When my wife and I were dating, I asked her some of her deal breakers in a relationship. Besides the obvious (cheating, physical abuse, etc) one of her deal breakers was a man that had no real life friends. She felt like a person with no friends is like that for a reason. Either by choice: the man is introverted and just prefers to spend time alone, has a lifestyle that makes it difficult to maintain friendships, or is just generally aloof. Or due to personality flaws: Too abrasive, moochy, needy or socially awkward for others to tolerate them even as friends.
I gave the counter-hypothetical of a man who recently moved to a city and hadn’t made any friends yet. She said she’d be willing to be friends with a man in that situation and take it from there.
She said ultimately she didn’t want to be the person’s one and only friend in the world because in the past, friends/partners like this all ended up being extremely clingy and needy. She’d be the only one they talked to, and because she’s such a good listener (being a Social Worker and all) the relationship would get a little one-sided. By having his own friends and social circle, a man would still have a life outside of hers and she wouldn’t feel guilty if she wanted to be alone or have a “ladies night” with her own friends. This made a lot of sense.
Fortunately I have friends, and my relationship with her grew (obviously we’re married now). Both of us having friends means each of us is afforded a degree of space if we want it. Having friends also helps you to get to know your partner by getting to know their friends and how they interact.
What do you think? Would having no RL friends be a deal breaker for you? I can imagine some people would revel in it, getting all of the person’s attention. I myself would be a little :dubious: for the same reasons my wife would be.
I can see it working as a general “soft” criteria that’s amenable to change. I don’t think I would want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t eat fruits and vegetables, because I’m guessing this would be a good indicator of that person’s level of health consciousness. Yet, this generaization may not hold at the scale of the individual. If I later learned that this carnivore works out and goes mountain climbing every day and otherwise seems like a normal, healthy-type person, I might change my mind. I would also change my mind if they had other assets that outweighed the pecularities of their diet.
Some people don’t have close friends because they are easily satisfied with the social relationships they maintain at school and work. This isn’t a fault. It’s a virtue.
Hmm. I don’t know. Everything else being equal, there’s a part of me that would be kind of attracted to a man with no friends because then all I need to do is integrate him into my social circle and I don’t have to learn any new names.
My husband has always been social with plenty of friends. We met at a young age and when we were getting married, his friends were drinking in bars and hooking up with random people. The friendships didn’t last because they were in different places in life. He also stopped doing drugs/drinking and lost friends. He made friends at jobs, but none have lasted. Now he we live in a new state and know no one. All the men he works with are his employees and he doesn’t want outside friendships with them because of issues in the past.
I don’t think it’s a deal breaker at all. We spend lots of time together and both of us enjoy it this way. It’s nice to text/call the friends we have back home, but now every time we have free time, we have a date night.
I think part of my answer would be the reason why the person didn’t have any friends, and what his expectation would be of me, with respect to mine.
Is this a person who wants to be alone, or just has difficulty meeting people and maintaining relationships? I’m not the type of person who wants to spend 24/7 with who I am dating, and enjoy having some time with my friends. Even if he’d easily integrate into my social group, I think it would lead to awkwardness when I would say “You know that group with whom we often hang out? Well, I want to do it again, but this time without you.” I’d feel guilty and awkward leaving him alone to his own devices, even if he was okay with it.
If the reason that he didn’t have any friends was because he was new in town, then I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable dating him until he made some sort of connections, because I don’t want to be his sole link to the outside world.
When I start feeling like I’m his social director, we’re going to have problems.
See these are the reasons my wife feels its a dealbreaker for her. She doesn’t want to be a person’s social director. There’s too many negative reasons for not having any friends that you’d have to dig through a lot of excuses to get to the legitimate cause at the bottom.
Monstro, a person limiting their interactions to aquaintences might not be committed enough to be able to maintain a relationship which may extend to levels of trust the person isn’t willing to make.
Of course there could be “legitimate” reasons they don’t have friends. But in a dating situation, getting to know someone early on you aren’t invested very much so there is comparatively little risk to pass up the picky eater, person with no friends, or 300lb tumblrista.
I can understand this, but I can also think of cases I’d be willing to give a variance to. Like, maybe I don’t really take things too fast myself, and I’m not really looking to establish a committment right out of the gates. I could see myself being attracted to someone who can occupy themselves just as well as I can and isn’t going to blowing up my phone ever hour because he can’t handle loneliness. I also would be attracted to a guy who is confident enough himself to tell me he doesn’t have a lot of friends, because it would show he was not only honest, but that he trusted me.
Your wife’s rule make sense for extrovert. But not necessarily an introvert.
My first boyfriend had no friends, and my social group therefore became his friends. It was a little awkward. I totally get not wanting to be one’s partner’s social director, because I hated it and promised myself I’d never do that again.
My husband, on the other hand, has very few close friends. He’s an introvert and rarely wants to go to social events with a bunch of people (I am an introvert but like the occasional party). He does get along well with almost everyone, and he has a lot of casual acquaintances/friends at work that he enjoys talking to. Occasionally he’ll invite someone for dinner or some such, though less often than I do (and sometimes I’m the one who brings up the idea). He also doesn’t really want to do a lot of social events or social extracurriculars, so most of my social life is spent apart from him, although I do have him go to the occasional social event (I generally pick ones that I’m pretty sure he will enjoy).
We would probably have spent a lot of extracurricular time apart anyway, as I do a lot of music and he doesn’t. This has worked out very well for us; he doesn’t mind that I do a lot more social things than he does, and he doesn’t get lonely or clingy, and is supportive of my doing yet another rehearsal for something… And I don’t mind that we do a lot of things apart, because I’ve always liked to do my own thing as well. Now, I know people who would hate the kind of relationship we have (and I’m pretty sure a couple of the people we know side-eye it a little). But it works for us.
The biggest difference between my husband and my ex-boyfriend is that my husband is comfortable in his own skin. He likes people, he just doesn’t always want to be with them, and he’s happy that way. Whereas my ex-boyfriend was always, I think, a little more clingy and needing the romantic relationship to fill up the deficits in his friendship-relationships, which I couldn’t handle.
I interpret the OP to have meant: The man is alone either by HIS choice (e.g. introverted preferences) vs. being forced to be alone by OTHER’s decision to not tolerate his tiresome presence.
No friends.
Too many friends.
Friends who are douchebags.
Friends who are creepy.
Friends he spends too much time with.
Friends who are always coming over.
Friends you never see.
Friends you don’t like.
Friends you like better than you like the person himself.
Imaginary friends.
Friends who get him in trouble with the FBI.
As long as I enjoy his company, he respects my space (not too clingy), and our range of conversation has breadth and depth, his friend count wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. I think there are more important things to judge a guy by, and in my experience, the number of friends you have isn’t a good proxy for how good you are as a romantic partner.
How is it not? I’m friends with plenty of introverts. Being introverted doesn’t mean you shun human interaction. Shunning human interaction is FAR beyond just introversion. And it’s still a choice.