. I stink at keeping in touch and it is almost never personal. But this absolute minimalist approach to remaining friends I find useless. I do like the people that you can not call for three years and you call them up and find out everything and they don't mind that they didn't talk to you for three years but they really are glad to talk to you and then that's it. They don't pretend to want to establish regular communication, they aren't mad that you didn't invite them to your wedding. Just a drop in and drop out. But that's different than trying to pretend that you are really still friends with someone when in reality you're not. Call a spade a spade. Move on with your life.

And one last one: what about your friends that get boring/weird/generally unenjoyable? It's happened to all of us. Someone you used to like is not the same person. Don't you wish you could just tell them? "Sorry, Bob, but now that you're a hare krishna I really don't feel like we have much in common. I think I'll skip your next vegetarian barbecue." On the other hand, some people who you don't remember enjoying all that much get way better with age. Every once in a while I'll see someone and think "you're so much better than I remembered". Then you could trade them in for someone who quit their job and has three kids and really only likes to talk about swim lessons.

it appears that having friends, just like everything else, was much easier when we were eight.