Guest Post: Friending Outside My Comfort Zone

I’m on vacation! While I’m away, I thought it would be fun to hear from some of the products of this search firsthand. Here, my new friend Veronica on our unconventional meeting.

When people ask how Rachel and I know each other, I joke that she picked me up online. But it’s true.

Being close to 30 (if I say it enough it loses its power, right?), and having been in a relationship for the last seven years, I have never had experience with online dating sites. I know that relationships originating from match.com and the like are way more common these days, but when it came to making new friends, it never occurred to me that the Internet would be a useful tool. I’m at the age (30! 30! 30!) where I straddle that line between being pretty well connected online but remembering the days before the Internet was such a pervasive aspect of daily communication. Most of my friends were made sitting outside a coffee shop. I know. How 90’s.

But by chance I noticed a blog post on Jezebel.com addressing the difficulty of meeting new friends in a new city as a married adult, and as I had been struggling with that very thing since moving to Chicago from North Carolina, where I had lived my whole life and developed a large network of friends, I read on and into the comments. That’s where I saw Rachel’s comment about her search and a link to this blog, and commented myself about my own situation. She then contacted me, and long story short, after some email back and forth, we set a date to meet for drinks.

We had similar stats – same age, married about the same length of time, no kids, both in the media industry with a love of brunch and The Soup. And obviously I wouldn’t be writing here if, when we met, we didn’t hit it off pretty immediately. We sat drinking wine and talking smack (pretty much my two favorite things to do) for several hours and it never really felt awkward.

And this is the part I didn’t tell her before now. I seriously felt the same giddiness I would have after a successful first date. I came home to my husband and gushed to him that I had met such a smart, funny and interesting woman and I really thought we’d made a great connection. And over the next couple days that “wait two days before calling her” scene from Swingers (again, I know, how 90’s) kept playing in my head. I fretted a little about whether or not I should be the one to make the next move, if maybe she didn’t like me as much as I liked her, {Editor’s note: I did!} and why hadn’t I heard from her a few days later.  I felt like a silly teenager. Then of course, after some business travel and a whopping sinus infection, I ovaried up and sent an email asking her to brunch.

After that brunch date, I joined her cooking club and developed great friendships with that group of ladies, and even went on another blind friend date with my husband and another couple via a mutual friend, which has also since turned into a fulfilling friendship. I credit Rachel and her search with not only introducing me to a new group of friends, but also for inspiring me to put myself out there.  Meeting a potential friend via a chance blog comment isn’t what I’d call conventional, but I’m glad I said yes.