Are you happy with your social life?

i really mean this question in a slight more philosophical sense:

is anyone happy with their social life? do you feel like you're meeting the right people? the most interesting people? who are these slubs that always turn up in your life? where is the exciting crowd? etc.

is this a normal anxiety to feel?

So no, in other words.

Aren't these awfully self-conscious questions? Who ARE the "right people"?? Who has the energy to care whether they're meeing the "right people"? Not I, said the cat.

I wish my social life were a little more active, and maybe had bigger GROUPS of people -- right now I'm dealing with lovely individuals but most of them are from different circles and don't connect to each other, there's no core of people who always have something going on. But groups take time to coalesce and someone has to be the glue for them. Am I feeling sticky? Hmm. I'd like to be throwing house parties, though.

So no, in other words.

Same here.

I do sort of hide out sometimes, because I can't afford to go out all the time. I wish I hung out with more philanthropes, too.

but my social life revolves around party/booze/drugs/music rather than discussions of like culture and politics and shit.

btw i am so shallow

Hm. Depends where you are, really. Under "ideal" circs in NYC a person could probably get a discussion of substantial quality going on, at least on whatever topics/specialties the participants have in common -- because the pool here is bigger and often weighted on the meeja/academic side of things. I'd like to be hostessing parties because I want to take all the people I like and smoosh them together and see what results. Also, I would like to be able to eavesdrop on all of them at once, so being the hostess is obviously the way to go. In West Michigan, though, I'd be more or less out of luck.

XP to Phil: How far back are the Strutter days? In terms of BFF generations?

Everytime I make some friends, I realise how much work it is and generally back off home to my hovel.

haha, i said social life not pathetic internet social life!

what?

When I read J. Franzen's revised Harper's essay in How To Be Alone, I remembered when books could make up for this.

Basically, with groups it's too often all or nothing: they're not really very welcoming in te long run if you're a dilettante.

That describes me when I was at school pretty well.

It doesn't exactly describe me now, because now I don't actually have any nearby friends I don't belong to any social groups by default.

I can't believe people still think they need to meet the 'right' people. Are you after friends or work contacts?

I'm also worried that people might be calling me less now I'm married, which would suck, but I could just be paranoid.

I'm happy with my lot though - the 'cut-backs' were worth it.

When L & I were together L had the friends and the social life and because of the daily Oxford-London commute my circle at that time sort of drifted away and I was content to throw in my lot with L's social circle. But when she died that also drifted away, so I was left with nothing to fall back on; thus since 2001 ILx has played a grievously underacknowledged role in regenerating what element of social life I now have.

Don't know about looking for the "right people" but I think I may have found the "right person"... :-)

close friends and family
drunken football fans
fine-dining, wine bibbing parlor intellectuals
francophiles and francophones
miscellaneous sympathetics

They don't all mesh but that's OK and I like all of them most of the time.

I tend to go and watch football on my own, and I rarely see anyone from Glasgow outside of FAPs. However, I'm not unhappy with my social life as it stands, but the odd random extra night out wouldn't go amiss sometimes.

I don't understand how you mean this, Yana! I think people totally need to meet the right people - I mean yeah all good people you meet gradually build up a Web Of Awesome but you need to meet good people, for that.

All those lonely old people with only their cats for company must surely have had a social life once.

my own situation: i have a very close knit group of friends i have been hanging around since i was about 14 (I'm 26 now). I was out of town for a few years, we went to different colleges, but we are all still really close. im not sure why this is (possibly we are bad at making new friends?)

anyway--i love them. they are smart, hilarious, and loyal friends, and tons of fun. but inevitably, our lives are going in different directions, some are married, some have moved away. you know, typical growing up stuff.

but the grouply was so tightly knit that as it starts to disintegrate i am left without much else. i was just wondering if my sudden feeling that my social life was becoming a bit stagnant was a normal part of getting older....

Also, when you're close to the same people for years and years your friendships gain a richness from your history, sure, but it can make you REALLY lazy if you let it. I've seen people never really grow up because their high school friends were still right there, making the same jokes, holding the same attitudes, accepting the same kinds of behavior that they had at 17.

Mr R and I have just been invited to the engagement party of one of my oldest friends. I have not seen this friend socially for almost three years, but occasionally text and email him. He is part of a larger circle of friends that Mr R and myself used to be part of.

We fell away from them after I split with my abusive boyfriend (also part of that circle) and shortly afterwards began seeing Mr R. One or two of these friends couldn't see past my ex and got it into their heads that Mr R had 'stolen' me. They had a go at him for it but I think it was just male bravado.

Consequently we cut ourselves off from that group and have been getting along fine with just our own company and that of one or two other, unrelated friends. Whenever we meet any of the old group Mr R is a bit uncomfortable around them, he maintains they hate him although i feel that after three and a half years they've probably accepted our relationship.

This other friend was very supportive (he may have been the only one who seen what my ex was doing to me) and he told us he'd stay friends with us, but this didn't happen - Mr R was just too unhappy being around any of them.

I was always closer to the group than he was, he had always been on the outskirts, so the loss didn't feel as great to him.

Now we've all grown up, that group has grown apart, moved on - the same as ourselves but he is refusing to attend the party in case anything flames up due to drink. He feels that he still won't be accepted and says it's easy for me as nobody blames me for what happened.

(My ex moved to Germany when we split up, it had been planned for a year before hand - he briefly kept in touch with the others but he's engaged too and has no plans to come back)

I was soooo exited to get the invitation, my old friend would be delighted if the two of us could make it and I thought it would be a great opportunity to catch up and also let people see the strength of our relationship too.

Am I wrong to expect him to come or is he being unreasonable by refusing? God knows I miss the social life I gave up.

I suspect I'll end up giving in to him.

It's tough when you're coupled and your other half doesn't want to do anything with your social group. That's what I had to do with ILX and FAPs when Joe started refusing point blank to go to them.

Did Joe ever attend a Fap Kate? Was he scared for life?? ;-)

Perhaps you should have consulted with him before accepting on his behalf, but it seems unreasonable of him to expect you not to go.

I can't force him to go, I've already coerced him to attend two of my social gatherings this year - I think a third would be pushing my luck. He always makes it seem like such a sacrifice to come out with my pals - as if he's doing me some big favour!

Don't be too late back though, I've got a tenner which says he'll be fretting for a large portion of the night :).

xpost i have some sympathy for him there, but you know, give and take and all that

However, for the first time ... well, since my late teens. I've not got a "best friend". A close intimate friend, you know, the kind you can really share anything with, call for a coffee and a chat when things go wrong, and vice versa. Maybe this happens naturally as you get older, when people get partnered up, their husband or boyfriend takes the place of the Best Friend. But really... it's different.

I'm not saying that I don't love the intimate friends I have got; I love them and appreciate them and we have great chats and share good and bad times. I just distinctly feel the lack of the *best* friend. The people who have served that role seem to have ended up in different countries, or else got married - and even if you stay close, it's never *quite* the same. I do miss that.

And Laurel said : "Also, when you're close to the same people for years and years your friendships gain a richness from your history, sure, but it can make you REALLY lazy if you let it. I've seen people never really grow up because their high school friends were still right there, making the same jokes, holding the same attitudes, accepting the same kinds of behavior that they had at 17."

I really identify with both of these. I think it's really healthy to be able to be able to be slightly different people depending on who you're with. Actually it's not really being *different people*, it's more like different facets of your personality coming out depending who you're with and what you're doing. It can be purely practical. If I'm with people who I've known for 20 years I feel that if I've had a bad day I can moan about relatively trivial stuff knowing that it won't ruin the evening. If I was at a FAP or with people I knew less well, I would make a real effort to be positive and not bother them with whatever was bothering me. Also there's no denying that it's tempting to deliberately try and present a more exciting version of yourself to a new group of people, with all the domestic and work crap neatly excised. I suppose FAPs/ILX events are good for that. (London ILXers gasp in astonishment - "that's you being *exciting*, then is it"?) I know I rarely FAP these days, due to TOO MUCH STUFF TO DO, but you know...

Onto what Laurel said - totally OTM. I have a group of friends that I have known for 25 yrs, since Univ, and I think we are drifting apart to the extent that it's not worth bothering any more. Well, I have two groups of univ friends, having been to two Univs and I see my London Univ friends, of 20 years standing, every couple of weeks. Maybe they're fulfilling the role of 'comfortable old friends' and I don't need 2 lots. That's what Mrs. Dr C thinks. The first lot are now spread over the country and seem rarely able to meet up, partly due to the fact that many of them don't drive. But...trying to keep in touch seems a real effort and for several years I have been in the position of making all the running, only to have meet-ups fall apart through logistical problems, that frankly shouldn't stop good friends from getting together. Having thought it through, much of my feelings for them are really rooted in history and we have little shared experience to draw on. When I think of them I think about stuff we did a quarter of a century ago. I am prone to hanging onto these kind of memories and puffing them up into more than they really are and that is what I think I have been doing all these years. In truth I have grown apart from them and I am not sure that we have much in common any more, or that they even really like me in 2005. I find it quite painful to think that I may not see 2 or 3 of them again, but I think I have been deluding myself that there's anything there. Does anyone else have experience of this.

Our interests have changed too, she's into 'going out on the pull' whereas I left that behind me a looooong time ago. When we do go out she tries to encourage every man in the vicinity to come over and I end up feeling like some kind of gooseberry on her manhunt.

Well, I'm at uni, in a reasonably small department, and I have to say the friends I've made there are pretty clearly right and interesting. I suppose they're not the exciting crowd, but those who do seem to be just give me a headache.

sk00l and uni are always a bit of a safety net for social life, tho, much more than most workplaces even I'd guess.

it saved mine from OBLIVION.

I thought this was a good 'peak-era' ilx thread, and updates could be interesting?

I'm getting kind of gently frustrated with mine, which has changed over-time to become a smaller number of closer and deeper friendships with a few people rather than a cohesive group. As a single gay male in my 50s, I do feel more of an outsider in a mostly partnered and straight work social environment.

I'm happy to travel, and go to gigs and films by myself, but i miss some of the group socialising I used to enjoy and seems to have dropped out of my life as work threatened to become all-encompassing.

We moved to a different part of the country in 2014, and had to build a new social life from scratch. Getting involved in the life of the town was key in this, as it has a strong sense of community. The big change is that my new friends span a much wider age range than before. I hang out with people from 18 to around 80-odd, with all decades covered, and in this town that's considered to be normal. I value this very highly. The other big change is that although I'm gay, almost none of my new friends are also gay, and to my surprise this barely bothers me.

7 years ago, I went through basically the same situation as Ryan described 13 years ago - had a great group of friends from high school that mostly stuck together into adulthood. I didn't meet many new people but there was no need for other friends, really. Until I broke up with my long-time gf and half my friends had kids, all around the same time. Went through a period of learning how to make friends (and get over social anxiety), started spending time with new friends individually a lot more, and was surprised how much I enjoyed the change. Now I'm in a different country where friends come and go. Right now, things are good, but I think I've developed an innate sense for knowing when to "replenish" friends, having gone through these experiences

A lot of my long-term friends are now emerging from The Parenting Years, and are once again socially available. Parenthood is quite the social ghetto, it would seem.

I'm one of those people emerging from parenting and trying to rebuild my social life. My biggest challenge is that I'm now a cranky old man who doesn't like most people nearly as much as I used to.

I think I need to get involved in some community activity. I feel though at the moment that I’ve lost touch a bit with knowing what I really enjoy doing - so I’m taking a bit of time to find the right activity.

A good move imo. My social anxiety is such that it's like pulling teeth to get myself there but I'm always glad to actually be doing it.

I wish I knew how to rebuild a social life. I stupidly cut myself off from everyone during the post-grad-school crash and depression. Most of my friends were academics, and I was feeling a lot of shame and confusion at having failed at being an academic myself. I should probably get over it and start emailing them again.

It took me six months of buying the local newspaper every week and thinking "yeah, I don't want to join a bird watching group or a bridge club", before things started falling into place. I started volunteering for a community arts charity (initially doing their social media and helping service users set up blogs), then I went to an open audition for the town panto and got cast as the Dame. Those two things got me on the radar, which led to other opportunities.

"yeah, I don't want to join a bird watching group or a bridge club"

These are truly amongst the only places I've thought to look for friends. I would love to be in a bridge gang, but I just don't have the resolve to go through the humiliation of learning how to play. Charity volunteering a good idea too though!

jmm: i fear you'll find a lot of them only have time for utility-friends until well after tenure.

some sort of birdwatching and experimental writing crew that meets for afternoon tea would be ideal

I'm generally pretty happy with my life. The good parts are numerous. The worst parts of it are altogether familiar, mostly outside my control, and have been much worse at other times, so there is room for some equanimity there. As for my social life, it is subdued, verging on comatose, but I don't mind. I kind of like it that way.

not in a kind of cupcakes and taffeta way though, I mean people who like tea, sandwiches and free verse and will openly carry binoculars

current 93 lyric recitals in marshland