I’ve noticed when loner-types post about their life difficulties online, frequently they will mention having a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or maybe even wife or husband. But they almost never claim to they have friends–something they usually attribute to poor social skills or social anxiety rather than choice.
I don’t understand this. In my way of thinking–which I admit could be all wrong–it would seem that forming and maintaining a romantic bond is a million times more challenging than forming friendships. All you have to do to make a friend is laugh at someone’s jokes enough times and be relaxed enough to accept a social invitation from them. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating some. Making friends is more complicated than that. But still. It seems like friendship should be easier than romantic relationships, if only because we practice being a good friend all the way in kindergarten, almost 10 years before most people start thinking about chasing the hotties around them. And it seems to me that you can’t be THAT socially crippled if you can be emotionally intimate enough to sustain a romantic/sexual relationship.
It seems that my observations aren’t lining up with these assumptions, though. So maybe being romantic isn’t that big of a deal, and that the real test of someone’s social abilities is in how deep their friendships are?
One circumstance is finances. If your SO and you are equally poor, you find cheap things to do. Friends can often be on a different level and it makes it hard to socialize when you’re not able to afford what others are doing.
Either you become the boat anchor that makes everyone go to the free music in the park/they pay your way which gets old real fast for both sides or you drift away.
It’s not that easy to keep good friends. People move away, get sick and die, develop different interests. Oh, you can write and call and skype and visit, but then they are more like the “idea” of friends. A Christmas card here, an invitation to stop by if they come back to the area there. No guarantees.
As you get older, it’s harder to make and keep friends. Kids in the neighborhood grow up, graduate, and there go your PTO/carpooling friends. Neighbors move. People you work with retire. What is a middle aged couple to do to make new friends? The younger people around are busy with their younger friends and their careers, and you’re lucky if they say ‘hi’ once in a while. Your peers at work retire, get sick, move to be near their relatives away from the winter cold.
Meanwhile, there you and your spouse of 20-30 years are. Your SO, your boyfriend/girlfriend are usually there for you, whether its for good or bad. Your ‘romance’ fades into companionship, everyday life.
So I don’t get what your point is. You are already paired up, its a done deal. Its the friends part that is difficult.
It’s an interesting observation, I hadn’t thought about it. I find being married very easy and relaxing, and maintaining friendships quite taxing. I have more friends than I want.
I think maybe I feel like to be real friends, the type that are physically present, as opposed to facebook type friends, requires me to get out of my bubble. But my husband is part of my bubble, so being with him is as easy as being alone.
I have no idea, it is the opposite in my experience. Making friends is relatively easy, just so long as you have some kind of event(s) you attend where other people are around. Getting a SO is much harder.
Granted finding social events outside of work and school can be hard. but it is generally easier than finding an SO. Making friends as an adult can be hard though since you have time and energy constraints.
Some people I’ve met seem to have a really odd idea of what their social life “should” be - they feel depressed that their life isn’t basically a nonstop bachelor/bachelorette party (which sounds damn exhausting to me…)
I was thinking about people in their 20-30s. Not people in their 50-60s. People who are still relatively young and not dealing with the issues you’re talking about.
If a friend is over, it’s a long event. You interact with each other continually. With a SO, even if they’re there, you get spans of time where you feel alone, act alone. Even a roommate never quite gets consistently to that level of ease.
tapu, do you think it could be the case that people are more relaxed and geniune with a romantic partner, whereas with a friend, they are more likely to put on a facade and feel compelled to hide their true self? Because this would explain why a person with social anxiety would have a boyfriend/girlfriend but not have any friend friends.
Negotiations. You don’t want to do something with your spouse, you negotiate and work it out. Over time, that’s just a relationship. With friends, it all plays in to where each of you are at that moment (they’re busy with school and can’t go play, then you’re busy with kids, etc.), what your motivations are and what’s important. And ultimately, over time, that can add up to differences you can’t surmount. A spouse just constantly looks for renegotiation until things continue back to normal.
Mainly though, Renee really nailed it. Being with others outside my very immediate monkey sphere takes lots of work (when, where, how much, how long, personality differences / priorities and on and on and on). Being with my spouse in any capacity requires zero effort.
That seems to follow well. I’m someone who likes to have a lover, but I don’t pursue friends. And I think what you say there describes it. Friends are more like strangers on the continuum to me. It’s so socially awkward. (For me. I can give a friend about an hour.)
It did occur to me that people who identify as “loners” may be more normal than they think. But it’s easy to be fooled. It used to be being a loner meant you were an isolated hermit. Nowadays, it seems that not having a social media presence is all that’s required.
Very good question and so true. If you’re talking about the beginning/first building of a relationship whether friend or SO, there’s a chemical and emotional reaction that goes on with a lover that supersedes social skills. A pull that can’t always be explained (though often infinitely examined) and can persist even when you seem like total opposites, and the lack of social skills can even be endearing, or at least understood. But I think friendships depend on…agreement? about enough things to make the time shared worth it.
This isn’t true for me. I do have a few friends, and as difficult as it is to find people who truly like me and want to be my friend, I have never really (at age 32, and without shyness) had a(n) SO.
I put a lot more into an SO relationship and the other person is usually also more invested in making the relationship work because of the high stakes involved, for lack of a better word, and also because there are elements of mutual physical attraction/hormones/sex that are not involved in friendships.
I don’t want a lot of friends, but I want close relationships. So the amount of time I want to spend with one person is normal in the context of a “significant other” relationship, but would be off-putting to someone who is only interested in a “just normal friends” relationship.
Also, the higher level of commitment in an SO relationship allows the relationship to weather disputes/friction that in a normal friendship might more readily cause one or the other person to drop the friendship as being too much trouble.