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Don’t let this title mislead you. I don’t have a lot of friends. Very few in fact. I’ve just reached an age where I’m not looking for any new ones.
As a child, it was easy. Were you the same sex and age group as me and we lived within three houses of each other? Boom, we’re friends. Did we play the same sports together? Double whammy: teammates and friends. Did we have one thing we both enjoyed and a million things we didn’t? If that was the case, you were my best friend.
I wish it were still that easy. There’s this term now that’s rapidly growing in popularity: “friend groups.” This is my “friend group” from college; this is my “friend group” from work. Women use it more than men (I’ve done the research) and it’s usually spoken aloud while planning somebody’s large birthday dinner at a restaurant that nobody wants to go to.
There is no such thing as a “friend group.” There’s just dead weight you haven’t gotten rid of yet. “Well, I still hang out with her because we sat near each other in the office three jobs ago. She’s a huge bitch.” “Oh, that dude’s my college ex-girlfriend’s friend’s ex-boyfriend. He comments on my Facebook photos a lot so I figured he deserved a wedding invite.”
Hack these clowns off like they’re diseased limbs. They’re not bringing anything to the table and you’re only keeping them around to be polite. I have a strict No Assholes policy when it comes to my friends: nobody is allowed to be a bigger asshole than me.
My favorite are the couples who think they’re friends. “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend!” We’ve talked about this a few times on the podcast but you are not friends with your bf/gf/fiancée and you will never be friends with them. Strip away all your history and emotional connection with that person and ask yourself if you’d objectively want your significant other in your inner circle. I thought so. Don’t get me started on how men and women can’t actually be friends either. That’s an article for another time.
I regularly tell the Capital R Roommate that we’re not friends. After the initial shock and tears she’s gotten used to the idea three years later. I like to remind her “I have enough friends, I don’t need another one. Now get back in the kitchen and make me a san…” and then she punches me in the sternum.
By “enough friends,” I mean enough to count on one hand. The four guys I consider my real friends, I’d run into traffic for them. I only see them once a year at Christmas and even that’s sometimes too much. Outside of them, I have really zero interest in getting to know anybody else.
If I meet you now and you’re a good guy who shares common interests with me, that’s great. We should hang. Maybe even play in a fantasy football league. But let’s be honest with each other. The only reason we met was because either we work together or our significant others are friends. You’re not going to know my stories or my jokes and I’m not going to know yours. That’s fine.
Let’s just face the facts together. At the ripe old age of 29, I’ve made all the friends I’m planning on having in this world. I’m fine with it. You should be too. .
The winner of the 5 Star Review contest The Oat joins us this week on Don’t Take It From Us to answer VERY personal questions about JR’s childhood and talk about life as a single man in Chicago. We also get the opportunity to grade Episode 18 guest Ali Hinman’s dating profile in another installment of Bumblebraggin’ and Jenna Crowley goes IN on a shitty boyfriend who tells his girlfriend something no woman wants to hear. Enjoy!
Do you have a dating or relationship question you want answered on the pod? Make sure you send our way! New eps will be released every Wednesday, so check it out on Soundcloud below or on iTunes!
Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram here for a first look at the dating profiles we’re grading and all sorts of content throughout the week!
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JR Hickey
Stand up comedian and writer from Chicago who now resides on the West Coast. JR can be seen performing at Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco and Zanies Comedy Clubs in Chicago. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune and recently he was a part of SF Sketchfest 2015. JR's also the host of the PGP dating podcast Don't Take It From Us. He loves you very, very much.
@JRwilldoit
@JRwilldoit
Hey remember when I posted this 9 months ago?
https://pgparchive.wpengine.com/im-not-looking-to-make-any-new-friends/
The PGP editors obviously don’t.
I quit working at shoprite and now I make $35h – $80h…how? I’m working online! My work didn’t exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn’t be happier. Click Here And Go WebSite
Sincerely missed this – apologies. We’re not exactly reinventing the wheel with this take haha
My tinder bio is hundo p plagiarized, but it sets the tone of my humor early on. “Am I a good person? No. But do I try and be a better person every single day? Also no.” Really lets a guy know from the get-go that I am an inherently terrible person who is a giant piece of shit. Making new friends is hard because you have to ease into being a degenerate around them
I like old friends because they already know I’m a piece of shit. New friends turn into a real hassle when they realize it.
See I’m the opposite- my old friends knew me when I was a piece of shit. Young, arrogant, careless, and generally not caring what people thought of me. Now, I’m older and have matured but I’m still pigeon-held to that time I used to get belligerently drunk and strip naked at friend’s family BBQs. So I can’t ever advance in the eyes of those who knew me way back when.
You need to take some notes from the dolphin. He, too, came in really hard and heavy on his bit. He’s adjusted and is super likeable now. Maybe you try the same.
Sup?
As someone who just moved to a new city, I’m definitely in the market for new friends. I legitimately like meeting new people. Yes, plenty of people I come across add nothing of value to my life, but so many others do. Maybe I’m just a people person (and I work with the public so that’s saying a lot). Also, would love to read your “why men and women can’t be friends” article. Looking forward to it in the future.
As someone who moved back to my high school city after years away, I desperately need new friends.
Yeah that’s one thing I’ll likely never do. Best of luck though!
Having moved to a new city two years ago, and moving to a new one next week, I’ve come to realize it’s harder to make friends than people think. Those adult sport leagues everyone talks about? You join one, get put on a team of people, who are already a friend group. And they’re not taking new friends either. So your just the guy who is filling in for their friend because he’s got shit to do that season.
You got it Jackie Blue, will be coming soon !
Thanks!
Paul Rudd can get it.
JR, we’re friends on Twitter. It’s 2017, so like that’s as close to real friendship as anyone can get now and that’s okay
hey JR, do you wanna be frie…..nevermind.
I disagree about Friends Groups not being real. It doesn’t mean that you are friends with them only in certain situations. It just means everyone in that group of knows each other well already. I have a group of about 6 guys from undergrad who are all really tight, and I there are 5 of us from law school that got close. I don’t try to mix those groups not because I don’t really like some of them, because I don’t want to do the exhausting task of trying to make sure every one is meshing. The different groups have different things that brought us together and a person from group A and a person from group B might not have the most in common. So it makes sense to not mess with a good thing and keep them separate instead of trying to mix the two into an awkward mess.
I don’t get people who say guys and girls can’t be platonic friends. A few of my best friends are attractive girls, we just aren’t attracted to each other. It was handy in college since I can’t read my own handwriting and didn’t take notes, and now I appreciate the different perspective they bring. Is it that hard for other dudes to hang out with a pretty girl and not want to have sex with her?
Someone’s never watched When Harry Met Sally.
I think they mean you can’t not be attracted to a good looking member of the opposite sex. You can definitely be platonic and just not act on your attraction.
The second sentence there says, “A few of my best friends are attractive girls, we just aren’t attracted to each other.” So not what you’re suggesting, but I appreciate your input.
Do they have boyfriends? Do you have a girlfriend? If you are single and so are they, and also attractive, in my opinion its impossible to remain platonic. I’ve wanted to bang every single attractive female friend I’ve ever had.
We’ve been friends through multiple relationships and single times. Even spent a weekend on a houseboat in Amsterdam with one of them while we were both single, and there was zero sexual tension. We were more interested in wingmanning each other.
I enjoy making new friends. I’m not the same guy I was in HS or college so while it’s fun to hang out with those guys from time to time we have grown and gone in different directions. It’s still fun to talk about the dumb stuff we did but I’m not looking for my conversations to revolve around the past.