It’s very reassuring for me to see this thread, and see how many people have few friends and are okay with it. I have (had, really) one good friend, then she had kids, and now we email occasionally and that’s about it. My sisters and Mom are probably my only female friends at this point, and my husband is my best friend. I have lots of acquaintances, but few good friends, and I find that I don’t really want more friends, and I was a little worried about not wanting any more friends. My social needs are being met just fine, so I guess if it ain’t broke…
I really think the difference is that the people here know the difference between “friend” and “friendly with”.
I think alot of people don’t know or don’t bother to make that distinction.
I’d say a close friend is someone you can ask to pick you up at the airport, help you move, be emotionally vulnerable with, perhaps? I’ve been married, I’ve been single and personally IRL friends like this are very important to me.
If you’re single and past 30, it’s harder to make new friends, I’m finding. I moved to a new state and most of the people I know here are married with kids - not the sort who can go along to the movies or something on a whim. It took a while but I’ve made a couple of good friends through my main hobby (dog activities.)
Slight hijack-but-not-really - I’ve read that many people are becoming less social and more isolated too. I can think of quite a few reasons, but believe various methods of electronic communication plays a part. For some people, in my experience, the internet becomes both a replacement for IRL friends, and a valuable outlet for those who tend to be loners.
I didn’t spend nearly as much time online until I moved someplace where I initially didn’t know anyone - I think sharing with other people is a fundamental human need and places like the SDMB fills that need for people who don’t otherwise have an outlet.
So I’d say the responses you get here may not be an accurate sampling of the population in general, because folks who spend lots of time online are more likely to be loner-types.
Once again, this board makes me feel better about myself. I’ve been back in my hometown for eight years now, and while I have a lot of aquaintances, there is nobody that I hang with except for my wife.
The book Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, that came out in 1995 spoke to the notion that Americans have become more and more isolated over the years for a variety of reasons. From a review:
And from the book:
I could have written this myself.
Let me introduce you to the concept of “Pamplona-style friendship”.
My mother had lived in Pamplona between the ages of 15 and 19, but she didn’t really encounter this idea until she moved back at age 25, after marrying Dad. Her idea of friendship includes “cultivating”; you are supposed to call your friends and set up an alloted time for each friend. She has one friend she sees on Monday, one she sees on Tuesday and one she sees on Thursday. To me and, apparently, a lot of people from Pamplona, that’s “building fences on the sea.” Friendship happens, it’s not something you schedule. The way my mother used to see it, it’s near impossible for two people with busy, highly variable schedules to become friends, since they wouldn’t be able to meet at the same time for the same length of time every week. Of course, a daughter like yours truly has broadened her mindset a bit 
A “Pamplona-style” friend may not be someone you see every week. It may be someone you don’t write to every week. It may be someone you haven’t seen in years. But one day you run into them on the street, and you start talking with them on the street, with snow over your ankles, and you don’t even realize you’re cold until you’ve been there for over three hours. Or, your child is thinking of going to college in the town where they live, and you pick up your little red book and call them to ask if they know any good student housing, and they offer their house. After years of not hearing from you, years of not seeing you, years of not even Christmas cards in either direction.
I’ve got a lot of Pamplona-style friends. Since I finished college I’ve lived in South Miami, North Miami, my hometown in Spain, Philadelphia (with over 80% travel time), a different town in Spain, now I’m in Costa Rica. Anybody who expects us to meet for coffee and pastries every Tuesday at 4pm needs cold showers… but I’ve got friends that I know will be perfectly happy to see me next time we run into each other.
Yesterday was my birthday. Today I was talking to Mom on the phone, to give her my arrival time for vacation over Easter, and I told her I’ve gotten letters from several friends. She said “bet those guys write you more often than your brother Edu”. Yep. They do. So I’ve got some more normal friends too 
and a brother who writes 2-3 times a week, and one who writes maybe one line per month but hey at least he sends baby pics of the Most Gorgeous Nephew I Have (yes, I have only one, how did you figure that out?)
“Coffee and pastries at 4pm on Tuesday” friends… well, no, I don’t have any of those.
Another non-friend-haver here. I only ever have two or three people in my life that I can concentrate on, and for many years those spots have been taken up by family.
Nearly all my co-workers give me a pain in the ass. I do all my socializing here, and when I’m done, I turn the computer off. I never have to talk about anything that bores me, or remember anyone’s birthday, or go out for drinks after work when I’d rather go home, etc. I’m very happy.
This essay on the Monkeysphere is one of my favourite things from the net.
I’m glad to see this thread as well. I think some people think I’m kinda strange because I tend not to socialize much.
I’m a loner too. I have my wife and two dogs and that’s just fine.
My Wife and I live out in the sticks, and I’m a bit of a home-body. I like doing stuff around the house. In fact, I guess it’s my hobby.
My best friend of 27 years lives about 8 hours away, other than that, I have my brother and a cousin I hang with sometimes. They live 2 hours away.
My Wife has a larger circle of friends, 3 close friends that live in town, that I also consider friends. And I like them plenty, but really, where sort of friends by default.
The guys at work are good kids. About 12-15 years younger than me. They are completely and totally into fishing and hunting though. Something I have absolutely no interest in.
I’m happy this way, with one, sort of selfish exception.
Sometimes, you need a hand doing something, it can be a bit of an imposition asking an ‘acquaintance’ to drive 20 miles for some help.
For instance, we will be getting a new bed pretty soon. Not sure how in the heck I’m going to drag the existing king size mattress down the stairs from our bedroom and out of the house.
I guess I’ll ask the same guy that helped me take it up the stairs, at least he lives close. I wonder how he is doing, I haven’t seen him in over a year……
Yeah. I miss college for the easy friendshps. I hung around a crew of approximately seven close friends and maybe 30 other guys/girls.
But it’s easy enough to hang with people when you have no other real responsibilities other than “show up to class occassionally” and “try not to fuck your friends’ exes.”
These days, I have the availablity of my family if I need emotional support/advice. I could use a few unattached hanging buddies to run to the movies, talk up women and attend the occassional cultural happening with.
Yeah, I’m getting to the point where church is looking good for the social contacts alone.
I only have one close friend, and lately I don’t even see him all that much.
One reason I took up dating again was because I was lonely, I figured even if the woman wanted to ‘just be friends’ at that point it was okay in my book- someone to talk to/hang out with. But in spite of all the people I met, nobody has been on the level of 'Hey Incubus let’s go see the so-and-so movie. Or ‘Hey Incubus want to go biking on Sunday’? I have tons of time on the weekends, but nobody is interested in calling me and asking me (which is a big deal to me) to be a part. My friend is having a party at his apartment, and he didn’t even invite me because he thought I had to work all day on Saturday (I worked TWO FLIPPIN HOURS on Saturday, in the mornings, I’ve told him this a thousand times :mad: ) and rather than call and ask to be sure, he simply assumes I can’t and I don’t find out about it until he calls me asking if I can help him edit a paper for him :rolleyes:
So yeah, making friends is hard, for the same reason dating can be rough- the people that want to do it the most are often coming off as somewhat desperate in one way or another, which I know is a turnoff. I like ‘me’ time, but when every damn weekend is 48 hours of unrelenting ‘me’ time it starts to get dull.
Most of my friends are family. I don’t really socialize with the co-workers outside of work, except for an occasional office party or business dinner. I have a husband, two kids, and my BILs were there recently for me during a crisis with Ivylad.
I’m good.
Cleveland is a difficult place to make new friends, mainly because there’s not many transplants in the same situation as you. Most people are natives who have circles of friends that date back to childhood, and they’re deeply entrenched.
I have a lot of acquaintances here, and I’m well-liked in the groups that I’m involved in; boards and committees I sit on, activity groups, Dopefests, and so on. The members of my curling club threw me a surprise birthday party a few months ago. Still, I don’t yet feel comfortable calling any of them to just hang out, or help me move furniture. I’ve been to two Cleveland dopefests and I’m having one at my house in June, but again I don’t think I could call any area Dopers to join me for a movie or exhibit.
I do have a lot of good friends that meet my “Could I call them out of the blue to help me move a couch?” litmus test. Thing is, they all live in other cities.
I don’t have any girlfriends. My husband isn’t the macho, no-talking-about-relationships kind. I also work, so I don’t hang out with the other school moms, which seems to be where a lot of adult friendships happen. Also, I didn’t grow up here, but my husband did, so his friends have become the people we tend to socialize with. Really, family takes up most of my time anyway.
No, I don’t think it’s all that unusual. I’ve been a loner all my life and have never had much of a need for friends. It’s always been a simple matter of fact.
I’ve got online friends, but no IRL friends and it’s been that way for many years and it’ll stay that way.
Exactly. I’m perfectly happy the way I am. I don’t insult those who have friends and certainly don’t look down on them. Just not my cup of tea, that’s all.
Boy, howdy! My husband’s co-workers think it’s akin to a mental illness.
They’re constantly trying to “rescue” Hubby and I, which entails dragging us out to bars, or the women nagging me to come shopping with them. They’re fully convinced that I only stay home and read because I’m ignorant of other alternatives.
I have no friends other than my husband, and I am perfectly content with it. It means I don’t have to hear the phone ringing constantly, or having people “drop by”. It means I don’t have to try to wiggle out of constant invitations to do things I don’t particularly want to do or feel compelled to attend birthday parties or other social functions I would rather not. It means I don’t have to listen endlessly while someone whines about problems they created and/or intend to do nothing to solve.
Secondly, most of the people we know do not have the same tastes as Hubby and I. We would rather go to an interesting ethic resturant we haven’t yet tried than eat at a chain or have bar food. We would rather go to a museum or zoo than shop. We would rather spend our evenings in quiet surroundings with a bottle of wine and good conversation rather than in an ear-splitting, crowded bar.
Just as an example, we went on a three-day trip with some of Hubby’s co-workers to the Big City to watch a football game-- something I had never done before, and thought sounded interesting. Like Napoleon’s trip to the Battle of Waterloo, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
We were unhappy the entire trip. The group refused to eat in any place which “looked expensive” which meant that every meal was consumed in places with names like Alligator Joes which doubled as bars. (Where the chicken fingers cost probably the same as a meal in that cute little bistro on the corner, by the way.)
We spent every night trudging from bar to bar. (A practice which continues to elude my understanding-- one bar is much the same as the next. Why keep switching?) In the daytime, I was seized by the wives who bustled me off to a mall to coo over merchandise identical to what can be purchased at the mall at home. For endless hours I stood, watching them try on clothes, purchase them, and then go to a numbing succession of additonal stores in search of accessories, only to repeat the process the next afternoon.
They want us to go to Las Vegas with them this summer. Given the choice between that and a trip to Abu Graibh, I’d have to sit down and think it over.
But I digress. . . . What irks me the most is the refusal to accept other people’s choices as legitimate. Much the same attitude is faced by those who decide not to have children-- people insist that childless couples are “making a mistake” and will regret it later, or that they will “change their minds.”
Likewise, friends and socializing . . . I am not “wrong” for my choices, and neither are you. Just because the way I chose to spend my evenings does not appeal to you does not mean I need your help to free me from my peace and quiet.
I already knew that I wasn’t the only one having trouble making friends, so this thread doesn’t make me feel any better. 
I moved to Virginia in 1998, when I was 27, and to date I have all of two friends who live in this state – and they’re married to each other. I met the husband at my old job and we became fast friends, and happily as I got to know his wife I became friends with her as well. At the time I met them I had a best friend who lived in Maryland, but that relationship imploded in 2001 and since then they have been my best friends (though it’s a different kind of best-friendship). They’re great, I can’t imagine my life without them, and I’m completely in love with their 4-year-old son. But they’re both in their late 40s, and therefore so are the people in their small circle of friends. All cool people, but also all married and mostly with kids and here I am single and childless and just in my early 30s. Slightly different lifestyles. I had an awesome group of friends at the end of high school and during college, and I’ve been keenly missing that kind of social interaction.
The number of other IRL friends has gradually dwindled over the years: I used to have several, now I just have one – my old college roommate, who lives in Pittsburgh. I’m not in touch with anyone else from college or high school anymore, though there are a couple I could probably still call and get together with if I felt the urge. I don’t use the term “friend” loosely (or to describe anyone I’ve never met IRL) so I don’t think of myself as having any online friends, but there are a couple of Dopers I exchange e-mail with fairly regularly. I’m not sure what “category” I put them in, even though I’ve met one of them a couple of times … somewhere between acquaintances and friends. Buddies, maybe?
A few months ago I got proactive about the friends thing: I’ve been playing cards with a bunch of co-workers every Friday, and several of them are a tight-knit group of old friends who go out to dinner every week after poker. They’re all around my age, smart and funny people I seem to share a lot of interests with, and while they’re almost all paired off only a few are parents. I’ve worked on the same project with most of that group for the past 3 years, and as I’ve gotten to know them better we’ve all gotten along pretty well. I started thinking it would be cool to go to dinner with them, but I knew they would never invite me because they had no way of knowing that I wanted to go – and it seemed kind of rude to just invite myself. But after a while I became fairly confident that they wouldn’t mind if I went, so one day I just asked if I could tag along: they said sure, and I’ve been having dinner with them after poker every week ever since. It hasn’t translated into anything else outside of work yet – i.e., real friendships – but I could see it happening. It’s a slow process, though, because they’re all still getting to know me (and vice-versa) and it does take longer to make real friends after a certain age. It’ll be a while before I’m calling any of them up to hang out on a weekend or anything, but it feels nice to have even potential friends.
Seeing as I am a generally insecure, moody person, I don’t really know how many friends I have–or, more specifically, how many of the people I know count as friends. But, for all my innate shyness, I have at least managed to create/maintain a number of acquaintences. Some of them are through my husband, who is more outgoing than I am. Others are people I met through gaming (well, okay, technically through a thread here aboutu gaming). Some of them are people I’ve known for a long while.
I seem to meet most people via gaming, and most of my social excursions kind-of revolve around that. I don’t really socialize at work, as I have very little in common with most of my co-workers. In fact, aside from a once-a-week video night with a couple of close friends, I don’t really socialize much outside of gaming. For me, socializing is difficult, difficult work, and if I overdo it, then I eventually just turn off. For instance, after three weekends where I did stuff on both Saturday and Sunday, I was a quiet, nervous wreck, and left the last outing without even saying “goodbye.” I think that, absent the excuse of gaming, my social interaction would be virtually nil, unless you count online interaction. For some people, being social is hard, and, unless you’re guaranteed to get something out of it, it’s often more productive and fulfilling to stay home.
Yeah, Angel, I agree that amount of time spent on socializing is key. I love to go to parties and socialize and talk and have a good time - about twice a month. More than that, and I feel like I’m forcing myself to go and be sociable when what I really want is to stay home and read/watch movies/do something that doesn’t involve anybody other than my husband and me.
When I moved across country after high school, I lost track of all but one friend. Luckily we still talk on occasion, or I’d have to admit to myself that I have no real friends – only some acquaintances from work, with whom I’m friendly, but not too friendly.
It suits me well enough. I have a decent relationship with my family. My biggest problem is dating – I think some people like to size-up prospective mates by number of friends. I’ve endured more than a few dates with women who spent an entire evening name-dropping: “so then I met my friend Matt and Susie at this Sushi bar, but my other friend Sharon didn’t show up so I called Jake, but Jake wasn’t home so I called my other friend Lisa…”
There’s no way I can compete with that. Not that I’d want to bore some poor woman with lists of random names, but sometimes I feel like the sparcity of my contact list might be taken as a reflection of my personality.
I’m not a bad guy – just not particularly sociable.