How often can I expect that we’ll hang out in person?
How often will we text or talk on the phone? (I hate the phone by the way, if you’re my friend you’ll text.)
What if I’m not just a friend, I’m your “best” friend? How often will we hang out then, assuming I live in your area.
I’m asking these questions for a reason. I grew up in a cult. We had a lot of weirdness around what is a friend as we weren’t supposed to be friends with kids at school or people around us, even though we may have really liked them. Our “friends” were to be people at our congregations, people that we saw a few times weekly at meetings, and we were expected to think the same and feel the same on a lot of topics that dominated our lives. I know we were given a skewed view of friendship, and a lot of us go into the real world with skewed views of what a friend is or how often we’ll see them. If we text a friend and they don’t text back it’s the end of the world. If we don’t get together for months it feels like rejection. I posit that those things are normal, that many people don’t see their friends all that often, that people are busy and that our expectations coming from where we came from are probably way too high.
So, I am asking these questions to get a view of what you “normal” people view as friendship and how often you expect to hang out or just make contact (as through text or phone) with an average friend of yours, and your best friend. I didn’t make it a poll because context matters and any way you choose to elaborate is appreciated. Consider this a study on what others expect a friend to be, I guess.
We’d hang out on the weekends that I don’t have my kids, so that’s twice a month max. We could have dinner almost every night if you wanted, but no drinking.
Texting if you have something funny or interesting to text about. Talking on the phone would be only if something important is going on.
My best friends I’ll see once a week or sometimes more (I’m a musician and hang out at a lot of music venues with music friends, so…). My close non-musician friends I see once or twice a month. Close out-of town friends a couple of times a year, depending on how far away they live. Work friends I see all the time at work, but some of us go out occasionally for drinks or ping-pong or whatever. I have a pretty healthy tribe, but it takes a long time to make connections (for me) and takes some investment in maintaining those connections. It’s worth it though. I’m an outgoing introvert and need a social life.
I have a handful of close male friends. Some of them are across the country, which means I don’t see them very often. I may not even text or email or call them more than a few times a year, but we are still close.
I have a good friend who is my age (late 50’s), married (like me), and we see each other every other week or so. We often share funny stories via email or text.
The friend I see the most frequently is a much younger guy - we work out together (irregularly, but usually 1-3 times a week), but he also lives close by, so we often get together for lunch or to have beer. He texts me funny memes (mostly gym-related) that he finds. We’ve “got each other’s back” - if he has car trouble I’ll give him a ride, and if I need some help moving furniture, I know he’ll help me.
If the friend come off as clingy, our outings will be a lot less frequent. Not saying that is what you are doing JAM, just be careful. What you perceive as friendliness may be perceived as “clingy” to the other person.
Personally, I want to be left alone during the work week. Texts during the week are fine. Making plans is fine. But that’s about it for me.
I don’t have much of a social life anymore (too old to care) but when I did, I always met with friends once a week. And there were other friends that I loved that I would only see a handful of times a year.
It would help if we knew what age/social situation was. My answers would vary greatly if I was a college student, recent grad, new parent, parent of very active kids, or my current empty nester status.
Just to clarify, I don’t actually want to be your friend (see, not clingy at all Grrr!, lol). I’m not asking for me per se as I’ve actually done a great job of creating the types of relationships I want post-cult, but I have a podcast and a Facebook group where I help others that leave and I think some have misplaced ideas on what friendship might look like based on our cult experience. I know what I do, and I’m not clingy or anything (too busy to be clingy), but I don’t know how other people that were never in a cult are with their friends. It’s hard to add context to people that are trying to figure out how to navigate the world from my perspective alone. I wanted to see how others navigated the world of friendships and where expectations might lie.
@Spud - Just give examples from your own life. You can pick any time of life you like. Again, this isn’t a question for me exactly, but I’m just trying to see how others are with their friends. Some may have a really tight group, just one or two good friends, or be like me where you have a ton of friends but none that are super close because you like to keep up with everyone and it’s just not possible.
If you must have a specific situation and want to address me in particular just because I phrased the question as such I am 41 years old, married, no kids, self-employed, and I work a lot in my business plus I have a podcast, have a part-time life coaching practice to help people turn their lives around or get unstuck, and I work locally with some community based discussions.
Fair enough… Late College (early 20’s) it would be rare if I didn’t hang out in some way with my core group of friends each day. I had one friend who had a boat so most weekends in the summer were spent on the lake with friends. Of course my girlfriend was part of this group (as were other guy’s girlfriends). Being in a college town we also spent quite a bit of time in bars including doing things like “Around the World in 80 beers” drinking 80 international beers in 80 days.
After graduation many of us moved to different places and many started getting married but the core group kept in touch (this was before texting etc.) Several of us ended up moving into the same apartment complex so would see each other regularly but would actually get together more like a few times a week. We would still go out frequently on weekends. Some however drifted away.
Late 20’s to early 30’s we started having kids and buying houses. We were spread out much more but still probably got together once a week or so. The bar trips dropped off dramatically at this point. Euchre club took that spot. New friends entered the scene and some old ones dropped out.
Mid 30’s our kids were getting active and our friends shifted more to ones who were other parents in the neighborhood/school. Still saw the old group at Euchre club every other week or so.
Next stage was when our kids got very involved in sports. Many hours of practice, travelling for games, staying in hotels and driving for hours. We became and remain very close to many of these people. We pretty much lost touch other than through Christmas cards and the occasional random run ins with the earlier friends. This stage probably isn’t typical for most people.
Fast forward to kids in college and we met many other people to hang out with but none very closely. Some of our old friends we haven’t seen in years.
This doesn’t count the neighbors who we have known and interacted with for 25 years in our current home now. In decent weather it isn’t uncommon to spend a half an hour or more chatting across the fence. Nor does it include the current and past work friends that can vary from seeing them every work day to meeting up a every few months for a lunch or a few drinks. The most common thread is that everyone always says “we have to do this more often!” and two or three months later we say it again. Social media is probably our biggest connection.
Funny thing is a friend of a friend and I ended up in the same industry and have some other experiences in common and probably communicate more now then we did way back then.
And of course my best friend through all of this is my wife who I have spent time with almost everyday for the past 38 years or so (married for 32).
Don’t know if that helps or not, but it is my experience.
You can be my friend and hang out anytime you want. But you’ll have to come to Taiwan.
Now we have kids, I see my friends who don’t have kids much less than before. I’ve got one friend that I have dinner with weekly because I’m up to Taipei for work that day and can’t get back to the family. Otherwise, it wouldn’t really be fair to my wife to take that much personal time. Our kids are still young, ten and eight. After they grow up, I’ll have more free time.
My best friend from high school rarely talk anymore but when we do, it’s like we are back in school again.
I know the feeling about getting out of a cult. Mormonism is more of a Cult Lite, and not quite as closed as JWs, but it’s still very different from other religions. My mother has never had a nonmember friend.
Friends in the same town I’d normally see at regular club meetings, but only really birthdays and occasional meetups for a purpose outside of that. Out of town friends I may neither see nor contact for over a year- or maybe just a message for a birthday or big life event- but I’d still count them as good friends, and we have a great time when we do get to meet up.
At the moment, I’m living short-term in a town where I don’t really know anyone; I’ve met the neighbours and a few other people, so there’s people I chat to, but not really anyone I’m hanging out with. This means whenever I’m back in my old town, I’ll be trying to meet up with as many people as possible while I can. I’ve actually found it pretty interesting, as the people I’ve been mostly meeting up with while I’m visiting just for two days are not the same people I saw most often while I was living there. I suppose I’ve realised that some of the people I saw most often were people I was just seeing out of habit, but some I rarely saw are people I really value the company of.
I’ve shared living quarters with various people, not only in college but intermittently through the 40+ years since; and expect to have at least some conversation with them each day, and usually one or more meals together.
I also have a very close friend who lives over an hour’s drive away; we see each other in person only about two or three times a year, and communicate otherwise mostly by weekly emails with an occasional phone call or brief burst of more frequent email when something in particular’s going on. (We don’t text each other, which probably has something to do with personal preference but also something to do with our ages.) I’ve got another good friend who lives on the other side of the country and shows up about once a year for a week’s visit; and a neighbor/friend who I play Scrabble with once a week; and a friend I see every week during farmers’ market season but usually only a couple of times over the winter.
We’d have a meal or watch a game on TV (or live) once a month at the most. Sometimes maybe not for 2 or 3 months.
Text weekly, sometimes more or less depending on what’s happening.
Same for best friend.
I’m almost 40, so this is much less frequent than when I was early 20s. Back then I’d get with friends every single weekend, often even during the week.
My good local friend and I see each other once a month or so and rarely talk outside of that. My other local friends are more event oriented and when we host a party we invite each other over and again rarely talk outside of that so maybe quarterly. Very few of my friends are local but I don’t have a lot of reason to text with the local ones aside from asking or answering questions or setting up things to do. My best friend and I text every couple of weeks to months and we do a family vacation together every other year.
My oldest friend is coming out in two weeks and aside from wishing each other a happy father’s day we haven’t talked in a month and probably won’t until right before they head our way and it was probably 6 months before that when we talked last.
If you’re my friend, we hang out at least once a week, at a regular scheduled time.
If we meet less often than that our friendship is more like an acquaintanceship and is in serious jeopardy of fading away to nothing.
If we’re meeting twice a week (again, at regular scheduled times), then you’re probably somebody I’m romantically interested in, because that’s a pretty big time investment for anybody.
I’ve been following these basic rules since I graduated high school. I’m pretty forgetful and focus mostly on the present, so anything I don’t do on a regular weekly routine is at high risk of being forgotten completely. At the moment I only have one friend (who I play board games with once a week), and the most friends I’ve had at once is two - more than that and (with my family obligations) I wouldn’t have any time left to myself.
