In the Air
In The Air
Friendship is an interesting thing.
I'm making a new friend (everyone say hi?) A non-fandom friend. Someone I've met who doesn't have a connection to work, to fandom, to knitting - to any of the things I really do every day, every week. There are places we intersect, this person and I, but more in which we don't.
I haven't done this in *years* - it's a lot like tatting, to use a completely odd analogy: Tatting makes lace *in the air, unsupported by anything*. It's been ages since I've tried to make friends without the framework of a shared interest. In the air.
What this means, in a way, is that all of my expectations for how my new friend will react to things are ... wrong. I'm expecting what I've become used to, the way the fen I know react to things (and boy was I surprised when I saw just how similarly we react to things, fennishly) so many of my reactions are, well, not *wrong* exactly, but not mirrored. I expect certain reactions or comments and ... it's as if I'm climbing stairs and put my hand out for a banister and it's not there.
Fandom, shared interests in general, provide a shared frame of reference that’s narrower and more defined than the world as a whole. It’s a good place to start finding friends, shared interests; there’s always something to talk about. This is why, when someone says they want more friends (or a girl/boy/other-gender-of-choice friend), people tell them to join a club. With shared interests come commonality and connection.
I met my husband this way - without a previous shared interest. We met online, interestingly enough, but relatively randomly. We hit it off immediately - I remember wishing he’d come back online after chatting with him once. He did come back online, the next day, and then the next and the next and … soon our friendship progressed to more then text on a screen and became a relationship. THEN, I called him and spoke to him in person (and boy, was that terrifying. Eeep!)
So, I know it’s possible to make friends this way. Good friends, even. I just haven’t done it in ages, and it’s making me think about the mechanics of making friends and being friends. And, somewhat, of how online textual communication changes the way we interact. Do we make friends more quickly if the initial contact is less face-to-face? Are we more prone to revealing private things, because the simplicity of text makes us feel less public? Or less prone to being self-revelatory because text is so much less ‘welcoming’ than a live, friendly face?
***
Another thing that’s made me think about friendship is that I feel like I don’t make friends easily. Online friends I have in buckets - and boy are you the best people ever. Seriously, the help and love and hand holding and gifts and joy I've received from knowing all of you, no matter how far apart we are physically - it's more than amazing, it's inspiring and gratitude-creating.
But in person? It never seems to really work right. I'm too... loud or bossy or off-kilter (or not in the right fandom - I don't watch TV, so haven't seen, say Lost or American Idol or ...) or something. I'm not right. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and I'd like to change it. Maybe I'm too needy. See, here, if I were talking to fandom friends, I could reference a specific character and how that person does/does not deal with people or friends or friendship. Sharing a fandom, a framework, gives us a set of built-in markers, a common language, say.
Some of my online, fandom, friends have become in-person friends, and that's amazing (and some are blocked from this, by the simple fact that they're zillions of miles away). But those friendships are still, somewhat, framed by the common interest, the initial framework for the friendship.
This new friendship looks like it'll be an in-person one. Only without a framework. Am I doomed to screw it up? (No, no. Don't comment on that line - that's just me thinking out loud. It doesn't really warrant response.)
I've been thinking about friendships recently - well, for the past several months. I wanted to make friends with a couple of the girls at work. They're funny and bright girls, but it never comes to anything. We make tentative plans, but they fall through. Once I thought we had firm plans, but the other person thought they were tentative and ... fell asleep. (Which is good for her, really; she's in her last semester of art school and overworked, but it felt different at the time.)
It feels like I don't *know how* to make friends. I never really did - this is an ongoing theme in my life. I think someone's my friend, and they don't. I thought I'd made a couple of friends in other parents at Merrie's school, but discovered after a couple of years that one of the women really just liked me because I'm poor and make her look good and feel better about herself. She got to feel like the Gracious Hostess (she had no idea that I'm more sophisticated than my financial status would imply.) and the Magnanimous Giver. As soon as I realized that I was being used that way, I stopped going over to her house for coffee so much. Now she doesn't speak to me any more.
The other friendships I had at her school dissolved when she and the children of those parents stopped being friends. I thought we could stay friends, we adults; talk over the vagarities of life with kids and stuff, but ... I was wrong.
When I was in elementary school, I made friends easily at my working-class school. The students, my friends, were all different from me (and each other), but it was never important. We were all friends, because we were all there. I fit in there, in a way that I never did once I changed districts and started attending school in the upper middle class neighborhood. I’d think we were friends, the kids and I, and then I’d get betrayed.
Once, spectacularly, truly betrayed, with my secrets and personal life made somewhat public. Less public than it felt at the time (none of you know the “deathly important secrets” of my 16 year old self), but devastating. I had no warning, I just got a phone call from my two best friends, the two girls I’d have done anything for - they told me that they’d hated me the whole time and thought I was (ugly, fat, stupid) not worth their time and they weren’t my friends any more.
Ultimately, some of my current inability to make friends probably stems from that experience. When you’re braced for betrayal, it’s hard to be open to new friendships.
But I don’t feel like I’m braced for betrayal. I feel like I’m lonely for friends, people to bring into a big pile of happy people and to do things with.
Maybe I’m too busy? Too high-maintenance? Maybe *they’re* too busy?
***
Anyway, I guess my point, if I have one at all is this: How do you tell? How can you know when you’ve moved past acquaintance and into friendship? When does friendship become family? Many of the people I’ve met here, online, have become my *family* - more than friends. (Or maybe I’m mis-defining that as well…)
What do you think?
Stasia
Friendship is an interesting thing.
I'm making a new friend (everyone say hi?) A non-fandom friend. Someone I've met who doesn't have a connection to work, to fandom, to knitting - to any of the things I really do every day, every week. There are places we intersect, this person and I, but more in which we don't.
I haven't done this in *years* - it's a lot like tatting, to use a completely odd analogy: Tatting makes lace *in the air, unsupported by anything*. It's been ages since I've tried to make friends without the framework of a shared interest. In the air.
What this means, in a way, is that all of my expectations for how my new friend will react to things are ... wrong. I'm expecting what I've become used to, the way the fen I know react to things (and boy was I surprised when I saw just how similarly we react to things, fennishly) so many of my reactions are, well, not *wrong* exactly, but not mirrored. I expect certain reactions or comments and ... it's as if I'm climbing stairs and put my hand out for a banister and it's not there.
Fandom, shared interests in general, provide a shared frame of reference that’s narrower and more defined than the world as a whole. It’s a good place to start finding friends, shared interests; there’s always something to talk about. This is why, when someone says they want more friends (or a girl/boy/other-gender-of-choice friend), people tell them to join a club. With shared interests come commonality and connection.
I met my husband this way - without a previous shared interest. We met online, interestingly enough, but relatively randomly. We hit it off immediately - I remember wishing he’d come back online after chatting with him once. He did come back online, the next day, and then the next and the next and … soon our friendship progressed to more then text on a screen and became a relationship. THEN, I called him and spoke to him in person (and boy, was that terrifying. Eeep!)
So, I know it’s possible to make friends this way. Good friends, even. I just haven’t done it in ages, and it’s making me think about the mechanics of making friends and being friends. And, somewhat, of how online textual communication changes the way we interact. Do we make friends more quickly if the initial contact is less face-to-face? Are we more prone to revealing private things, because the simplicity of text makes us feel less public? Or less prone to being self-revelatory because text is so much less ‘welcoming’ than a live, friendly face?
***
Another thing that’s made me think about friendship is that I feel like I don’t make friends easily. Online friends I have in buckets - and boy are you the best people ever. Seriously, the help and love and hand holding and gifts and joy I've received from knowing all of you, no matter how far apart we are physically - it's more than amazing, it's inspiring and gratitude-creating.
But in person? It never seems to really work right. I'm too... loud or bossy or off-kilter (or not in the right fandom - I don't watch TV, so haven't seen, say Lost or American Idol or ...) or something. I'm not right. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and I'd like to change it. Maybe I'm too needy. See, here, if I were talking to fandom friends, I could reference a specific character and how that person does/does not deal with people or friends or friendship. Sharing a fandom, a framework, gives us a set of built-in markers, a common language, say.
Some of my online, fandom, friends have become in-person friends, and that's amazing (and some are blocked from this, by the simple fact that they're zillions of miles away). But those friendships are still, somewhat, framed by the common interest, the initial framework for the friendship.
This new friendship looks like it'll be an in-person one. Only without a framework. Am I doomed to screw it up? (No, no. Don't comment on that line - that's just me thinking out loud. It doesn't really warrant response.)
I've been thinking about friendships recently - well, for the past several months. I wanted to make friends with a couple of the girls at work. They're funny and bright girls, but it never comes to anything. We make tentative plans, but they fall through. Once I thought we had firm plans, but the other person thought they were tentative and ... fell asleep. (Which is good for her, really; she's in her last semester of art school and overworked, but it felt different at the time.)
It feels like I don't *know how* to make friends. I never really did - this is an ongoing theme in my life. I think someone's my friend, and they don't. I thought I'd made a couple of friends in other parents at Merrie's school, but discovered after a couple of years that one of the women really just liked me because I'm poor and make her look good and feel better about herself. She got to feel like the Gracious Hostess (she had no idea that I'm more sophisticated than my financial status would imply.) and the Magnanimous Giver. As soon as I realized that I was being used that way, I stopped going over to her house for coffee so much. Now she doesn't speak to me any more.
The other friendships I had at her school dissolved when she and the children of those parents stopped being friends. I thought we could stay friends, we adults; talk over the vagarities of life with kids and stuff, but ... I was wrong.
When I was in elementary school, I made friends easily at my working-class school. The students, my friends, were all different from me (and each other), but it was never important. We were all friends, because we were all there. I fit in there, in a way that I never did once I changed districts and started attending school in the upper middle class neighborhood. I’d think we were friends, the kids and I, and then I’d get betrayed.
Once, spectacularly, truly betrayed, with my secrets and personal life made somewhat public. Less public than it felt at the time (none of you know the “deathly important secrets” of my 16 year old self), but devastating. I had no warning, I just got a phone call from my two best friends, the two girls I’d have done anything for - they told me that they’d hated me the whole time and thought I was (ugly, fat, stupid) not worth their time and they weren’t my friends any more.
Ultimately, some of my current inability to make friends probably stems from that experience. When you’re braced for betrayal, it’s hard to be open to new friendships.
But I don’t feel like I’m braced for betrayal. I feel like I’m lonely for friends, people to bring into a big pile of happy people and to do things with.
Maybe I’m too busy? Too high-maintenance? Maybe *they’re* too busy?
***
Anyway, I guess my point, if I have one at all is this: How do you tell? How can you know when you’ve moved past acquaintance and into friendship? When does friendship become family? Many of the people I’ve met here, online, have become my *family* - more than friends. (Or maybe I’m mis-defining that as well…)
What do you think?
Stasia