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We now live in the post-community age; success nowadays seems to embodied by packing your schedule with school/activities to the point where you don't have time to hang out with anyone, so you can land a job that pays you enough money to hole up in your mcmansion with all the latest consumer electronics and never have to have to genuinely engage another human being again.
Then you cannot call that person a friend, I suppose. Friends look after each other and are genuinely interested in each other.
I get the feeling some people see "friends" as just people to hang out with while doing something else so they do not have to be alone, instead of being together because you actually enjoy each others' company. I hardly think the latter sort of relationship has gone out of style though.
I think maybe younger people take each other for granted, but rest assured, that changes as you get older and actually find you enjoy people for who they are and how they can enrich your day to day life--not just what they can do for you. Maybe it is a maturity thing.
I've had a number of friends but when I stopped working and became a stay at home mom, people drifted away throughout the years. I have many Army friends but we are more distant friends. As others have said, FB seems to be the means by which folks stay connected. I'm not much of a FB person. I'm an older mom (50s) with younger kids so many times, I'm on a different wavelength anyway. I've made a few mom friends who are on the older side like me and will miss them tremendously when we leave this area.
I am a very friendly person however a bit introverted. I do much better one on one versus gaggles of folks. Hopefully I can find some nice folks in our new area.
I find that people are just so busy these days. With kids especially, there are so many structured activities and people stay within their social circles.
We now live in the post-community age; success nowadays seems to embodied by packing your schedule with school/activities to the point where you don't have time to hang out with anyone, so you can land a job that pays you enough money to hole up in your mcmansion with all the latest consumer electronics and never have to have to genuinely engage another human being again.
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Originally Posted by FeelinLow
That's the issue, ''willingness''.
So few people seem ''willing'' or ''interested'' in getting together. Much less often than years ago.
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Originally Posted by Osito
I agree. Of course where I live aren't exactly friendly people, despite what the media loves to say. I don't even bother anymore.
Wouldn't have said this years ago but now I can understand why some people become hermits.
so they spend their time collecting FB friends and making their life looking fabulous, kind of like working their own PR machine.
I had a former co-worker in CA make friends with my high school friends from WI on FB - and most accepted...I'm sorry, but I didn't even keep most of those people after a few filters. WTF do they possibly have in common??? Nothing but collecting friends and building up their ego I think.
It seems to me, the line between reality and fantasy is fading. The average person thinks they are famous or something, and the giddiness they get from the constant attention on FB is like being popular and/or famous, even if it's disingenuous or silly.
True connections are rare these days, indeed. People are all too willing to make you disposable as soon as whatever you are feeling or going through becomes an inconvenience or may OMG! Tarnish their "image" because they are a VIP, of course
I only have one true friend I keep in contact with daily. He's younger than me so it's strange at first and I blocked him out when we first met. I don't like younger people because most are immature, and all about themselves. I feel far more comfortable around older people and mature conversations. However, my friend may be young but he's smart, mature, and does not drink, smoke, or do drugs (same as me). Our personalities are almost the exact and sarcastic humor is spot on. I'm thankful to have him as a friend, but I still block out younger people till I get to know them. Hyper people or lazy, lazy people I don't talk to again.
As someone who has suffered from OCD most of his life, never been popular, had few friends over the course of my life, an introvert and now into my early 30's, been through years of counceling and medications, I am now planning on moving to a larger city to with people who love to do things that I wanna do so I can find new friends and relationships, I've learned a few things to improve my friend making status
1. Get out of the damn house. Find meetup.com groups online and go meet people FACE TO FACE.
2. Get rid of *friends* that arn't close on your facebook or remove their posts to your news feed. You will spend less time stalking and wasting time constantly being on facebook waiting to hear back from them.
3. If a friend doesn't wanna communicate with you, don't take it personally, just don't communicate much with them in return. Tell them your available and to get in touch with you for hanging out. Leave the ball in their court. If they continue not to serve it back, consider ditching them. I left a friend of over 20 years because he didnt' wanna talk, return calls or basically do anything anymore. Relationships/friendships are two way streets, its gotta be a give and take. If its only one, its not worth continuing
4. Do/find hobbies that put you in public places at the very least. You will feel better being surrounded by people at least rather then just being all "alone". Go one step farther and try new hobbies that INVOLVE people doing the same thing. That gives you the opportunity to talk with people about something in common, a great ice breaker.
5. Rise, Repeat as necassary.
I am an introverted woman in my mid-50's and I agree with this. I basically had to build up a brand new social life after my husband dropped a bomb a few years ago and I did as AT suggested and now am having to turn down invitations. Not all are friends--many are acquaintances, but some of those are well on the way to becoming friends. Things began to happen fast when I started dancing every week and it was great for me at first b/c I could go among people w/o the pressure of having to make conversation with a bunch of strangers like you would have to do at a party or bar. Now we have little splinter groups that go meet at coffeeshops or microbreweries on a regular basis so you can go or not, as you want.
Also, I also have several close friends scattered all over the state of MO after getting very involved with a church a few years ago and it feels really good when we can reconnect. I don't even have a church in this city so I go to district events. If I had just sat in the pews w/o getting involved though, the outcome would have been quite different.
I did not have this growing up--I think I was the weirdest kid in the school and had very few friends in high school or college.
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Originally Posted by AT-AT28
Yes, its when it happens to us introverts who only have a few close friends that we choose to involve ourselves in and those few are unavailable for whatever reason around the same time frame.
Extroverted people however, don't suffer from a shortage of friends to meet up with. Unless your introverted, you will never understand.
I don't think the issue is whether you're introverted or not--it's whether you're willing to make the effort, as Zentropa suggested. I do those email back and forth things all the time and I'm an introvert. Yes, people are busy but you just try to connect when you can and that often means looking at this date and that one to try to find a mutual one. Or sometimes people will choose an event that they want to go to, like a concert in the park, and they'll send out an email to a number of their friends to meet them and if you're free you go, and if not you don't worry about it.
To the OP--one thing that raised a red flag with your post was when you railed against this: "Then you have to watch everything you say and how you say it so as not to ''offend'' the ''pc'' mindsets that dominate everything." IME, when people say this, they are angry that they can't say any dam thing they want to. Part of social life has always been sensitivity to others' feelings, so not sure why it's an issue now except that often as people get older they want to pop off with something outrageous like my g-ma used to do. Also, it used to be appropriate to rail against other races or homosexuality and now it no longer is and I personally am glad for the change even though I'm a caucasian straight woman.
But even if that's not what you meant, the fact is that you can find almost any topic to discuss with people, even if they don't believe as you do. I'm a liberal and have some extremely conservative friends and we can find plenty to talk about and even agree on and we leave alone the topics that are inflammatory.
Also, I think that it sounds as if your real issue here is resistance to change. The times they are a changin' and flexible people will figure out how to navigate and not so flexible people will run into problems but it's always been that way--or at least as long as things were changing. If your old friendships are no longer working, you'll need to go out and make new ones and get involved in something. Church, dancing, community work, usher at musical concerts, volunteer to work for your favorite political candidate--there are a thousand things to do out there so why sit home bemoaning the good ole days? (Psst, they weren't that great)
I'm 60, and no friends here, either. Live in a clique small town where you have to be a somebody or from a certain area of town.
My opinion is that the internet and phones and social media has really scarred making friends. The art of making friends has been lost. Just talk to a millennial face to face, and they freeze and run. Frightened that you spoke to them directly.
I have shut the tv off. Like mentioned, I'm pretty serious about the internet also, but I do restrict my access to it.
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