Friends

Over my life I have had some really good friends. I hope we can all say that at about our lives. Everyone needs to have friends in their lives. I can still remember some of my friends from early childhood, elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and adult life.

For the most part my friends have changed over time. Again, nothing too odd about that I would assume. As I grew up some friends moved away, I (or they) started hanging out in different groups, or things just fell apart.

When I was a little kid, my friends were the neighbor kids. We did everything together: baseball in the circle by our house (or my front yard), playing with our stuffed animals, GI-JOE’s, M.A.S.K. and Thundercats action figures. We had so much fun together. But those relationships for me didn’t last to the end of elementary school. By then I had friends at school that were my age/grade and we hung out at school and didn’t live on my street. I still played with the neighbor kids, but I basically had 2 friend groups – school and home. That worked well until 5^th grade when I started making friends at church as well.

Having church friends definitely started in 5^th / 6^th grade. I became close with a bunch of the guys but I really connected with 2 of them. The three of us became very attached to each other for the next 6+ years; until college came along. None of us went to the same schools so the only time we got to see each other was either at church or if we went to each other’s houses. We regularly hung out together on the weekends. I usually ended up at one of their houses more times than not. One of them had the “Gaming System” which was the Super Nintendo and so quite often we were at his house. We did other things as well like talking, riding bikes, going to the nickel arcade, and going to lots of movies. Those 2 friends meant so much to me during junior high and high school. They were always there for me when I needed them. We rode our bikes everywhere together before we could drive, and once we could drive, we still went everywhere together. Their parents became second parents to me, and I knew they cared for me like a son as well. Once college hit, we went separate ways initially but we still were regularly in the same area on the weekends so we were still hanging out all the time, and during the summer we were again together as much as possible. But during college we did drift apart, or at least I drifted away from them. I was the furthest away for college, and I allowed myself to not stay as connected as I should have. Email wasn’t as big as thing then, and there was no such thing as texting, so the communication was an issue. I should have tried harder to stay connected, but I didn’t and as a result our friendship faded some. Once college was over we were in the same area again, and we were all best men/groomsmen at each other’s weddings. We still talk on occasion to this day, but we no longer have the same deep friendship as we once were. We all went our own ways, we have all made new close friends, except for me. I haven’t made new church friends like that recently. I had some when I was first married, but as we all had kids we grew apart, and don’t really talk to them at all anymore.

School friends were important to me in high school. I am sure this is true for many people. I had those friends that I hung out with at school and on the weekends. These were the people I was in class with or had common other friends with. The typical weekend hang out was at someone’s house with 15-25 people there or at my church playing volleyball. I didn’t always know everyone there, but we all got along for the most part. It was a good group of people. It is true that many of them decided later in high school that drinking and stuff was also a good idea, but they never pushed it on me. They knew I wasn’t a drinker and so they would do it on the weekends I wasn’t at the party, or they would do it away from me so I wouldn’t feel that pressure. I appreciated that, to me it showed respect for my opinions and feelings. I may not have agreed with their choices, but we were still able to be friends and enjoy each other’s company. I still “chat” with some of these people online on occasion, but again we all went different directions and to different locations, so we aren’t really friends anymore.

College was very similar to high school for me. I made some friends. We hung out or lived together during college but once college was over, we drifted apart. I do still talk with one former roommate a few times a year, and I see another couple posting on Facebook occasionally but other than that I don’t hang out with them anymore. Except for my wife that I met in college, became friends with and eventually married. That was a great friendship that has continued to this day.

And now we have me as an adult, and I don’t really have that many friends. I have people that I see and can say “Hi” to and have conversations with, but they won’t be there for me if I need them. Not like my friends I had when I was younger. I can call some and ask for help and if they are available, they will try and help, and I would do the same from them, but we don’t really know each other beyond that.

So why is that? I think this is because I am not a very good friend. I don’t seek people out. I don’t engage in conversations with people anymore. I tend to be standoffish. I like talking with people, but I wouldn’t say that I spend time getting to know them outside the surface level. I also don’t open up to people all that much anymore (which I find a little funny since I am writing this for people to read and that is opening up). This is something that is very important when making friends. One needs to be able to open up to truly make friends, and I am bad at this. It takes me a long time to feel comfortable opening up to people. I wasn’t like this when I was younger, but I also found that I sometimes opened up too much too earlier in a friendship and then when that friendship didn’t go anywhere, I was left thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have opened up that much to them. As a result, I have started to hold myself back. I take time to get to know people before really making friends. And this is all on me. I am the one that doesn’t want to open up, and as a result I don’t make friends easily. I am sure there are people over the last 10 years that I could have become close friends with, people that I would go and hang out with and play games, talk, have a drink, etc., but it never got there. There have been a few over that time that came close, but then COVID happened and that changed the dynamic of hanging out and those relationships were lost. Again, I know that is partially my fault. I could have reached out, but I chose not to (of course they didn’t reach out either). [There is one person that continues to reach out a few times a year and we have tried to hang out when our schedules allow so maybe he is a good friend, but I don’t reciprocate it so…]

So where does this leave me? I don’t have any truly close friends outside of my wife. I love her deeply, but I really should have some male friends in my life. Guys I can hang out with regularly and “shot the breeze” with, or just call up to say hi. Guys that if I need to talk about something that I can call and have those discussions with. I need to work on it. I need to “man up” and find some male friends. That is a goal I need to have. Let’s see where things go.