Anxieyote
Sobriety over everything else • 30 • Midwest
- Mar 24, 2021
- 445
I have seen a few users recently lamenting their lack of personal success when it comes to friendships. I wanted to add my two cents, because it's also something I've struggled with for a long time.
The first indication you get that making new friends as an adult is going to be difficult is when you ask people for advice on how to make friends as an adult.
If they say, "I don't know" that's probably the most honest and direct answer you're going to get. Most normies without any developmental disabilities find friends naturally throughout the course of their life. They meet them at work, they meet them at school, and they have enough social experience to maintain these friendships for years. They've also been actively networking throughout their teens and 20's with apps like Facebook and Snapchat—doing regular check-ins with the people they want to take with them into their adult lives.
A helpful way to look at it is through this hypothetical:
Imagine there are hundreds of boats in a harbor. Resources have been running low on the mainland, so everyone is shuffling onto these boats to find a new place to settle. For whatever reason, you have not been able to secure a spot on any of them. You watch helplessly as all of the boats trickle out of the harbor—until there are no boats left.
You know you're going to die if you stay on the mainland, so you craft a sailboat with what little experience you have, and set off.
Eventually you run into the larger ships, and cry out to them from your tiny sailboat. "is there any room for me??" you cry out desperately. "Find another boat." they shout down to you. "There's no room left."
You can try sailing next to the larger ships and asking for help, but you'll be met with a lot of rejections and "I don't know what to tell you"'s. The fact of the matter is, most of the spots are filled, and no one can fit you on their ship.
Social circles operate very similarly. If you haven't established your ride-or-die friendships early on, chances are, the people who would have filled this role for you have found other connections already.
Finding friends will be like firing shots in the dark; which isn't too far off from what a lot of desperate people do. I knew a coworker who wasn't having success with finding a girlfriend, so he sent out messages to hundreds of different girls—preferences be damned. He called it the shotgun method. "Due to the law of averages, eventually one of them is going to agree to go on a date with me." he said.
It's a very sad situation to be in. It was kind of a musical chairs thing, and we were the last ones standing. Most of the people I meet aren't willing to fit me in. They already have a group of friends, a girlfriend, and a family to meet their social needs.
The first indication you get that making new friends as an adult is going to be difficult is when you ask people for advice on how to make friends as an adult.
If they say, "I don't know" that's probably the most honest and direct answer you're going to get. Most normies without any developmental disabilities find friends naturally throughout the course of their life. They meet them at work, they meet them at school, and they have enough social experience to maintain these friendships for years. They've also been actively networking throughout their teens and 20's with apps like Facebook and Snapchat—doing regular check-ins with the people they want to take with them into their adult lives.
A helpful way to look at it is through this hypothetical:
Imagine there are hundreds of boats in a harbor. Resources have been running low on the mainland, so everyone is shuffling onto these boats to find a new place to settle. For whatever reason, you have not been able to secure a spot on any of them. You watch helplessly as all of the boats trickle out of the harbor—until there are no boats left.
You know you're going to die if you stay on the mainland, so you craft a sailboat with what little experience you have, and set off.
Eventually you run into the larger ships, and cry out to them from your tiny sailboat. "is there any room for me??" you cry out desperately. "Find another boat." they shout down to you. "There's no room left."
You can try sailing next to the larger ships and asking for help, but you'll be met with a lot of rejections and "I don't know what to tell you"'s. The fact of the matter is, most of the spots are filled, and no one can fit you on their ship.
Social circles operate very similarly. If you haven't established your ride-or-die friendships early on, chances are, the people who would have filled this role for you have found other connections already.
Finding friends will be like firing shots in the dark; which isn't too far off from what a lot of desperate people do. I knew a coworker who wasn't having success with finding a girlfriend, so he sent out messages to hundreds of different girls—preferences be damned. He called it the shotgun method. "Due to the law of averages, eventually one of them is going to agree to go on a date with me." he said.
It's a very sad situation to be in. It was kind of a musical chairs thing, and we were the last ones standing. Most of the people I meet aren't willing to fit me in. They already have a group of friends, a girlfriend, and a family to meet their social needs.