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It stresses me out when my wife asks me what my friends and I talked about after we hang out because
a) I don’t really remember
b) the shit I remember are nothing she would care about
She’s always asking me about how my friends’ new jobs are or how one of their cousins-third-removed that we met at a wedding 18 years ago is doing and stuff. I keep telling her stuff like this just never come up.
And C) how the fuck do I provide the context for this to make sense or not sound terrible?
How was X’s wife and the young baby?
Me: oh, don’t know forgot to ask
The actual topics: cycling (50%), that one annoying kid back in school was annoying again half a year ago, music, comparing our mental disorders
When I see my mates I don’t wanna take about work.
I’m … Not sure I’ve ever had nine friends. I mean, there are a bunch of people I talk to online and I’m grateful for their presence … But it’s hard for me to imagine going on a trip with nine people and enjoying it. Harder still to imagine them being interested.
Yeah… I think there might be a correlation to why he has no idea what’s going on in their lives.
In my experience really large friend groups like this are typically the result of something like a frat house or some kind of club. It’s more activity based than it is cemented by any sort of deep emotional relationship.
I’m not really a fan, I prefer more meaningful relationships. I only get to see my best friends like 1 a year, but I am also friends with their partner, I know what they are teaching this semester, I talk to them about their research and let them bounce ideas off me, and we try and make time for each other. To me having a friend I don’t have a deep emotional relationship with is like making small talk about weather to strangers.
I don’t know, I just got back from a weekend canoeing trip with 12 other people from the frat days and felt pretty connected with everyone. Some of them I hadn’t seen since last year’s canoe trip, but we built a connection long ago and were able to pick things up from where we left off. Some people had life updates that got shared, but most of us didn’t say anything because not much had changed.
Our group might be different in that it was small for a fraternity and therefore easier to avoid too much cliquiness and I could also just be lucky. It just rubs me the wrong way a little to discount frats and clubs as places to form meaningful relationships when it’s been the best place for me to do so.
It just rubs me the wrong way a little to discount frats and clubs as places to form meaningful relationships when it’s been the best place for me to do so.
I didn’t say they couldn’t be meaningful, just that they weren’t very meaningful to me, and that they seemed to lack deep emotional connections.
As you said most of you hadn’t really connected since the last trip and didn’t have much to share as far as life updates.
I don’t really see that as having a deep emotional connection. I’m closer to my best friend than I am with my family. I know how they are doing, what they are struggling with, we talk about our relationships, our careers, and our families. I can trust them implicitly with my health, wealth, and happiness and they can count on me to do the same for them.
Well, I’m curious, what are they teaching and researching?
They teach cognitive science and philosophy of the mind. Right now they are collecting data about the mind body connection in Japanese archery using balancing plates and eye tracking software.
That tracks. Thank you for the information!
This is 9 of his closest friends, not his 9 closest friends. There are more of his closest friends.
I once made a list of all the people I grab coffee with and stuff. It’s like 10-15 people. Once I took away work-related stuff and people I only see occasionally, it’s like 5-7 people. Out of those 7, only 3 are what I would consider a close friend. Only 1 of those 3 is my best friend who will hear everything about my life.
So, I could say “I have 15 friends” but that would be inaccurate depending on how one interprets the word “friend.”
My whole point is, some people will exaggerate the number to seem cooler, others may say “friend” when they only see that person 3 times a year.
The dude you’re seeing 3 times a year now is still your friend if you’ve spent dozens of weekends together earlier.
Every state capital? Amateurs. My husband knows every world capital.
Edit: he is on a trip with 2 male friends now. Naturally I send him this meme. He calls me back immediately and said “WRONG. We are talking about which country is the happiest.”
So whichever way you slice it, it will be something geography related.
When I was young, me and some friends read there were, I think, 131 regular episodes of the original Twilight Zone, so we sat around trying to name them all.
