Reply to Everyone's Too Busy to Be Friends

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Walk to school. Do an activity with other friends. Host a party or larger playdate. Do smaller one on one playdates with kids your kids really get along well with.[/quote]

OP. I'm doing all this, but many people are too busy to join activities, playdates, or parties. The only people who RSVP yes are socially awkward or boring. I feel like I'm doomed to hang out with people I don't actually like because all the interesting people's dance cards are full. [/quote]

What exactly do you do that makes you so interesting and sophisticated and therefore a higher quality social connection?

I know that "socially awkward" and "boring" are codes for stay-at-home moms, people poorer than you, people whose kids go to less prestigious schools than your children, people with fewer degrees from less prestigious schools than wherever you and your spouse went to (let me guess, Harvard), out of shape moms who've given up on fitness, people whose jobs are not particularly high status even if paid well, foreign-born parents who don't speak the language well enough to make witty banter, etc.

I always marvel at people who approach friendship with this transactional attitude and always measure potential friends against a status bar. Like you must be this tall to ride on my friendship ride. Do you think this attitude makes you a good potential friend to anyone? What if you stopped measuring and just started talking to people without any expectation that it will develop into a friendship or a useful social contact?[/quote]

+1. Seriously, OP, I hope you read this, it’s the most insightful explanation of your problem. [/quote]

OP. This is pretty off-base. I am foreign born and not particularly wealthy or in shape. My friends whom I met through baby groups were mostly SAHMs, nearly all foreign-born (from different countries), and went to colleges I hadn't heard of. I specifically chose a lower-ranked school district here after trying and really disliking a top rated school. I very much want to stay away from status-chasing and transactional friendships.

My friends in my past life were smart and interesting, which has nothing to do with being the "cool moms" - we were anything but that. What I really enjoyed was having deeper conversations about social issues, things going on in the world, our own lives and life choices, and hearing insightful comments and thoughts. That's what really filled my cup. Obviously we talked about basic topics as well - kids, trips, etc - but it was a mix of the more small talk topics and the deeper ones. I've met people like that here, and had the most interesting conversations - but those are the people who are overbooked.

The people who are available to hang out are perfectly nice, and of course I'm polite to them and continue spending time with them, but we just don't have much in common. They're not interested in deeper analytical conversation, I can tell they are bored when I bring up the things I'm passionate about. [/quote]

Okay, I'm the one who asked what makes you so interesting. Your posts reminded me of one of the parents of my DD's fickle friend who is always trying to suss out the status of other parents and pointedly does not talk to anyone with a low-status occupation or education. If you're such a deep thinker yourself, why haven't you thought more deeply about how your snap judgments of people make it difficult for you to make new friends? And those socially awkward people you reject are more likely to be the deep thinkers you'd like to connect with, but if they're aspie, their brains are not wired to make friends so smoothly, so give them a chance (or a break).

People are not going to open up more without first establishing a baseline, which starts from casual and light topics, and then naturally processes to topics of more substance. It sounds like you would benefit from joining a political party or working on a campaign, where you'd meet lots of people who wear their passions and deep thoughts on their sleeves.[/quote]

DP here. I am an ivy educated SAHM. I used to be a working mom. I have lived in a diverse SES neighborhood as well as a wealthy neighborhood. I have three pretty amazing kids who are well behaved. We have not had problems making friends in either neighborhood. I guess we can be considered high status. We have a high income and prestigious jobs. I would not want to be friends with anyone who wants to be my friend due to status. We have friends from all different backgrounds. We throw great parties. We get invited to a lot of parties. I host play dates. I carpool. I try to help out when I can. We have friends who are private jet people as well as teachers, feds and military. Dh is well respected and liked. My kids have a lot of friends. I’m friendly with everyone.[/quote]

That's nice dear, but what does that have to do with anything? Maybe you should write "Memoir of the DP from Page 5."[/quote]

My point was that if you are friendly and not status driven, it may be easier to make friends. I have always made friends easily. I got multiple invites today to make plans for just myself, my kids and families. Other families like to travel with us. We are fun. We are easy. I think every member of our family is likable so people like to hang out with us as a family. We also don’t give off a competitive or striver attitude because that isn’t our style. The most successful people we know seem to like that most about us. [b]We don’t try hard[/b].

I host a lot, OP. I used to feel like I was the only one hosting when kids were younger. People often didn’t reciprocate but they always accepted our invitations. This started back wheb my kids were toddlers and in preschool. I used to host Halloween parties, holiday parties, Friendsgiving, Valentine’s Day. Now I host a lot less and all those people I hosted for all those years now invite me out to their parties or just to have dinner and go out. I connected with some other moms at elementary recently. Im a room parent and planned the class kindergarten party. The other mom invited us over and now I’m having them over to our house. Friendships should feel natural and not forced.[/quote]

And yet your posts are all kids of try hard with cheese on top.  :roll: [/quote]

+1 NP[/quote]

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