Recently, I had one of those weeks in which everything seemed to happen at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have invitations to sparkly dos flying through my letterbox like Hogwarts acceptance letters. No, I just had one of those weeks when the only things you’ve been invited to in AGES are all going on at once. Why is life like that?
So I had a dilemma. Did I a) Go to the talk being given by a former colleague? b) Rock up to the party of a very new acquaintance? c) Attend the networking dinner being held by a work contact? d) Hide behind the sofa and turn the lights off?
I felt torn and I’m blaming that, not on my indecision, but on the fact that I’ve spent so much of my life chasing after the wrong people - something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I don’t mean romantically (although I’ve done my fair share of that, too) but people I thought might be potential friends… then turned out not to be.
I’m not talking about existing friends who might have drifted away for any number of reasons that make time a precious resource in adulthood - and I strongly believe that those friendship gaps that open up when we marry/have children/move away/get divorced can often be temporary stretches in friendships; a case of putting things on ice until life seems more manageable. I’m also not talking about friendships that genuinely end, as so many do over the course of our lives - absolutely normal, if often incredibly painful (my podcast on that subject, here).
This is about people with whom you are not friends, but would like to be. Basically, I wanted to go to the party of a new acquaintance, but worried that I was repeating my old pattern of trying to align myself with people who ultimately weren’t bothered if I was there or not. Was I?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re someone who has too many friends or too few: if the people you’re spending time with aren’t reciprocating your efforts, you’re probably going to end up feeling lonely. What I’ve come to realise, as an adult, is that some uncertainty is necessary when making new friends and there might well be a period when you’re giving out more energy than you’re getting in return. But if that persists beyond the initial ‘getting to know you’ phase - when you’re almost wooing your new friend or friends - they might not be that into you.
I experienced one of those moments in my own life, when I moved into university halls. There was a group of girls, in my block, who had all been to the same well-known public school and so stuck together like pieces of chewing gum on the underside of a classroom desk. Drawn to them, like moths to a well-heeled flame, was a group of boys who had all been to the same well-known public school. They fitted together as only the Hortensia’s and Harold’s of this world can.
Obviously, I tried to insert myself into this circle, even though I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t a natural fit.
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