I am usually OK with faces (although there's a lot of "I'm not sure if I've actually talked to them before or just seen them around") but I'm horrible with names. I literally have people I've known for years that I don't know their name because I'm too embarrassed to ask again. Ugh. And they always remember MY name, of course! I need an app for this, like I can surreptitiously snap a photo of them and put in their name as soon as I meet them, and then have a record to refer back to. I remember things much better if I see it written down.
Yes, me too!
I'm probably going to see my new buddy a couple of times next week, I guess I'll find out if we're friends now or if it was just some crazy late-night one-off thing after a couple glasses of wine. Hopefully I'll be having one of my "on" days and not one of my "hide under the table" days...
I hope you really become friends!! Though maybe a little distance is good. It's sometimes more fun to have crushes on people than to have them turn all human on you.
A question for people in this thread: how much energy (time/emotional/mental etc) are you putting in to maintaining existing friendships vs trying to make new connections?
Though I have an old friend with whom I chat with every week, I'm spending more time on new connections because we are relatively new in this community, and the first few years I was too busy taking care of young kids and elderly parents to socialize much. A few times a year I visit neighborhoods where I used to live and manage to see a whole bunch of people in a day, and it's great. But otherwise, I'm trying to make new friends since I expect we'll be living here a good long time.
Also, the old friends with whom I am in the most contact, now have different politics than me, and it's a bit of a strain. I love them and all, but it's more relaxing to be with friends around whom I can say anything without thinking too much.
I rarely feel like I fit in anywhere, like I'm on the outside looking in and it can all come tumbling down at any time if I say or do the wrong thing (I have a LOT of hangups from childhood that I haven't quite gotten over yet). But I don't know if that's because I haven't found "my people" yet or if childhood trauma-reactions just make everything feel not quite right. Thoughts?
One of the big breakthroughs for me in the last decade has been to realize how awkward OTHER people usually are! Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people are basically lonely. At any rate, even when I don't fit in, I'm not afraid of people any more.
In terms of feeling like a good fit, the best conditions I find for friendship is when a group of people who are new to one another come together (like to a new school or program or housing group), then spend a fair amount of time working or studying together. That's not enough for cohesion though. The next step is for this group of people to
travel together among strangers. Then you feel like you know each other!