Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who I met through this blog. Just as we put our napkins in our laps, she made an observation about my recent posts:
“I notice you’ve started writing more about friendship and less about the search,” she said.
I don’t know that I’m writing less about searching for a BFF, per se, but I am, I think, writing less about the questions of where to meet potential friends, and more about how to turn those new friends into best ones.
This isn’t on purpose. As my search has evolved, the blog has changed along with me. When I started writing here, my main question was where in the world should I start? How could I find people to ask out on girl dates? Why was it so hard to talk to a potential best friend in a restaurant or a yoga class? Over the year, I’ve improved in those departments—you know, except for the times when I’m totally awkward—and now I’m in phase two. I’ve found the potential BFFs, now I need to turn them—some of them? Any of them!—into plain old best friends forever.
This might be the harder stage. There is some finesse involved—“I want to hang out with you all the time, but I’m not a stalker, I swear!”—and while most people are open to girl-dates and friendships, they aren’t necessarily in the market for a new partner-in-crime. Plus, as I discussed yesterday (and THANK YOU all so much for your amazing insights) the whole let’s-go-to-the-mall-on-a-whim thing isn’t quite as easy in the adult world of scheduling as it was when I was 13 and had nothing to do.
My intention for this blog was to chronicle my quest for a new best friend, and to bring readers on the journey with me. But now I figure it’s time to check in with you guys. Are you missing the stories and analysis of the where-to-find-friends variety? I still try to address those questions as they come up in my everyday life, but admittedly they arise less now than they did when I was making a daily effort to meet new people. Would you like more posts focused on where to pick up girls, or are you enjoying this next phase of the journey? Be honest, I don’t offend easily.
The goal is to strike a balance, but since you guys are nice enough to check in and give me feedback all the time, I want to be sure I’m giving the people what they want! And, as always, if there is any specific topic you wish I’d write about, feel free to shoot me an email.
MWF Seeking BFF 
Rachel, I really enjoy the variety of topics you hit on and think you should continue this phase 2 style– in fact many times when I read your entries I think ” well I think about that topic sometimes but never took the time to write about it” and I feel like you hit so eloquently on those details. Keep it up! As far as writing about WHERE to find gal pals, although you previously started with it, I think that would be a difficult writing phase, that’s kind of like asking “where do I get a boyfriend” — and in most cases, whether you’re looking for a friend/ bf/ bff you don’t have a one-stop shop– it just happens. So i love the phase 2 writing style you are doing and think you should continue.
Since I am still in the “search phase”, it would be nice if you still address this occasionally, but to be honest, I find all of your posts surrounding friendship – finding friends, making friends last, etc. – interesting 🙂
Congratiolations on your journey to develop a BFF on stage two now 😉
I would not mind to get to know more possibilities, even though I feel it might be simply my location that makes the search so hard!
Ditto San. I have found a few potential BFFs through an organization but am still searching for more. I have been wondering where you met those that you have developed the closest relationship with so far? I am curious if it is a variety of places or one type of meeting place/scenario that has produced closer relationships/easier built relationships?
I enjoy all the posts, have really shown me we all approach making & keeping friendships differently. If there is a phrase I would like to explore further, it would be after the girl date, that went well…..do you just start calling your new friend? I have found ,if there is not a preexisting reason to bump into each other (with regularity), it can feel awkward to build upon an out of the blue girl date, even if it went great….
And it seems that texts and emails don’t facilite a new friendship like face to face…so calling a very new friend saying ” hey ready to hang out with me again?..your new BFF!!!”…I can’t seem to make the transition from girl date to real friend….
All that said, you have yet to write a post I not enjoyed…so please just continue!!!
I too am really enjoying the ‘phase two’ posts. I do sometimes go back and re-read posts from the early stages of the blog as I find these really inspiring. I find all of the anecdotes about asking people out on girl dates help to put in me in a positive frame of mind when I’m having doubts about my ability to make new friends.