Monthly Archives: September 2010

I have two friends starting new jobs this week, and today I heard of another one who just scored an offer.

The first week in a new office is at once an exciting and terrifying thing. You’re the new kid in school. Sure, you’ll know everything about these people eventually—what they eat for lunch, which dentist they go to, what instrument they played in high school marching band—but for now you’re just trying to remember names. And, more importantly, get them to remember yours.

We spend approximately 40 hours a week with our coworkers. That’s a lot of time to feel lonely if you don’t connect to anyone in your office. In fact, research has found that when Americans are asked to choose between having a best friend at work and a 10% raise, friendship wins out easily.

I’ve made close friends in all the jobs I’ve held. But it took time. Upon arrival at each office I was so eager to establish friendships immediately that I most definitely was the awkward girl trying to weasel my way into social circles. As I write this, I’m cringing at the memory of attempting to befriend someone at my very first full-time job, and it was totally one of those trying too hard situations.

“Hey, so, um, watcha working on?”

And then I proceeded to tell her my whole life story because, you know, why not.

Not that she’d asked.

So my advice for my new worker bee friends is as follows:

First, make yourself visible. You want your new colleagues to remember you’re there, so they invite you to lunch and include you on a group project. In the office especially, people are so wrapped up in their own lives that out of sight really is out of mind.

Second, don’t insert yourself for no reason. Though you want to be visible, you don’t want to be intrusive. Jumping in others people’s conversations—“Hey guys whatcha talking about?” (not that you’d do that)—screams Andy Bernard.

Thirdly, do your job, do it well enough, and relax. As long as you’re not burning down the office or forcing anyone to stay late, you’ll make friends eventually. Taking the relationship out of the office takes time, but for now you just need an on-the-clock friend—someone you can recap Modern Family or your weekend with. She may not be a BFF (yet) but that relationship is equally as valuable.

Remember being the new guy at work? Any tricks for establishing workplace friendships? Anyone think the office and friendship shouldn’t mix?

“Can I tell you a secret?”

According to some experts, these six words will turn an acquaintanceship into a friendship. Self-disclosure, they say, is the defining trait of BFFs.

When a new friend trusts you with private information, it’s flattering. Clearly she thinks you are good stock. Reliable. Loyal. She sees a future in your relationship.

Sometimes I think I should spew out secrets to everyone I meet. It could speed up our bonding process. Except for one small problem: I don’t really have any secrets.

I’ve noticed, however, that when there’s a promising connection with a new friend, I’m more willing to mention my father’s death. I don’t go out of my way to bring it up, but I don’t avoid the topic either. When a girl-date is going just ok, I fear that kind of info might halt the already forced conversation.

Though the fact that my father died is clearly not a secret, it’s a personal memory that I only share when I’m comfortable with someone. That single piece of info doesn’t catapult us to capital F Friendship, but I think it makes clear to my friend-suitor that I feel like I can talk to her.

But there’s another side to this coin: When someone reveals the most intimate details of her life upon first meeting, there’s part of me that wonders, “Why are you telling me this? I hardly even know you.” Is there a too soon for self-disclosure?

I recently came across an old New York Times essay by Ann Patchett (whose friendship memoir Truth & Beauty is on my to-read list) about Sex and the City, and whether the ladies’ close friendships are realistic. She writes, “That’s my idea of real intimacy: It’s not the person who calls to say, ‘I’m having an affair’; it’s the friend who calls to say, ‘Why do I have four jars of pickles in my refrigerator?’” This sentence sums up what I am looking for in a local BFF better than anything I’ve ever written. I don’t need someone with whom to discuss the deep stuff—it’s the minutiae I’m interested in.

Sometimes it takes talking about everything to get to the place where we can talk about nothing.

What do you think? Is self-disclosure the fastest route to friendship? Or should we hold off from revealing too much until we’ve reached a certain level of intimacy – a three-date rule, perhaps? Also, do you agree with Ann Patchett’s definition of friendship intimacy?

My brother moved to Chicago a week and a half ago. My mother moved here from New York a little over a year ago. I have four cousins, two aunt-and-uncles and a grandmother who live within city lines (Also a new, three-week-old first cousin once removed. Hi Samantha!) Clearly, there are a lot of us.

Alex, my brother, is an especially exciting addition to the local family. We’ve always been incredibly close. He is, as his girlfriend pointed out recently, the male version of me. Unclear as to whether she thinks this is a good thing.

I’ve heard people say they are so close with their family that they don’t need friends. Their siblings, or their parents, are their BFFs. In fact, the 2006 study “Social Isolation in America,” found that in the 20 years prior, the percentage of Americans who named at least one non-kin person as part of his inner circle went from 80% to 57%.

If I believed in the whole family-as-BFF thing, Alex would be mine. We understand each other, we have that I-know-what-you’re-thinking connection when we’re in big groups, and we’ve been through some pretty rough times together. Luckily, I’m able to put behind me the bullying-the-little-sister years.

But I don’t believe in family-as-friends. Just the other day I was telling my grandmother about this blog and, pointing to my mother, she said “Isn’t she your best friend?”

“No,” I said. “She’s my mom.”

I’m a proponent of separating family, friends and romance. They are different relationships, with different tenets. When I first moved to Chicago, I had few friends, so I spent a large portion of my time with my aunt and cousins. And while I love them and love spending time with them, I craved a world of my own. I wanted a group of friends who didn’t know the inner workings of my family and who, more importantly, didn’t care. I wanted friends who were all mine.

I don’t want to demean the importance of having wonderful family. When I’m in a bind, I go straight to Mom or Bro or Aunt or Cuz before I try friends. I’m certain they’d come through for me if necessary, and I don’t feel that same confidence in my new pals. Yet.

But I think everyone needs some non-familial friendships. For sanity’s sake. There’s something about being with relatives that brings out the crazy in us all. And when that happens, we need someone to escape to.

I wrote about this back when I was pondering the March sisters (and the response was fascinating!), but now that my big bro is my new neighbor, it’s on my mind again. I hope to hang with him a lot—and will always feel comfortable calling for a last-minute lunch date—but I still say he’s family, not friend. What do you think? Can relatives do double duty?

I talk a lot on this blog about my friend-making successes. I dish about a waitress, or a girl sitting next to me on a plane, or an improv class full of new friends.

I’ve written less about the BFFs that never were. Ladies who never called back or stopped responding to emails or who flat out told me they didn’t think we should be friends.

I do this because I want to encourage people to go out there, introduce themselves, and invite a new acquaintance for coffee.

But the truth is that for every three-to-five people who happily accept my invitations to brunch and the like, there is usually one who brushes me off. And I get that, because there was a time not so long ago when I would have thought it was plenty odd that some random girl was trying to platonically pick me up.

Commenters on this blog are often discouraged because they did what they were supposed to do—the asking out, the following up, the saying yes—but then the potential friend disappeared. So I’m here to say that this has happened to everyone. Or at least, this has happened to me.

A girl I genuinely thought I’d bonded with stopped acknowledging my emails. To this day I still don’t understand why. Another one told me outright that our friendship wasn’t going to work out. And there’s yet another who I think may currently be passive aggressively trying to end things.

I generally take this kind of brush-off personally. Who doesn’t? But these days, when a PBFF gives me the old heave ho, I’m usually able to laugh about it. Since so many people have been receptive to my friendship advances, I don’t get too bent out of shape about those who haven’t.

You know what your grandma said about kissing a lot of frogs? It’s true. But with friendship it’s even better, because you don’t have to limit yourself to one frog at a time. You can kiss all the frogs you want at once.

Ok, this metaphor is getting weird.

What I’m saying is, if you’ve tried to pursue a friendship with one or two people and it hasn’t worked out, you can’t just bail on the effort entirely. Remember, it’s not personal. As Jon Stewart says, we’re the busy majority. Some people don’t have time for new friends.

But other people do.

So take solace in my failures. We’ve all had the not-so-great friendship adventures. But I’ll guarantee that if you continue to introduce yourself and do the work, you’ll end up with more potential friends than rejections.

And then, when the inexplicable “We can’t be friends because I don’t like people who wear purple” happens, you’ll be able to laugh. If you’re me, you’ll just plan to write about it some day.

Have you had any less-than-stellar reactions from would-be friends? If you’re on a similar search, have you had discouraging moments? How did you get back on track?

I’m breaking my own rule here, but this new research couldn’t wait until Wednesday. It’s too fascinating.

Think true love is priceless? Think again. According to Oxford University researchers, led by Robin Dunbar (the anthropologist behind the 150-person max social network), the cost of a romantic relationship is exactly two friendships.

According to the study, the average person has an inner core of five friends (the people we see at least once a week, the ones we count on in a crisis), but as a new romance grows, those numbers change. “People who are in romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five [individuals] on average, they only have four in that circle,” Dunbar told the BBC. “And bearing in mind that one of those is the new person that’s come into your life, it means you’ve had to give up two others.”

When I cited this to a colleague yesterday she seemed unsurprised. She lost a friend when she started dating her husband, she said, because that friend had just gotten out of a relationship and was bitter that anyone else was happy and in love.

Friendships end, or diminish, for various reasons when it comes to romance. Maybe your BFF doesn’t like your significant other (or vice versa). Or maybe she doesn’t want to hang out because she hates feeling like the third wheel.

Researchers chalk the lost friendships up to time constraints. When you’re dedicating a chunk of your schedule to romance, girl-time gets whittled down. And as soon as you stop seeing friends consistently, “emotional engagement starts to drop off, and quickly.”

Now that we’re aware of this friend-for-romance tradeoff, we should probably do something about it.

If you’re in a romantic relationship, remind yourself of the importance of platonic ones. They’re meaningful especially when you’re in love. Nothing kills passion like talking to your man about the TMI stuff. He doesn’t want to hear about bodily functions, or how your butt looks in those jeans, or your 800th analysis of the conversation with your mom last week. That’s what BFFs are for.

Have you lost friendships due to romance? What should people do to avoid this relationship evil? Is it possible to maintain close friendships and a quality romantic relationship, or should we just accept we can’t have it all?