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How often do you see your friends?

2K views 15 replies 12 participants last post by  Truffaut 
#1 · (Edited)
Self explanatory title.

I only see my "friends" at least, once or twice a year. Hence why I put friends in speech commas. I know these people, I get along with them, but do I really know them? To be honest, not really. They're not acquaintances, but it feels like they're not close friends either. It sucks, I want to see some of them more... but adult life, work schedules and all that you know? It makes me wonder, do adults really have quality friendships or do they just wander from person to person, getting what interaction they can, but ultimately are still lonely because there is no intimacy and it... damn it sucks.

Of course I know it goes both ways. There is this one friend I have that I initiate contact with, but they never initially message me, or come and see me, when I've gone and seen them... so it makes me feel like its not worth keeping the friendship anymore, if they don't really want to be my friend. I give up. I mean, people have said others are lazy at keeping contact, but there comes a point when it's just... maybe they don't care at all.

Also, it's probably a fault of mine that I'm picky with friendships, well.. I just want somebody who likes some of the same things as me at least, similar personality and humour at least... like I don't like clubbing, so why would I have a friend whose main fun time out is clubbing? *sigh*

Maybe I shouldn't be complaining so much though, because I haven't contacted anyone lately... but..

There's some people I want to get closer to, and some I don't. And the ones I don't are the ones that are mostly available... or maybe I'm just too picky? The one person I want to build more rapport with doesn't really... message me back any more? Or maybe they're just too busy? (She is a chef.) Last time I heard she's living somewhere waaay far away. Argh. Besides her there's not really anyone else I kind of... clicked with straight away... You know what the weird thing is, I didn't even know her for that long and after I few weeks I've felt like I've known her forever, and I missed her when she wasn't at work. It was like, as if, I was in love or something. But I'm not? I mean, I'm not a lesbian at all. Or maybe this is a normal feeling for females? We can feel close even though we're not partners or anything?


Anyway, guess I'm at fault a little bit too.


... Err... anybody else feel this way?
 
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#2 ·
I am married and consider my husband my best friend. I see him every day.

I have a girlfriend that I have known for 20-25 years, I forget(s), the true total, of years. We meet with her husband (me, my husband, her husband, her) once every 6 months for dinner. That is twice a year.

I have a few other people I like, but I don't meet them, I send them emails if they write.

OH YEAH I forgot Kristi! Husband and I meet her and her husband for dinner at a famous hotel this past summer. Last time I had seen her was 45 years ago, when we were in high school.

And that is it. Speaking only for myself -- my damn energy is VERY limited. Also, my interest in other humans is about zilch.
 
#3 · (Edited)
@Eroticarmin

awe :(
I used to feel this way sometimes. And yessss i get friend-girl crushes too!! They always manage to hurt my feelings when i discover we aren't going to be as good of friends as I imagined. The reality is, as you alluded to- everyone is busy. And friendships are give and take. I know there are a select few friends I don't see for a year at a time but when we come together it's as if we just saw each other yesterday and those are who i consider to be my closest friends. It demonstrates a bond that surpasses any words we could exchange. Old friends who disappear and never come back i would just consider more like what you said.. I'm picky about my friendships. If i see them again randomly they're back at WHO ARE YOU?? status in my book.

But we do have a big problem as a society (assuming your in the u.s. and i apologize if not) with working 40 hours then having societal pressure too look successful with large homes that need maintenance and fancy cloths that need maintenance and have you whatever other 1,000 things people have that they don't really need like electronics that distract them from forming meaningful relationships!! It's our culture. It's awful. I don't know what you do for a living but maybe try and find some new activities that fascinate you that happen to have a social aspect. Like a volunteer program or club or something that you know you'd be super into no matter whose in it? I've found the more involved I am with my community the less alone I feel. You find people you love by doing the things that you love, in my personal experience thus far! Hope this helps a bit :)
 
#4 ·
I hardly ever see my friends, but I'm in group chats with my main IRL friends that we're always talking in, so we are moreorless in contact still. All of my other friends I've fallen out of contact with one way or another, except for an online friend who I talk to once a week. Mainly just cause I'm really, really bad at staying in contact with people. With my friends from school, every several months or so my best friend will stay over mine or me and our other friend will stay over my best friend's house for the night, with my college friends we meet up and do stuff about as often.

I have the same problem though, where you don't really feel that close with any of your friends. And where the people you do want to become closer with it feels hard to do so. When there's someone in the latter case I want to become closer with I have a bad habit of being really clingy and suffocating as I try to force the becoming-closer process to happen while I have a chance, if that makes sense, so I have to watch myself really carefully when there's someone like that in my life, and by over-controlling myself with those people I end up accidentally ghosting them and making them think I'm disinterested in them, and I don't even know which is worse. Then with the people I do naturally click with right away, we never end up in contact all that long for one reason or another which isn't great.

I think the only person I've really clicked with that I'm still in regular contact with is my middle sister. I was estranged from her and my youngest sister for just over 10 years until they both found me on social media and we started seeing each other every now and then, then after a while I didn't see then for years because of various life reasons, but we've managed to start seeing each other recently after a good few years and we've found that now that I'm an adult we've just completely clicked and we really *get* each other in a way we don't really experience with other people, and it's been really nice. I get along really well with her fiancee too, and I feel really close with both of them, so that's been nice.

So I suppose adult life can be a bit lacking in real intimacy, but there'll probably be someone that'll enter your life before long who you can have that kind of relationship with if you want to. I see you're Gen Z so you're probably a few years younger than me, this only happened with me this year, give it a couple years or so and you never know what kind of people you'll meet.
 
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#5 ·
I see my INTJ bff every week, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 days at a time. And I'm sick of it.

My other friends are classmates, so I see them 6 times a week.
One professor we see 5 times a week, another 2x, another just once.

Since it's only 1 1/2 to 3 hours a day, it's not that bad. I wish family and bff also had that kind of time limit. Like, only 6 hours with family every day, and my bff only 1 day per 2 weeks, and not his constant presence. But that is just a dream...

I should get a random desk job outside the house so I have an alibi not to deal with people.
 
#6 ·
When I get around to it.

IRL friends, I rarely text except to hang out, but that's every six months, minimum. Probably averaging 1.3 'excursions' a year.

My closer online friends, we text back and forth when not busy, and I usually tell them new happenings before my IRL friends. No consistent meet-ups (they're scattered across the states and abroad).

If someone from either subset gets a bit flaky, I pull back big time. I am not interested in giving more of my energy in exchange for less. If you're busy, so be it, but I won't keep banging down your door. Genuinely busy friends always come back around. 'Busy when you talk to me' friends are pretty much gone.

I am generally much closer to my immediate family.
 
#7 ·
One of my best friend, he is an ENJF, about 30 times in the last 12 months, mostly saturdays and then around 10 hours. But we also message us on a daily basis.

The other one, he is an INTP, about 15 times, saturdays too, 6-8 hours. We often sit together in discord through the night, when my sleep schedule is getting messy.

The 3rd one is the wife of the second one, she is an ISFP. They mostly visit us (I am married with an ISFJ) together.

The 4th and 5th are also married together (she is an INFJ and he is an ENFP) about 10 times, 6-8 hours.

(We are all friends. Five of us play pen & paper together. It is funny to think of, that we all (seven people) have different MBTI Types)
 
#9 ·


I don't need some tiresome and low benefit social obligation to fulfill, as if dealing with other humans that don't fall into friend category wasn't troublesome enough.What possibly such "friend" could have to offer me in exchange for tedious task of consistent socializing with them, anything of worth that I couldn't get elsewhere for less effort and risks taken? I suppose correct answer to your question for me could be never, since childhood or early adolescence.It would depend, if people I hung out with then would qualify as a friends (I'm dubious of notion but I wonder how I would describe this whole situation back then). I've little to none interest to deal with nonsensical drama that results from such engagement.
 
#15 ·
Ahhh, the introverts’ conundrum.

To answer your question, most of my friends I see a half dozen times a year at most. In fact, some of my closest friends are people I exclusively talk to online, though I know them on some level in real life (either old friends who have moved away, or people I knew that I got closer to through Facebook/ messenger/ text etc).

But to answer the harder part of it, I have come to determine that what makes a good friend a good friend is that they are someone you give your narrative to. The people you share the ongoing story of your life with. The reason it’s important to have friends beside your significant other is that your SO LIVES your life WITH you and so there is not much left to “narrate” to them.

It is through narrating our own story, and getting feedback from it, that we get that irreplaceable feeling of belonging, of being known and understood. I think there is something essential to human happiness in that.

It is important to have people who share real life experiences with us, and that can be our romantic partner, friends, family, etc. But it is also important to have someone to narrate ourselves to that does not live with us, share their lives with us.

For me the ideal is to have a really close coworker since that way the time to spend with them is baked into your day. But that is sort of random and I have had the happy chance to experience that a few times but have gone years in between without it. But yes, it is very hard, as in introvert and an adult with responsibilities, to find the time and social energy to commit to friends in a meaningful way. Texting/ messaging helps, IMO, because you don’t need to both be in the same place at the same time to share. But to do that well, you both need to be fairly expressive in writing.
 
#16 ·
I usually see my two very best friends once a week, which is cool, even if I sometimes feel the need to see them more often. With being adult comes this gruesome situation in which you are spending lot of time with people who you feel indifferent to, in your work or place of study, whereas you can't spend much time with the ones you love and care about.
I don't know, people are so busy nowadays, and it makes sad to think that I'm spending my life with people who don't care if I live or die. I try to change the situation, making friends and connections, and I achieve victory sometimes, but, besides this two friends, the rest of the relationships I built end up in the gutter, even when I put time and effort in them. Of course, sometimes some of these people whom did not value my friendliness reach out for me after a while, and I correspond them with sympathy, because I know how to forget, but I can't help but feel like is all a game, a game in which you can't really count with nobody for a long time.
 
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