Tag Archives: friendship

Making Friends 2.0

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I recently wrote about the difficulty of making friends as an adult. One of the most poignant remarks to me was that of the woman who said she has friends who fill different niches in her social calendar. Well, I recently decided, with the prodding of some friends, to start a book club, a la Gretchen Rubin! While I don’t miss school, whenever I start talking books with someone I realize that I DO miss the camaraderie of the shared reading experience and the meeting of minds that can occur when you talk about a story you’ve both consumed.

I was thoughtful about selecting who to invite. I purposefully picked people that I didn’t know all that well, but in whom I had sensed some kindred spirit. I invited the friend with whom I originally came up with the idea (of course), and she invited a co-worker, who invited her sister! I messaged 3 acquaintances from church, and one gleefully responded that she had been looking for a book club but hadn’t found the right one to join. And I sent an email to the wives/girlfriends/fiancees of Andy’s coworkers, and two decided to join. So a motely crew of seven ladies who love to read emerged!

I Googled a few things like, “how to start a book club” and browsed the lists of suggestions. It took us quite a while to find a date to gather for our first meeting, and I wanted to be prepared! A secondary inspiration to the love of books that led me to start the club is my love of entertaining and feeding people, so the answer to the age-old group gathering questions of “Will there be food?” was for me a resounding, “Yes!” I want the group to have a casual, girls’-night out kind of feel when we meet each month, and food and wine are musts for that in my book (no pun intended).

Only three ended up able to come on Thursday, but we were armed with lists of book suggestions. Since it was a small group, we took a somewhat informal approach. We each read our lists, and a few of us vetoed books we had either already read or just immediately thought would not be a good fit for our group. I expected to do some blind voting on selections, but it ended up not being difficult to pick three books to get us going. Most of our books fell into the categories of historical fiction, current fiction, and “pop” nonfiction. I felt encouraged that I had created a meeting of like minds by the fact that not one but TWO books showed up on multiple lists.

The three of us enjoyed a lovely dinner and downed an entire bottle of wine. As we discussed our book suggestions, the conversation ranged from job satisfaction to marriage to other books to travel….there was no awkward introductory time even though we were veritable strangers. When they left I was overcome with a sense of gratitude for these women coming into my life and feeling SO excited for our group to continue meeting and sharing meals, books, and our lives.

In case you’re interested in reading along, our first three books are:

We’ll be meeting on the third Thursday of the month (consistency seems like it will set us up for success), and whoever’s book selection we are reading will serve as the moderator. The selector is also willing to host if it makes her happy, or else I will continue to. We knew the holidays would get crazy, so we decided to skip December (especially since we only met in late November and our first book is quite long!). But I’m looking forward to having a communal book to read throughout the holidays, anticipating the sweet gathering that will take place at the end.

If you’re interested in starting a book club of your own, here are some of the Internet resources I perused as I was planning our first get-together:

Happy reading!

Making Friends

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I read a fascinating article awhile ago about making friends as an adult. (Well, it was about making friends over the age of 30, but I’ll extrapolate, because I think it applies.) This is obviously something that I’ve given a lot of thought to in the past few years, especially since moving to Atlanta. For me one of the stumbling blocks always seems to be, “But I have these awesome friends in other places and I don’t know how to make this new relationship be like the one I have with So and So.”

The article states that “the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other.”

This seems to happen easily in college. You’ve obviously got the proximity thing down pat, and unplanned interactions happen easily in the cafeteria, the post office, the gym, the dorm bathroom. And we’re you’re literally living together, it’s pretty easy to let your guard down.

I spent 6 years in a dorm setting and have the friends to prove it. But once I graduated and was living in Huntsville, I exclaimed to Andy one night, “I don’t think I’m very good at making friends!” It’s so, so hard to move beyond a relationship where you see each other in a certain setting and get along well but never interact outside of that one place. And it’s even harder to know who and how to approach to try and make that happen. The author of the article puts it this way about a woman she has seen 4 times in the course of a year: “We are “friends,” but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way.”

It’s so true. When everyone has jobs and marriages and especially kids, it takes an act of congress to meet up with people. I had a drink last night with two friends from my church small group who have moved to new neighborhoods. We planned the get-together 18 days ago. Hardly an unplanned interaction. But that doesn’t discount how great and important it is to see your friends. In fact, in some ways it adds even more weight to the relationship that you’re willing to set something on your calendar that far in advance.

I’ve watched my parents build a community around themselves since moving 8 years ago, and it’s pretty incredible all the different places where they’ve developed relationships. I guess for most of my life their main social group (especially for my mom) was by default the other parents of my friends, swim team-mates, etc. But now they have a pretty rich group of people with whom they do fun and interesting things.

The article puts forth a case study on a certain approach to adult friendships: “Some, like Ms. Degliantoni, the fund-raising executive, simply downsize their expectations. ‘I take an extremely efficient approach and seek out like-minded folks to fill very specific needs,’ she said of her current strategy. ‘I have a cocktail friend and a book friend and a parenting friend and several basketball friends and a neighbor friend and a workout friend. It’s much easier filling in those gaps in my life,” she added, “than doing an exhaustive approach for a new friend.’”

I could see that working pretty well actually, and being nice enough, but my heart still craves that friendship, even if it’s just one, where you can call someone and know they’ll be right over if you need them to.

I’m clearly not an expert on this, but I’m working on it…though let’s not talk about keeping up with the old friends, ’cause that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.

This Is My Story

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My church small group is spending the fall listening to each other’s stories. Each week, 1 or 2 of us comes prepared to share, and we get 20 minutes to tell our story. The group then gets a chance to comment, respond, and ask questions. Our group leader shared hers first to sort of give us an example, and then she gave us some guidance as to how to begin thinking about our own (because it sure is overwhelming to try and think about telling your whole life story!).

We were each given a chunk of post-it notes in 4 different colors. One color was to represent positive people, places, and experiences, while another represented negative. The third color was for accomplishments, both worldly and character building, and the final color was for us to record insights gained and lessons learned along the way. We spent some time writing stream of consciousness on each color with the “homework assignment” to revisit and flesh out each set.

Once you write your thoughts, you lay them all out chronologically on a poster board (or piece of paper) so that the squares of color make a sort of quilt: your story quilt! From there, you can begin thinking about how to turn it into a cohesive story. It was interesting how readily the seemingly disparate instances written on the post-its arranged themselves into a timeline. Some people in the group said they were surprised to find themselves writing down names of people they hadn’t thought about in years but who had apparently made an impact that their subconscious remembered! I noticed that several of my positives also showed up as negatives–I guess when someone or something touches you that deeply, it has the potential to influence you in both directions.

I sat down one day and typed up a rambling 6-page essay from my story quilt. All the words just sort of flew onto the page since I had already put thought into the content via my post-it notes. I, the consummate volunteer, offered to share first, so I read my story last night. Ever the English major, I already want to revise and tell it again! There are so many ways you could arrange it: chronologically (as I did), by person, by event, by lessons learned. Also, since I took a broad view and considered my whole life, I felt like some really important characters and scenes in my story were reduced to a short sentence, so another layout could be to focus in on one or a few particulars but extrapolate out and gloss over its effects on the rest of your life.

I’ve always loved reading other people’s memoirs, so it was interesting to briefly try my hand at my own! I’m not sure what it will turn into, but dredging up thoughts and memories is never a bad exercise in my mind. Of course, I had the added layer of telling it out loud, which is a very nerve-wracking experience for a lot of folks. I never mind sharing, but it was quite a feeling laying myself out so raw in front of 5 people I’m only starting to get to know. But since we ALL will share our stories eventually, it’s just one big step toward being able to say I know them, rather than that I am getting to know them!

Have you ever written a memoir piece? What was the experience like for you?

cultivation

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You know that saying, “Friends are the family you choose for yourself?”

I’ve always thought it was kind of cheesy, but lately it’s been running through my mind. Moving to a new place where I didn’t know anyone (well, save a few souls) has necessarily had me thinking about friendship a lot in the past few months. And in the last week or so it’s struck me even more how valuable good friends are.

Our church is big on community, and one of the ways it fosters that is by having spiritual formation groups that are gender-divided and neighborhood specific. It’s basically a small group, like you might find at a lot of churches, but with very intentional purposes: to foster deep relationships, prayerful conversations, and real discipleship growth. My group met for the first time this past Tuesday, and it was amazing to realize how much my heart has been craving something like that. A group of like-minded people with whom I can open up and be honest. A group of women to call my friends, whatever the basis of our friendship may be. A place to seek and find God. It was a great evening, and Sunday at church it was nice to chat with a few of them and feel like we were standing on some common ground. It’s been tiring since we moved to always feel like I’m having to cover the basics of who I am and make small talk with the few people I know.

But what the group also made me realize is how many wonderful friends I have made in my life and how important it should be to cultivate those relationships. (For whatever reason, cultivate is the word that keeps coming to my mind as I think about this journey: “to promote or improve the growth of by labor and attention.”) I’m all too aware of how easy it is to let people slip away when you don’t see them often, or to convince yourself that Facebook and Twitter communication are good replacements for real conversation. But so what that many of my friends and I are scattered around and no longer have built-in reasons to see each other? So what that I have begun to let communication collapse with some of the people I care most about? So what that as adults, our lives no longer look as similar as they once did? I’m resolving to stop using these as excuses and instead find ways to continue on in relationship. I’ve mentally hand-picked some people who have meant a lot to me and decided to seek them out, regardless of what our relationship has looked like lately.

Last week, I went on a letter writing spree. I pulled out some nice notecards and settled in to tell some people how much I care about them. Letters might not be the most efficient way to communicate these days, but this topic felt weighty enough that I wanted to make it meaningful. I don’t know what kind of response I’ll get to my cards. I don’t know exactly what adult friendships look like, or how best to make them work. I’ll probably need to get over my utter loathing of talking on the phone and put my voice where my blog is. But I always find that when I suck it up and talk to a friend, the sweet comfort it brings overcomes any dislike I may have had. So call me up. Write me a letter. Send me a long email. I choose you.

Are you good at communicating with your friends? What are some ways of keeping in touch that you’ve found work well?

Welcome, Friends!

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If you are visiting from my guest post on Money Saving Mom, welcome! I’m excited that you’re here. Please poke around my site–I’d love to “meet” you in the comments! It was one of my Birthday Resolutions to have a guest post posted on a blog I respect, and Money Saving Mom is definitely that. I’ve had such a blast following Crystal and others who’ve taught me how to coupon. I hope you can pick up a tip or two from Unpunctuated Life!