@Tris Prior - I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just enjoy that Boyfriend had a great time. Drunken people can get needy. Much nicer type of drunken person than those that are mean. Hope his head isn't hurting too bad.
Remember - you can't decide what other people think but you can chose what you think. Chose - drunken man feeling the love....He was having a good time.
He never gets hangovers - lucky him. :P
I am trying not to think too hard about what they thought of his statement. He had a really good time and it probably didn't even occur to him that maybe that wasn't a good thing to say (I have not mentioned it to him.).
How long have you lived in that city? I've been through the same kind of thing, feeling like all my friends are "new" friends in a new place, and feeling like I'm not a high priority to anyone since they've all been here longer and have more established relationships. It's just a normal part of life.
I have lived here all my life, born and raised. He's been here since 2005. Yes, that's exactly it, I feel like we are not a high priority for anyone, but an afterthought, and told Boyfriend the other day "I don't know how to get people to actually care about us?"
So part of me thinks, what's wrong with me that I've been here for so long and still do not have close friends? Then the other part of me remembers, oh yeah, I HAD friends but they all hated Chicago and left for places where the winters aren't as bad, where owning property with actual land is a possibility, etc. All my life, it's gone: meet someone, hit it off, start hanging out, develop friendship...... and they announce they're leaving.
A lot of this is on us. We haven't prioritized making friends for some time for a variety of reasons, over the years: sick parents needing care, jobs that required 80-hour weeks, poverty that caused us to spend all our time hustling for money and being unable to afford to socialize (and also being unable to find people who were willing to socialize with us for free; that is a real problem in this city). We're working on it harder now but it sometimes gets really exhausting. We were supposed to go to another event today that is sure to have folks with similar interests, but we are too worn out (and slightly hungover) from yesterday's festivities and no adulting tasks were accomplished yesterday so instead we're food-shopping, batch cooking, doing laundry....
Anyway, they're probably flattered. Think how you would feel if someone said that to you. You'd feel good that they liked you so much and felt a connection with you, right?
Yes, I would. But I keep replaying this conversation I had years ago with a not-close friend. She awkwardly was explaining to me that her wedding venue was tiny and she couldn't fit everyone after inviting family and lifelong friends, so she was sorry but I wouldn't be getting an invite. I wasn't upset by this; I had the same issue with my own wedding and I told her it was fine and I understood. She looked relieved and said something along the lines of, "whew, some people have gotten SO upset with me about this. There's one person who I'm not going to invite.... and I don't know how to tell her because she just asked me to be her bridesmaid in HER wedding. She says she feels so close to me, like a sister, and wants me to be a part of her big day. And I just don't feel that way about her, and I'm not even INVITING her much less asking her to be a bridesmaid, and I feel so awkward around her now, I don't know that I'll feel comfortable even hanging out with her again."
I didn't even know her friend but instantly felt SO sorry for that person, whoever she was. Here she thought she and my friend were BFFs and my friend just..... didn't. I'm worried about becoming that person someday.
The worry is low self-esteem or anxiety talking, I think. The only way I could imagine thinking that was "pathetic" was if I was only hanging out with someone out of pity or obligation... and I think deep down you're worried that this is what's happening, because the social anxiety makes you feel like you don't have any worth as a friend, and you don't understand why anyone would be your friend for real. (I'm 100% projecting this from inside my own social anxiety, btw... I'm continually amazed that people like me and perpetually worried that they don't really.)
OK, thank you for the reality check. I suspected as much (yay therapy for helping me see that this might be my jerkbrain talking even though I still feel crappy about it!). And yes, I worry that people don't really want to hang out with me but feel obligated to. I was bullied horribly in school, as was Boyfriend, and both of us had the experience of people faking like they wanted to be friends with us and then mocking us and shunning us. "You thought we were your FRIENDS? HAHAHAHAHA." That sort of mean girls behavior. Except Boyfriend got it from girls he wanted to date. Tweens and teens just really suck sometimes.
I think part of the reason why I try to do a lot of favors and kind things for people is that it makes that part of me shut up... "See? People like me because I'm so nice! They're not secretly feeling sorry for me because I'm such a loser." If this all sounds familiar: definitely social anxiety talking...
Totally familiar. When I was getting mercilessly bullied as a kid and would lament to my mom that no one liked me, she would say, "if you want a friend, you need to BE a friend." She never really explained what that meant, though, and I had no idea, so in my kid-brain that morphed into "go along with whatever others want, do favors for people, help them, never ask for anything in return, do all the emotional labor and listen to their problems but don't burden them with yours." To this day I struggle with setting boundaries with others and standing up for my own self-worth because I never learned how to do that. I have a hard time seeing the line between "good friend" and "doormat who has no needs of her own."