Anonymous asked: hey nancylicious! i wanted to get your take on how to go about developing new friendships. I'm mid way through a 1-yr grad program and realized a reoccurring theme in my life is the lack of strong friendships. At this point it feels kind of hopeless and that there must be something off-putting about me.
NANCY’S GUIDE ON HOW TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS
I can sympathize with this concern. When I moved to New York, I was also nervous about my ability to make new friends. While I had a well-established circle of friends that moved there after college, spending my first year postgrad in China had put me a year behind in urban social development. I confided i n best friend R my concerns.
“Oh Nancy,” she replied. “Everyone in New York is secretly lonely.”
If you wants friends, be a friend. Connect with those friends you already have but may have lost touch with. Friendships are give-and-take. Not take and take-for-granted. Look critically at your (lack of) strong friendships: as demotivator says, the only consistent feature in all your dissatisfying relationships is you.
Rather than play victim, however, own it! Be accountable! Change your destiny as a lonely cat person! Rewrite history! Connect with those you want to stay connected to via facebook, email, gchat, text, phone, and in-person. Push yourself out of your (lack of) communication comfort zone. Not everyone will respond in kind, but at least you will be putting yourself out there and admitting that you are a social being. At the minimum, you can regard this as practice for when you make new, strong friendships.
If you want friends, be a friend. Look left, look right. You probably have friends or acquaintances right now you are not counting as such. Person A might be reaching out and trying to be a friend to you but you are so focused on befriending Person B you are blind to their efforts. Maybe you think all your friends are tea drinking knitters… so that when a coffee-drinking crocheter offers you an espresso, you cannot see if as a friendly gesture. Be open to the possibility that friends come in all shapes, sizes, and personalities. Don’t make someone not count.
And listen, listen, listen.
Okay, no more questions for now.
