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It’s a familiar nervousness. You’re anxious about carrying the conversation. You’re uneasy about whether or not it’s actually a good idea to pursue in the first place. You wish you could fast forward to see how it goes rather than uncomfortably go through the motions. It feels like a first date, but it’s not one. It just has every quality of one.
There’s a sense that you trudge through your twenties trying to “find” things. On the forefront, it interchanges between finding a career and finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. One is more important than the other to most, though both of which are anxiety-inducing enough that worrying about them probably does more damage than good. But what falls by the wayside is how annoyingly difficult it is to find something that carries less societal importance than your job title or relationship status – new friends.
For most of your life, your friends are products of your environment. The kid you sat next to in elementary school. The guy on your soccer team. The dude down the hall in your dorm’s corridor. Your coworker closest to you in age. Sure, you have a choice of who you become friends with, but the pool from which you draw from is drastically smaller than that of the job market or dating scene.
There aren’t Indeeds and Monster.coms for friendship. You can sign up for Bumble BFF, but shopping friends through an app might certainly have a worse connotation to it than actually trying to find a significant other through one. Approaching someone in a bar because they “look cool” comes across as creepier than approaching a girl in the gym who has AirPods in. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but finding friends outside of your normal friend group can often times be more difficult than finding a job or person you love.
And that’s where the nervousness comes in.
Getting over the hump is the most difficult part. Sure, you can get drunk together and bond, but getting drunk just to find friends becomes more and more of a hill to climb as you get older. Like dating, you find that meeting someone during a night out is more often than not a fruitless endeavor. Texting a guy who you think has similar interests as you is more difficult than texting a girl who you simply find attractive. Common ground is everything when sexual attraction leaves the room, yet finding that common ground is the hardest part.
How do you ask him to grab drinks without sounding weird? How do you ask him to spend five-fucking-hours with you on a golf course? How do you hang out and actually establish a friendship without coming off as someone who tries too hard even though you are trying hard?
Well, the short answer is that you don’t. You come across numerous people you could have full-fledged friendships with only to allow them to waltz through your life never to be thought of again. They don’t haunt you like the girl you saw a few nights ago who you can’t stop thinking about. No, they go back to their old group of friends and have the same old conversations in the same old bars. It’s comfortable, which is the most dangerous part.
It wasn’t until months ago that I truly took a shot in the dark. It’s weird to look back on it because I look back on it with the same awkwardness as that of a beginning of a relationship. I sent a text that I’d only ever really sent to girls I was fond of.
“Drinks this week?”
Ugh, how could I send such a thing to someone of the same sex when I’m a red-blooded male with too much pride to admit that I wanted to be someone’s friend? Gross. What a loser move. How could I? What had I become? Am I that desperate?
Simply put, yes. I was desperate. But it’s more than that. Friendships are healthy. Difficult as new friendships may seem, you get as much out of friendships as you get out of relationships. Because they are, in fact, relationships.
The uneasiness I felt after sending that message was a rush I hadn’t felt in years. How will he respond? Will he even respond? Did I lead with the wrong question? Does he hate me? Fuck. I fucked up. I really fucked up. Yep, they aren’t going to respond. It shows as “delivered” but those three dots haven’t appeared yet. Okay, put your phone down. What are you even doing right now? Are you seriously on edge because this guy isn’t texting you back? Alright, go do something to distract yourself. Wait, what was that? Shit, he texted back. Don’t read it yet, your Read Receipts will look desperate. Keep distracting yourself. Okay, fine, fuck it. See what he said.
“Yeah, I’m free all week – Tuesday?”
The nervousness. The anxiety. The uneasiness. The wishing you could fast-forward. It’s all there. Because for whatever reason, making new friends is one the hardest parts about growing up. You aren’t handed friendships or put in situations that are conducive to producing them like you were as a kid. You have to be that type-a person who you wish would just approach you instead. You have to put yourself out there like it’s a job interview or a speed date. But worse because bombing is oh-so-much more cringe-y. It’s something that seems insurmountable and debilitating at times.
That is, until Tuesday when you have to figure out what the hell you’re actually going to talk about. .
Respond
Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
@willdefries
@willdefries
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will@grandex.co
We try to be your friends, Will, but all you do is reject us.
Finally pulling the the trigger on hanging out with Micah outside of the office?
I love this article so much.. I honestly get more nervous going on a “girl date” as I like to call it, than going out on a real first date
This is a cute story of how you became friends with Dave.
This hits home for me. My wife and I have both struggled with this since settling in Houston. Sticking yourself out there to basically be “evaluated” by someone else (as you do the same to them) and hoping a friendship comes of it is terrifying.
Trying to find couple friends is the worst. I would 100% fill out some sort of application to match with a comparable couple. What do week nights look like? What are you watching? What does your Sunday afternoon look like? How do you react when one of you drinks too much. Where do you like to go when you don’t want to cook on Thursday?
Let’s cut through the awkwardness and actually make friends.
When someone drinks too much…. you pony up and join them. Ducks fly together. Real friends are ducks.
Let me rephrase… what happens when your wife/gf/so (incorrectly) assumes you’ve had too much to drink?
You let her know that you actually haven’t and you’re good for another drink or two. If it’s a good relationship, she’ll take your word for it because she trusts you and acknowledges your ability to control your liquor. If it’s not, you two get into a fight and you sleep on the couch.
I know how I handle the situation. It was a question for the hypothetical couple friends questionnaire.
My girlfriend and I are the same way. It’s also much harder because there’s so much less free time – between work, gym, errands, time with our families and time with each other, there’s less and less time to spend on hanging out or meeting other people.
I still talk to my close friends, who are from either high school or college, pretty much every day, but they’re all throughout the country.
Every two years. New job, new city, new friends. Rinse and repeat.
I should probably start trying hanging out with new people since my current friends all seem to be sending me save the dates and baby announcements.
I’m in the same boat. My friends who aren’t engaged or having a baby are still in committed relationships. I’m just over here comically single.
Seriously, trying to make new friends in your 20’s is an ordeal.
I still haven’t figured out how to do it.
Will you’re going to make me break into the eggnog early this year if you keep this up.
They say you only have a problem if you drink alone. Which is why you should make new friends.
This is why I️ only have 2 friends