how to not make friends as an adult (pt. 2)
a multi-part serial about the dangers of young adult friend groups - especially those made up of primarily couples
→ Read part 1 of this serial here.
→ Name/person key at the bottom of this article.
Friendships are hard when you’re a seer (and I don’t mean a woo-woo seer like Prof. Trelawney in Harry Potter).
When you have seen more of the world and more of yourself in a few short years than most of your peers, you see things. Patterns, delusions, and often lies people tell themselves and others to be better accepted, to better belong.
My dad, masochist that he is, calls this “the shining,” yes, in reference to the Stephen King novel.
I see it most in people who have been confronted with their own mortality young, for whom the rose-colored glasses on life have been removed, the glass shattered.
Some people get it, and some people are content to never see clearly.
Ignorance is bliss after all.
Some of us are not destined to reside in bliss forever. Awareness seeps in and makes living infinitely more complicated. Though infinitely richer in equal measure, I’d argue.
You may or may not be aware of a statistic from a few years ago suggesting that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% truly are.
Let’s reframe again, shall we…
Only 10-15% of all humans possess a conscious knowledge of their own character, feelings, motives, and desires.
Terrifying as that statistic feels, if you’re among the 10-15% with “the shining,” this probably feels about right.
How often are you driving only for someone to pull some crazy stunt right in front of your car?
How often does someone reach over you or step in front of you at the supermarket?
How often do you find yourself over-explaining a basic sentiment to blank stares and deaf ears?
This is all to say that for the 10-15% to find each other, recognize the shine, and be well-suited for friendship is rare.
Most of us have maybe a handful of one-off friendships forged through shared experience or adversity, where mutual respect and vulnerability are the foundation – or so, anyway, do R (my husband) and I.
Neither of us was popular, nor were we unpopular. But we respectively never chose to be surrounded by a group of people we barely knew and call ourselves cool for it.
We both harbor insecurities about this. Particularly in college, I felt that the time I spent talking on the phone or on FaceTime to R, and my own recluse proclivities, kept me from expanding my social circle. I developed a preverbial chip on my shoulder because of this.
R, too, has a similar chip, perhaps one we bonded over filling for each other. The seer in me has always recognized the seer in him.
It was rather uncharacteristic of me to put myself in uncertainty’s way by going on that first friend-date with E. I know how to mask well, better than I realized, as we yapped enthusiastically about the bachelor (which I only watched because of R, actually), and serial TV shows we both loved like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl.
Then onto our gamer boyfriends, both tall, opinionated, slightly traumatized, and possessors of big personalities. We couldn’t believe it, “are we dating the same person???” We laughed at this shared identity that lessened the space between two strangers.
We parted ways in agreement that we would go out next as a foursome.
And so we did.
R and I primped nervously, fighting over our one full-length mirror as the time to meet for our first-ever double date loomed nearer by the hour.
We nervously gamed planned points of conversation. I relayed similarities E had mentioned about her boyfriend, L, that I thought might resonate with R.
Anxiety bubbled in us both as we walked the two blocks to one of our favorite bars, conveniently located on our turf to give us the home-field advantage.
We sat nervously across from E and L, the lively atmosphere around us occasionally breaking our awkward silences as we muttered through introductions and gazed at the menu a little longer than necessary.
Eventually, E and I struck up a conversation while R and L sized each other up... boys.
That is, until she and I were the ones sent to walk next door to pick up our food, and the children were left to fend for themselves.
“I hope they don’t just stare at each other the whole time we are gone,” I laughed to E.
“Ugh, I warned L that he needed to talk tonight; he’s quiet around strangers,” she vexed back.
But our fears were unfounded as we made our way back to the table, a new round of drinks in front of our men, as they furiously discussed some game they both couldn’t beat.
E and I exchanged hopeful glances as we quietly dug into our food.
Hope and anticipation buzzed stronger than our drinks as R and I stumbled home that night. Friends.
The potential rang out infinitely before us.
A series of hang-outs followed throughout the summer, each one a blur of nervous laughter, new experiences, slightly forced conversation, and alcohol. A lot of alcohol.
L and R had a quick camaraderie. L was a bit of a bad influence in a way that I thought R really needed. It quickly became a practice for both of the boys to surreptitiously steal something from wherever we went: candles, glasses, coasters, anything they could pocket inconspicuously.
Then, as the nights recapped at whoever’s apartment before we parted ways, the illicit goods were exchanged to be kept by the other.
Everywhere we went, we started to spot the same red candle, and E and I even noticed it as a prop on TV shows we watched. So we made a pact to each steal “the red candle”, without the other’s noticing – which all four of us did eventually accomplish, and I’m sure still have to this day…(you may recognize it).
R and I had a comical drunk photo of L that we printed out with “Have you seen this man?” in bold lettering beneath, which we proceeded to plaster all over their neighborhood on his birthday.
L was a prankster too and probably got R countless times with fake phone calls over the summer (R is for sure too gullible for his own good).
Some hangouts were tamer, board games or singing along to 2000s bangers on YouTube from the couch.
But regardless of what we were doing, it was alcohol that forged the friendship forward.
As the summer faded to fall, though really fall everywhere else was peak summer in San Diego, L started to talk about expanding the group.
One afternoon, L, sprawled on our living room floor, said, “I have a goal for each of us by the end of the year. We all have to go out and find 2 people and bring them into the group.”
“What?” went E, R, and I from the sofa.
“Ya, I think we need to take this to the next level, we need more people.”
“You want us to just go find two randos to be friends with?” I asked incredulously. Anxiety building in me at the very prospect.
“Ya, I want to know so many people that I’m just lost in the crowd, you know, then we can all go out and just not know what’s even going on.”
Not L’s first red flag, but E brushed him off, and to be fair, he did say a lot of out-of-pocket things like this that she easily dismissed.
But for R and me, the threat was deposited, noted, and filed away in those dark boxes of our fears.
Were we not enough? Decades of life experience and deep-seated insecurities resurfaced as an ever-present undercurrent in the following months.
And then, one otherwise mundane afternoon, E texted me, “Hey!! We went out last night with this cool couple. I met the girl on bumble bff last week, and then we all went out last night, and I think she and her boyfriend will get along with all of us really well. When are you and R free?”
Enter T & D.
to be continued…
this story gets out of hand quickly.
how not to make friends as an adult is a multi-post serial about navigating new friendships as an adult, and what happens when a mix of misaligned, insecure, 20 & 30 somethings (who happen to all be couples) form a friend group.
Friendship Key:
June - me
R - my husband (then boyfriend)
Together 7 years (at this point): socially awkward, a little co-dependent, generally great communication, hadn’t made new friends since the start of college.
Couple #1, E & L
E - first girl I met on Bumble BFF: basic & cheugy, very surface level, obsessed with T-Swift & The Bachelor
L - E’s boyfriend: a little dark, drinks too much, withholding, big unhealed trauma energy, gamer
Together 2 Years: E made the rules. L probably didn’t like her. Group kingpins, and they liked it that way.
Couple #2, T & D:
T - girl E met on Bumble BFF: quiet, shy, cat lover, probably closeted gay
D - T’s boyfriend: always high, long hair, deadbeat
Together 5 years: Foodies, travelers, kind of boring. BIG malicious gossips.
-June
I invite you to stay and be seen here.
for words with nowhere else to go
unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between
your next read →
how not to make friends as an adult (pt. 1)
I landed in San Diego, solo, in the summer of 2019. Like a pipe dream finally realized, our plane soared over the mountains, quite literally through the city (iykyk), and made contact with the earth.
there's no such thing as a "waste of time"
“I don’t believe that time can be wasted,” a mind-boggling revelation delivered as a passive statement by my younger sister, P, in the middle of our weekly facetime.
art by the incomparable talent on Pinterest
I am eagerly waiting for the next chapter in this series! I like how you’re filling us in on the intro of the situation(s) to see the evolution of it all
Since going sober, it has been shocking how many of my friendships and relationships were glued together by tequila…. I realised that the reason why we were spending so much time together was because it was more socially acceptable to get drunk in a group than in your room alone. Loved this, excited for the next part!