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hrj(Another in the continuing series of "hrj re-commits to providing substantive content in her LJ".)
Being the person I am, I sometimes (often?) consider the question of why my patterns of social interaction manifest in the way they do. Whether there are ways I can modify them to achieve things that I want to achieve. Whether some of the issues I see as flaws may instead be features. And after all that pondering, here are some of the things I think I've learned about myself. A "field guide to the hrj", as it were. (Discussion is welcome, but anything that starts with "Well, why don't you just ..." should be given serious thought first.)
I've often been fascinated by the sort of person who can walk into an event (party, convention, etc.) and become close friends with one or more people that they'd never met before by the end of it. I honestly don't understand how that works. I can meet someone in that type of context but I've never managed to achieve any sort of lasting connection. When I look at the friendships I've made (and I'm making a distinction here between friends and acquaintances) they have pretty much all involved an extended period of regular interactions for some separate purpose. For me, an essential part of making friends seems to be that building up of a shared experience. There have certainly been plenty of people I've met that I've wanted to become friends with on the basis of a brief interaction. But without the context of that initial habitual interaction, it doesn't end up happening, no matter how much I want it and no matter what I try. In Real Life this constrains my potential pool of friends a fair amount. There have been people that I had known or met quite some time previous to the point when we were thrown together sufficiently often to become friends. And I don't know of anything that could have sped up the process. It also means that sometimes I've become friends with someone with whom I have very little in common, simply by virtue of being thrown together regularly. (My 'best friend' in high school was a girl who happened to bike the same extended route to school as I did at the same time. Alas, the friendship didn't long survive graduation. I wrote her regular letters during the next year but received none in return and eventually gave up. And yet, at the time, I considered her my best friend.)
The Internet has thrown an interesting twist into this feature. I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if I'd grown up with the net. The net has provided a new type of context where I can have regular, extended "parallel play" of the sort I seem to need to make friends. It's not quite the same, and the opportunities for what one can do with that friendship are narrower. But it does open up the pool a bit. There are a handful of people I've gotten to know through extensive regular conversations in newsgroups or mailing lists where we seen to have achieved the friendship threshold.
Another feature that appears to be essential for me is that a sufficient percentage of the "parallel play" stage is one-on-one. In groups, at parties, as part of a crowd, I more or less fade into invisibility. I could be in the same room as someone every day for a year -- even talk to them regularly -- and if all of that time involved the presence of more than a couple other people, I'm unlikely to have made friends by the end of it. This often mystifies people. "But I see you hanging out with Group X all the time! What do you mean they aren't your friends?" If I'm hanging out with a group, but I've never made specific individual connections, it doesn't morph into friendship for me. I think part of it is the sense that, in a context like that, I'm an interchangeable cog in a larger machine. And then there's the crowds-and-noise factor. Crowds and noise are hard work for me, and hanging out in groups tends to involve crowds and noise, by definition. So group socializing may sometimes be a useful investment towards other options, but it carries no direct social payoff for me: I'm working hard and not getting much back either in terms of immediate enjoyment or relationship development. Or, in other terms, I don't do 'entourage' for fun (although I may do it for other purposes).
It's much the same reason I don't tend to become a classic 'fan' of the authors or artists I like. I'm already enjoying their output as a consumer, but I have no illusion that if I read their blog or join their club or attend their readings or autograph sessions that it will be an equal two-way relationship. I have a fairly solid rule that I don't "friend" people on the basis of being a fan of their work unless we've actually met in person and I have some expectation that they would remember who I am. If I have a positive response to the ideas and imagery and whatnot in someone's work, it may well give me the desire to get to know that person better, but just as with any sort of passing encounter, it rarely gives me a basis for establishing an ongoing interaction that might develop into a friendship. And, quite frankly, I'm not that interested in seriously asymmetric social relationships. If I'm investing time and emotional energy into a social relationship with someone, I want the hope of the sort of social relationship that gives me back the things that feed me. And what feeds me is the sense that the other person knows and sees and appreciates me for the specific, individual person that I am. Not as an interchangeable fan. Not as a nameless spear-carrier in the production of their life. Not as a fictional character in their own story that they've pasted my face on for convenience. But as me.
And why do I think I deserve to receive that type of friendship from others? Because if someone does stick it out to become my friend, that's the level of commitment I give to them. The "help move bodies" level. The 3am phone call level. It's a perilous thing, friendship.
Being the person I am, I sometimes (often?) consider the question of why my patterns of social interaction manifest in the way they do. Whether there are ways I can modify them to achieve things that I want to achieve. Whether some of the issues I see as flaws may instead be features. And after all that pondering, here are some of the things I think I've learned about myself. A "field guide to the hrj", as it were. (Discussion is welcome, but anything that starts with "Well, why don't you just ..." should be given serious thought first.)
I've often been fascinated by the sort of person who can walk into an event (party, convention, etc.) and become close friends with one or more people that they'd never met before by the end of it. I honestly don't understand how that works. I can meet someone in that type of context but I've never managed to achieve any sort of lasting connection. When I look at the friendships I've made (and I'm making a distinction here between friends and acquaintances) they have pretty much all involved an extended period of regular interactions for some separate purpose. For me, an essential part of making friends seems to be that building up of a shared experience. There have certainly been plenty of people I've met that I've wanted to become friends with on the basis of a brief interaction. But without the context of that initial habitual interaction, it doesn't end up happening, no matter how much I want it and no matter what I try. In Real Life this constrains my potential pool of friends a fair amount. There have been people that I had known or met quite some time previous to the point when we were thrown together sufficiently often to become friends. And I don't know of anything that could have sped up the process. It also means that sometimes I've become friends with someone with whom I have very little in common, simply by virtue of being thrown together regularly. (My 'best friend' in high school was a girl who happened to bike the same extended route to school as I did at the same time. Alas, the friendship didn't long survive graduation. I wrote her regular letters during the next year but received none in return and eventually gave up. And yet, at the time, I considered her my best friend.)
The Internet has thrown an interesting twist into this feature. I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if I'd grown up with the net. The net has provided a new type of context where I can have regular, extended "parallel play" of the sort I seem to need to make friends. It's not quite the same, and the opportunities for what one can do with that friendship are narrower. But it does open up the pool a bit. There are a handful of people I've gotten to know through extensive regular conversations in newsgroups or mailing lists where we seen to have achieved the friendship threshold.
Another feature that appears to be essential for me is that a sufficient percentage of the "parallel play" stage is one-on-one. In groups, at parties, as part of a crowd, I more or less fade into invisibility. I could be in the same room as someone every day for a year -- even talk to them regularly -- and if all of that time involved the presence of more than a couple other people, I'm unlikely to have made friends by the end of it. This often mystifies people. "But I see you hanging out with Group X all the time! What do you mean they aren't your friends?" If I'm hanging out with a group, but I've never made specific individual connections, it doesn't morph into friendship for me. I think part of it is the sense that, in a context like that, I'm an interchangeable cog in a larger machine. And then there's the crowds-and-noise factor. Crowds and noise are hard work for me, and hanging out in groups tends to involve crowds and noise, by definition. So group socializing may sometimes be a useful investment towards other options, but it carries no direct social payoff for me: I'm working hard and not getting much back either in terms of immediate enjoyment or relationship development. Or, in other terms, I don't do 'entourage' for fun (although I may do it for other purposes).
It's much the same reason I don't tend to become a classic 'fan' of the authors or artists I like. I'm already enjoying their output as a consumer, but I have no illusion that if I read their blog or join their club or attend their readings or autograph sessions that it will be an equal two-way relationship. I have a fairly solid rule that I don't "friend" people on the basis of being a fan of their work unless we've actually met in person and I have some expectation that they would remember who I am. If I have a positive response to the ideas and imagery and whatnot in someone's work, it may well give me the desire to get to know that person better, but just as with any sort of passing encounter, it rarely gives me a basis for establishing an ongoing interaction that might develop into a friendship. And, quite frankly, I'm not that interested in seriously asymmetric social relationships. If I'm investing time and emotional energy into a social relationship with someone, I want the hope of the sort of social relationship that gives me back the things that feed me. And what feeds me is the sense that the other person knows and sees and appreciates me for the specific, individual person that I am. Not as an interchangeable fan. Not as a nameless spear-carrier in the production of their life. Not as a fictional character in their own story that they've pasted my face on for convenience. But as me.
And why do I think I deserve to receive that type of friendship from others? Because if someone does stick it out to become my friend, that's the level of commitment I give to them. The "help move bodies" level. The 3am phone call level. It's a perilous thing, friendship.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 02:23 pm (UTC)In the last [mumble] years I've noticed that despite spending time with them, I generally don't make friends with my co-workers. At my current job, it's a small crew and the power relationships and pre-existing circumstances get in the way (as in I'm not likely to become close friends with one half of a married couple). At my previous job I had little in common with most of the others (coming from different political planets is a pretty big deterrent).
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 02:49 pm (UTC)This is not an "If you just"...
Date: 2012-05-02 04:16 pm (UTC)You are not an 'interchangeable cog' to me, and have not been in my experience even before we got to the acquaintance stage. I do not believe anyone else could 'sub-in' for you, no matter how unobtrusive you make yourself.
Now of course, all of this is based on our shared activity in the SCA, so it's already met one of the pre-requisites for further social interaction.
This may not be pointful, and I may need more coffee, but I felt the need to comment.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 05:11 pm (UTC)"I have a fairly solid rule that I don't "friend" people on the basis of being a fan of their work unless we've actually met in person and I have some expectation that they would remember who I am."
Is very nearly an exact match to the rule I (mostly) use on the one 'social network' I'm on. Which leads to a small but occasionally noisy environment.
The post in general is reminiscent of one of the recurring topics that I sometimes use to occupy my brain on long drives, cataloguing the different types of associations or relationships that people share. Some are obvious, some aren't and some may or may not exist except for me. I really should commit some of those thoughts to some medium more permanent and reliable than my memory.
It occurs to me that the interesting situation of 'knowing' someone via computer networks has parallels with 'knowing' someone in the SCA (and probably other organizations as well). While the nature of 'knowing' in the two have differences, they both have holes that seem quite bizarre to someone who isn't familiar with that milieu.
In any case, yeah, that sounds familiar here too.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-03 12:37 am (UTC)I've made most of my friends via some shared context where the interaction can go deeper than merely a shared activity... usually this means that I meet them online, because people express themselves in a deeper and more expressive fashion online, for example. It's okay to talk about one's thoughts online whereas in person, there gets to be the feeling of sticking to small talk or one narrow topic of common interest.
The only shared activity that's lead to enduring friendships has been tabletop role playing gaming. I don't know what it is about RPGs that is different from other activity-contexts I've been in, but it's been how I've made most of my closest friends. Something about the context of creating characters together and the relatively "long period of unstructured time" format of a typical game night seems to naturally facilitate things... conversations about the characters and settings naturally lead to conversations about other matters... whereas in other settings where friendship might normally happen, it tends to never, ever go outside of the context in which I met the person. School-friends tend to stay at school, for example. Also, strangely, I tend to feel that people who know my fictitious characters and worlds, know the deepest and most important part of me that I tend to keep hidden from non geeks.
It's almost impossible for me to commit to a group; I can't ever promise that I will stay interested in the same group for the rest of my life, or that I won't get too busy at some point and need a break, and I tend to feel a bit of awkwardness in contacting people outside of the group or initiating things. I also tend to pre-reject myself... bad habit.
At this point, it seems most people my age either meet based upon being "single and hunting" which is not a mindset to which I in the least relate, even when I'm looking... or they get together in groups of couples. Getting anyone away from a group long enough to socialize in my most natural way of doing so, is not very likely. For this reason I tend to find that at the moment, I am mostly socializing outside of my age group (my friends tend to be either rather younger or rather older).
no subject
Date: 2012-05-03 02:02 am (UTC)I too have trouble getting to know people in groups. I prefer to find one or two or so people to have chats with and get to know. I find it difficult to go to things where I don't know anyone and put myself out there (like the Cooking Symposium in Feb). I just cover these feelings with the appearance of being an extrovert but I'm truly a bit shy.
S