If you're friends with someone and your current friend group doesn't personally know them, do you expect your friend group to be opened minded about meeting them?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Background: Since I plan on staying at my college this upcoming weekend with some friends of mine (original group), I thought that I would visit some of my other friends as well, even though my original group doesn’t mind me doing so at all.

Situation: I met this girl in one of my classes and even though we didn’t talk very much, she recognized me as I was walking past her friend’s apartment from a party with a small group of people. Even though her friend’s apartment was a “friends only” event, this girl still invited me to come in after asking her friend if it was okay just because she recognized me from class.

Ever since then, I’ve only seen her at parties once in awhile, since she usually does her own thing during the weekends, and every time, she always seemed happy to see me. I also drove her and her friends to and back from a party when I was designated driving one night, but they probably don’t remember me because they were drunk at the time.

Furthermore, after telling her about coming up to visit this upcoming weekend, she said that she’ll definitely let me know what her and her friends decide to do during the weekend.

Overall, I feel like some people are presuaded by their own friends when it comes to decision making. If one friend doesn’t agree, then the rest of the group may go along with it just to avoid any confrontations between the group.

So, if you were the girl in this situation, do you expect your friends to be understanding when meeting someone new, which would be me in this situation?

On an extra note, this girl’s friend group has both guys and girls, if that changes anything.

TLDR: A friend of mine may not invite me to hang out with her and her friends just because they don’t personally know me, even though she doesn’t mind at all, but her friends may.

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Yes they should be open minded and definitely make some effort to get to know you. But after that they are entitled to make their own decision about whether they like you or not.

If they don’t like you then they should keep that to themselves unless they feel the mutual friend might be hurt or in danger in some way through knowing you. I’m sure you’re not giving out that vibe though…

3

I thought the OP sounded vaguely familiar. Is this friends and friends-of-friends stuff a recurring issue for you?

4

Does this win for longest thread title ever?

5

Is this all re covid? If so, keep the f apart! Even if not so, keep the f apart. Multiple students have been suspended from universities for not following the rules.

6

This seems, to me, to be a manifestation/extension of Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship is Transitive. “GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they’re not, something is Very Wrong.”

OP, your female friend may consider you to be a friend, but it’s possible that she understands (or suspects) that her other circle of friends might not hit it off with you. Just because you get along well with a certain person, is no guarantee that you’ll get along with one of that person’s other friends.

7

My response is a little bit from Fiendish Astronaut and a little bit from Kenobi
Her friends should give you a chance to integrate well into the group, in a perfect world.
But this is not a perfect world, and if her other friends and you don’t mesh well, well, thats ok too. It’s alright to have different groups of friends from different areas of your life.
And Kenobi is a wise old man :wink:indeed, to counsel that if she suspects you and her other friends won’t mix well, to keep you separate.

8

You’re wasting your time. That same point was made repeatedly in the previous thread (See link in my last post here.), and the OP hand-waved it away.

9

Whatever you do, don’t overthink the whole thing to death… Ahh, I just looked up who the OP was. Uh, oh, sta3535, you’ll have to work on that.

Oh, and are you still not masking or distancing? You’d better not let any cute girls see how little you care about other people…

10

I’m not sure I understand, but I think you are asking:

I’m going to hang out with some college friends this weekend. I also want to visit this cute girl I met, but don’t know well. She wants to hang out with me, too. Should I expect her friends to invite me to join them?

Answering based on that understanding:

If we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, yeah, I’d expect her friends to invite you to hang out. It depends somewhat on what they are doing. If they are planning to play some game where it would be awkward for you to join (either because they need some specific number, or because it would be hard to bring you up to speed) then no, I wouldn’t expect them to include you. But if they planned to hang out and watch TV, yeah, I’d expect them to be curious to meet you, and invite you to join.

But, we ARE in the midst of a pandemic. So your joining them is actually risky for them. I mean, the girl hanging out with you and then hanging out with them is risky for them, too, but they have less control over that.

So no, I wouldn’t expect them to invite you to join them this weekend. They might even uninvite the girl, if her hanging with you makes them feel unsafe. And you shouldn’t take it personally. Sadly, this is a bad time to expand your social network. Maybe you can start by joining their discord server or something and meet them virtually.

11

Open-minded, yes. Duty-bound to like someone you like, and/or to welcome them into their social circle, definitely not. A friend of a friend is not necessarily going to become your friend, too (although it’s nice when it happens).

12

Ah, Yes

13

Don’t do any of it. Have you heard about the pandemic? Stop meeting people!

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sta3535: Sorry for hijacking your thread. I just can’t help myself sometimes. If this is not the longest thread title ever, then I see this as a challenge. It may take me a few days, but I will come up with a real doozy. I wonder if the new system will limit me to a certain number of characters. If so, I vow to use every one of them.

Everyone: Please ignore this post and return to the original topic.

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This is not sta3535’s first thread on this exact topic. He doesn’t care because he thinks since he’s a college student, he can’t be infected or infect anyone else. People have already previously tried to get through to him with obviously no effect.

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I ended up hanging out with my close friends only, just because I would’ve had to deal with a 2 mile walk from the hotel to my other friend’s apartment, since the hotel was located off campus. Driving was obviously out of the question due to drinking.

Even though I made a big deal out of this, I’m more surprised that my friends didn’t mind me hanging out with them during an ongoing pandemic.

As for me, I plan on sticking to virtual communication between my friends and I.

17

That’s good news. Thank you from everyone who doesn’t want this pandemic to last for years.

But do NOT be surprised that your friends don’t take precautions if they’re in their 20’s. We were all invulnerable back then, and almost incapable of worrying about consequences and other people’s lives.

18

I’m not really sure what the OP is asking. But ignoring the COVID-19 implications, I would say that yes, I would generally assume friends of friends should be open to meeting someone who is introduced to them by one of their friends. Assuming you don’t act like a jerk, I would also assume that at worst they would be accepting but indifferent.