I responded that it sounds like she’s swamped on weekends, how about a night next week? To which she told me that if I wanted to try out her yoga studio, she could maybe go with me and maybe get dinner with me.
I decided to give up. It seemed that unless I wanted to run with her, or plan my life around her workout schedule, a two-way friendship wasn’t in our future. The whole situation frustrated me. Who writes “If you will try out my yoga class, then maybe I’ll be able to hang out with you”? I’m happy to make the first, second, third move, but I’m not okay with feeling as if my schedule is irrelevant. And yes, I like to run and do yoga, but the gym is my morning routine—I do it early to get it out of the way—and I’m not the marathon runner that she is. I couldn’t keep up even if I wanted to, and, to be honest, I don’t want to.
After I got the last note I was sulking around the apartment, frustrated with this follow-up attempt. “I’m not going to chase her around town,” I told Matt.
“You shouldn’t,” he assured me.
“I’m just going to email her something about how I know training is a priority for her right now, and I’d love to get together when her schedule clears up. Is that okay to say? I’m just not going to suggest a date or a time anymore.”
Matt laughed at me. “You realize you’re planning a breakup speech, right? You’ve only met the girl once.”
Huh. “Sounds like your schedule is too busy for me.” “We have different priorities right now.” Those are some classic get-out-of-jail-free lines.
As if on cue, an email popped into my inbox. Hilary changed her Sunday night dinner plans to brunch ones, could I join? I was still soured by the I’ll-meet-you-on-my-own-terms exchange, but agreed nonetheless. I adored her when we met, I reminded myself. Just go eat an omelet.
So Sunday morning, tired and not at all in the friending mood, I drag myself out of bed, pull on my comfy leggings, and meet Hilary at a brunch spot near her apartment. Her friend canceled so it’s just the two of us and nothing’s changed. We still click. Once again, I leave feeling much sweeter on her than I did when I arrived. Maybe she’s one of those friends who is a total pain to make plans with but is awesome when you’re together. Is the work worth the payoff? We shall see.
FRIEND-DATE 14. My second want-ad response date is with Kaitlin, who in her email explained that while she’s in the same boat as I, her journey to the BFF search was different. “Many of my friends have married or moved away and now I literally have one best friend who is a gay male. While he is great for emotional support, whenever we go out people assume we are together as a couple instead of seeing me as a possible candidate (I am single) and, honestly, there are some days when a female simply needs another female’s company.”
It’s been fascinating to read how each potential friend found herself in the BFF market. Some, like me, have recently moved—for love, for work, for school. Others have lived in Chicago forever, but their friends have all shipped off to the suburbs with spouses and babies. One girl travels for work so hasn’t had the opportunity to make more than surface friendships. Another, a new mom—of twins!—is suddenly looking for someone to have exchanges with in a language other than baby talk, but isn’t into the Mommy-and-Me scene. And perhaps the funniest—or saddest?—part of all is that even though my essay clearly states I’m searching for friends, that I plan to take on the world one potential BFF at a time, the women who email still couch their notes in caveats. “This is not something I would normally do.” “I feel weird writing this email.” “I know this sounds cheesy but …” “I’m not psycho!”
Once upon a time—or a few months ago—I, too, felt the need to add a disclaimer to my invitations. The unfortunate truth is that we live in a society that’s not only suspicious of people who declare they’re looking for friends, but thinks friendliness in general must be qualified. We’re worried that an overt show of camaraderie will be taken the wrong way. Fourteen weeks in, I’ve found that friendship advances are generally received positively, but as the asker we worry we’re imposing. The last person we want to be is that girl.
Remember back in the day, when we’d knock on neighbors’ doors to see if Betsy could come out to play or if Sharon had a moment for a cup of coffee? Those days are long over. Unannounced guests were once considered gracious; today they’re a nuisance. I can’t help but think of A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche DuBois, how she “always depended on the kindness of strangers,” and wonder how she’d fare in today’s world. Although, I guess that didn’t work out too well for her in 1947, either.
When I arrive at the Asian restaurant Kaitlin has suggested, I’m totally frazzled. I drove to dinner from work and am running late. I couldn’t find parking, so eventually gave up and settled for a spot in a paid lot, then had to walk a block in the lovely April showers, sans umbrella. When I sit down at the table I’m feeling guilty about being late and spewing out small talk without coming up for air while simultaneously struggling to dry off, catch my breath, order a drink, and take off my coat. This often happens when my timeline gets thrown off, especially when it’s by my own doing. I turn into Grace Adler, TV’s most lovable—or annoying, depending on who you are—neurotic. Though now that I think about it, perhaps that’s not just when I’m late. More than one person has told me I remind them of the kooky redhead.
Kaitlin seems the exact opposite of Grace, other than the gay best friend part, but appears amused enough at my crazy. She has short brown hair with an edgy uneven cut and is wearing big hoop earrings and clogs. She appears unusually calm, not even flinching as I barrel into the restaurant and try to get my bearings. I get the sense that she’s artsy, but not intimidatingly so. When I’m finally settled, white wine in hand, she says, “How many of these meetings have you had?”
I note her choice of words. “You make it sound like an interview,” I say.
Kaitlin shrugs, as if to say, “Well, isn’t it?” Given how this date came about, we’re both acutely aware that we’re sizing each other up, looking to see if there’s a bestfriendship at the end of the rainbow. The same was true of my lunch with Jodie. With the shared emphasis on friendship comes the added pressure of “Are you The One?”
Psychologists say that within ten minutes of meeting a person, you decide what kind of relationship you hope to have. Ten minutes in, I don’t think Kaitlin and I are going to be best friends. This is different than judging. I didn’t know at the outset that we weren’t going to click. There was nothing to indicate as much in the emails. But with some people there is easy conversation and not enough time in one meal to get out everything you want to tell her—all the things you didn’t know you’d been holding in until you’re suddenly confessing to Facebook-stalking ex-boyfriends and how nerdy you are for coveting the iPad—and with others there is that subtle but heavy weight of constantly trying to think of what you might say next to avoid an uncomfortable silence.
What Kaitlin and I have in common is work. She’s a graphic designer, I’m a writer, and we’ve both just started blogs, so we have an interesting discussion about the intersection of social media and creativity. While I don’t think we’ll be best friends, she might make a good “let’s do artistic things together” friend. People who fill specific roles—a yoga or cooking pal, someone who’ll join me when a fascinating speaker is in town or a documentary about musicals comes out—are important. According to Dunbar, I had twenty friendship openings when I started this project. I am not going to make twenty new BFFs. I probably won’t even make twenty close friends. But remember the tiered friendships? Like the food pyramid, they ascend from acquaintances to casual friends to close ones to lifers. I’m building acquaintances in abundance. Perhaps Kaitlin and I will be casual friends, to be called upon when there’s a blogging workshop in town. Or something.
As we exit the restaurant, there’s that brief moment on the street where it’s unclear what form this farewell will take. So I, always one to make an awkward moment more so, say “I’m going to g
ive you a hug.” Had I hugged her without announcing my intentions, I might cringe less in retelling this story. But I said it. And she said, “Oh okay … we’re doing this.” And there was a hug. A painful one.
The next day I get an email that Kaitlin is “willing to get together again.” Gee, thanks. Maybe she wasn’t so amused by my neuroticism, er, I mean enthusiasm, after all.
Keeping in touch with old friends is as important as making new ones, so I recently made plans to get together with an old friend and his boyfriend. Kevin and Patrick live near my office and accompanied me to an opening weekend showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but I hardly ever see them due to conflicting schedules. Matt and I were supposed to go to their apartment, eat bruschetta and meat loaf (an unusual combination, yes, but when someone’s cooking for me I don’t complain), and play some Wii tennis. Sounds like an ideal evening. But on the eve of our date I get a Facebook message that Patrick has a tennis match (the real-life, not video-game, kind) and is it cool if we reschedule?
All I could think to say was, “Thank you.”
As I get further along on this journey, I get busier and busier. I’ve taken it upon myself to follow the four steps to lasting friendship—self-disclosure, supportiveness, interaction, and positivity—with the ladies I’m most interested in. I’ve been especially heavy on the interaction. Without it, the others are impossible. So while I’d love to have a casual night with Kevin and Patrick, I feel as if they’ve given me the overscheduled’s equivalent of a gorgeous Balenciaga bag—a night of nothing to do.
Speaking of keeping in touch, I’m beginning to worry that my long-distance friendships are taking a hit. Given my new schedule, it’s harder and harder to pencil in phone time. And the more time that passes between calls, the longer my friends and I need to catch up. So when someone like Sara appears on my caller ID, I usually screen it and plan to call back when I have an hour. Which is almost never. Suddenly the person I miss most is the person whose calls I ignore repeatedly. And even though my reasons are sincere—Sara deserves a chunk of undivided attention—it doesn’t change the fact that I’m talking to my friends less and less.
Sara’s worse at phone communication than I am, but just last week we finally connected. She started to tell me about a guy she just broke up with, to which I said “What guy? I haven’t even heard of him. It was serious?”
“He’s been around a little bit. I mean, the people in my everyday life knew about him.” Ouch. She didn’t mean it as a jab, but it felt like one.
An unintended consequence of this search is that I’m suddenly even more aware of how much I need my old friends. Going on girl-dates, even the good ones, takes energy. With old friends, it’s easier. Less exhausting. So late that night, after feeling like a bonehead because of the Sara call, I email Brooke, my New York City roommate and another lifer. “Can we talk soon? I miss you. I’m learning that interaction is key to friendships and we haven’t interacted!” Yes, I’m spewing friendship jargon, but good friends are rare so they shouldn’t go unappreciated. Plus, research shows that those who’ve told a good friend how much they value her friendship in the past month are 48 percent more likely to report being “extremely satisfied with the friendships in their lives.” So I redouble the staying-in-touch-with-old-friends effort. If I lose my old friends while trying to make new ones I could very easily end up with none at all.
* * *
FRIEND-DATE 15. Sometimes, you ignore the signs. When you’re trying to keep an open mind, a red flag suddenly seems like just one more piece of evidence that you’re too judgmental. That you don’t give people a chance.
The first email was fine. Quite nice, actually. Three weeks ago, Gina read my essay and wrote, “It was just such a relief to find I’m not the only woman out there, a little west of Chicago, who needs a BFF.” She lives in the suburbs with her fiancé and works from home, so the girls’ night invitations, she said, have been dwindling. “If you are still looking,” she wrote, “please consider me!”
To some (to me, even) the wording may have come off as overzealous—I’m not actually accepting applications—but it was certainly in the spirit of openness and friendship. I’m the one who posted the want ad, so who am I to fault someone for treating it as such?
I wrote back thanking her for the kind note and checking when she might be able to meet. “Do you come into the city much? If you have any plans to make the drive anyway, we should plan around your schedule, otherwise we’ll figure something out.” Considering she responded to a want ad that very clearly sought out Chicago-based friends, this didn’t seem such a stretch.
Here’s what I got in return: “I’m going to be totally honest with you: I’m a country mouse, not a city mouse. Though I have been to the city many times, I don’t go frequently, and the only time I tried to go down there alone, my train hit someone and was delayed for hours. I want to warn you that I am not very public transportation savvy.” This does not sound promising.
She wrote that she lives in Morris, Illinois. A Chicago suburb, fine, but hardly “a little west.” It’s about sixty miles away. When I asked a coworker, she said it takes about an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes, to get there.
In that same email, Gina wrote, “I’m not sure what your thoughts are on meeting in public, but you’re welcome to come to my place if you’d like.” Um, my thoughts on meeting someone who found me over the Internet in public are very positive. I’m sure she was just trying to be friendly, but I wanted to write, “I’d actually rather not come to your house sixty miles away from my husband and family so you can chop me up into pieces in your basement, but thanks for the offer. I’ve seen that episode of SVU.”
Instead, I suggested we meet somewhere in the middle. In daylight. Surrounded by lots and lots of people. We settled on the Orland Square Mall in Orland Park, a forty-minute drive from my house.
A few days later I got another email: “Can I ask you for some advice? Can we just pretend that we’re best friends already and that you can’t wait to give me advice?”
You’ve been the one showing blatant signs of desperation before, I remind myself, don’t get put off by her eager-beaverness. Stop. Judging.
She asked me what she should do about waning friendships with coworkers. Something about how she didn’t go to college, can’t sympathize with her school-loan-ridden friends and instead flocked to coworkers twice her age who she thinks might have been using her as an excuse to go out to bars and cheat on their husbands. And then there was something, unrelated maybe, about the other ladies in the office ignoring her.
“So, do you think that they are stereotyping me as a young party-girl type like I stereotype people my age as such?”
Whoa there, lady. I don’t even know you. I can hardly even follow what you’re talking about.
So much of making friends is about tuning in to social cues. “Coming on too strong, oblivious to the other person’s response, is the quickest way to push someone away,” John Cacioppo and William Patrick write in their book Loneliness. Gina is doing exactly what Cacioppo warned me not to. But I shall not be pushed! Sure, she was self-disclosing like a mad woman way too soon, but it’s such a complicated dance, this friend-making.
She was probably nervous. And lonely. And excited to meet someone new.
I put off responding for three days. What do I know about her reputation? Eventually I wrote back that while I’m no expert—I’m advertising for friends on the Internet, don’t forget—it seems to me that life-stage is more important than age when it comes to BFFs and that “people do grow apart naturally, that’s part of life, but the hope is that we can find new people to connect with.” Apparently I’m a therapist.
Then I said something about the older generation being less open to work-friends than the 20- and 30-somethings. I have no idea if this answered her question. I hardly know what the question really was.
There were a few more back and forth emails. On top of the general intensity o
f her friendship advances, I was starting to rethink the geography thing. Is a friend an hour away any better than one a plane ride away? I’m not so sure. We wouldn’t be able to grab a last-minute lunch. We would probably only ever meet at Orland Square, or in Morris, since she’s scared of coming into the city alone.
While proximity isn’t necessary for maintaining friendships, research shows it’s a key factor in making new ones and a primary indicator of which of those will stick. I make a mental note to befriend someone in my apartment building. We could borrow a cup of flour from each other, grab cupcakes down the street, lie out on the communal deck …
But back to the matter at hand. I’m going in with an open mind. At least an ajar one. I’ve heard stories of friendships unlikelier than this one, and potential friends on whom I’d pinned low expectations have surprised me before. So tonight, Thursday, I wrote her an email: “Hiya! Are we still on for Saturday?”
And I’ve just received this:
Hi, Rachel,
I’ll be honest, I kinda have mixed feelings about it.
It’s really a downer that we live a little farther apart than is optimal to be BFFs. And I like corresponding with you via email, but I’m not sure that a pen pal is what I’m looking for, or something that you have time for. I know you’re a busy lady.
What are your thoughts on this? I’m not opposed to meeting, but I’m not thinking we’re going to be each other’s BFF. I’m weary of meeting someone I’m not confident that I’ll really get to know or be friends with. Sounds like friendship heartbreak to me!
Know what I mean? Or am I nuts?
:-/
Gina
Oh. My. God. I just got dumped! I can’t believe this. She’s breaking up with me before we’ve even met. I know that I had the same issues with the distance, and a part of me is relieved, but still, yikes. I figured that we’d work it out—or not—in time. And while yes, the ad said I was seeking a BFF, I don’t actually think we will become best friends forever on first meeting. It’s as if she’s saying “I don’t think we’re going to get married, so we might as well not go on the first date.”
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