Why I'm Not A Very Good Friend

I am 44 years old now, which means about two decades and change out of college. For context, I’ve also been divorced and remarried. I’ve moved five times as an adult. If you take all that information, and you care enough to make an assumption, you’d probably think that I’ve been in some friend groups, left some, and things are harder because I am a guy. You’d be right on most of that (I don’t necessarily think male friendships are “harder” than female friendships, but they operate on different ideas of ritual).

Probably the biggest confusion I’ve had as an adult is around friendship and how it weaves in and out of your life. I kinda knew I wanted to write things, whether or not it was my main income source, since I was maybe 13 years old. If you asked me at 13 what I thought I would write about as an adult, I never would have guessed that a primary topic would have been “friendship,” although in some ways it makes sense because I didn’t have a ton of close friends at 13 either, so I was probably ruminating about the topic back then.

Anyway, I have written a bunch about it. Personally I think a lot of adult friendship is about “similar life stage/moment” and there’s not much more to it than that, but I also think it’s pretty easy to look at friendship and say, “That’s a nice to have, not a need to have, as I carve out my adult path.”

Today I wanted to look at my own bullshit for a second. This should be fun.

Do I have friends?

Yes. I’d say I have more acquaintances, but I have usually 3–4 things to do every weekend, and I don’t consider myself per SE “lonely,” although sometimes I wish the connections I had were deeper, yes. I think a lot of people wish for that, personally; it’s just that not as many articulate it.

Do I struggle to make friends?

Also yes. I think sometime around 2021 or 2022, I kinda gave up on the idea of deep friendship, which was ironically around the same time I started self-loathing more around infertility and shit like that. With guys, I became more of a meme-sharer, which sometimes leads to decent discussions and an invite to a few beers, but usually doesn’t go that far. In 2021, I was 41 (well, 40 for most of the year) and still didn’t have kids (still don’t), so anywhere in that COVID to now region I was mostly dealing with dads of 2–3, all of whom are still school-aged. It’s a very different life script. So yes, I struggle here.

Does it seem like some guys have no interest?

No doubt. And while I seem like a femcel on TikTok right now, let me explain briefly. I’ve had a few guys — three or four I can think of — where I’ve tried to initiate activities, like a meetup or a college football game or even one time a volunteer project — and I get ghosted or stonewalled. In hindsight, I kinda think that these three or four guys I’m thinking of would be kinda terrible conversationalists, so I don’t know why I care other than just wanting to feel like someone is responding. Maybe it’s a belonging issue. I am not entirely sure of my psychology (or psychosis) there. But it did lead me to this next query.

So what is wrong with me specifically?

Alright, transparently here is what I can give you:

1. For years, and I mean decades, I drank to the point of excess all the time. I don’t really do that anymore, but I still drink here and there. A lot of times in my 30s, I day-drank, so that involved me basically main-lining depressants into my body while others were at work. It led to some off-task text and voice exchanges.
2. I can be too emotional.
3. Because I do write a lot of shit about the problems with work and periodically the downfall of motherhood via Instagram, sometimes guys’ partners (I.e. wives) won’t like me, because I’ve written something along the way that threatens their identity, and that limits my ability to hang with the guy.
4. I can be flaky on some things.
5. I’m too quick to anger.

There’s my “Fab Five” of why friendship with me would be harder. (1), (4), and (5) are in process and doing much better. (2) and (3) are still a ways away.

Also, there are smaller elements (bigger to some) around not being a dad, which limits sets of activities that some propose or just the general scheduling of a random Sunday, etc.

Here is a story that I think illustrates the nice yin-yang of me in a male friendship dynamic. I had this friend from college and, looking back, I think I overvalued the friendship compared to how he thought about me. (This happens.) Weirdly a few weeks ago, I found a 2006 email between us (19 years ago) where he was complaining about me asking him a question about a bachelor party because of how busy he was at work. Writing has been on the wall for a long time.

In early 2022, this guy’s dad had a stroke, and I think I found out not from him, but from another friend. I reached out to my friend, and said, hey, I hope your dad is OK. I’m far away but let me know if I can help or if you want to talk, etc. He never responded. So now bring in me boozing, and a few weeks later, I was sitting at a place in Fort Worth called Bearded Lady, and I texted him again saying hey, hope things are OK, let me know if I can be of any help. That time, he texted back and apparently a year before I had bitched at him about him not remembering my birthday (I don’t recall this, but it seems like something I could do), and he didn’t “want to feel pressure” to keep up with me, so that’s why he wasn’t responding about his dad. OK. I was getting drunk, so I think I said something stupid.

In that exchange, you have:

1. I was too emotional a year prior.
2. I tried to care too much about his dad relative to what our friendship was.
3. I was day drinking while communicating with him.
4. I ended up feeling angry.

Net loss for me. Nice kid, but like I said, the more I’ve thought about that friendship, I am sometimes unclear if he ever liked or respected me at all. And that happens too.

So what do I need to do?

Focus on the above, and find more social dynamics in chess clubs, woodworking classes, etc. And be grateful for where I am and that I’ve been able to cultivate relationships, however long or short, with hundreds of people throughout adulthood. Fair weather friends ain’t necessarily bad either.

What holds you back as a friend, would you say?