Man wonders whether people are putting less effort into maintaining friendships, or whether people don’t want to be around him: ‘They always say “we need to hang more”/“we need to do this again soon!” and then they never reach out to set something up’

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  via Adrian Swancar

  The man, frustrated about friendships

  _{Subject is a model}

• Are people just generally putting less effort into reaching out/maintaining friendships?

  
  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via Thom Holmes

  The man sending post about games

  _{Image is representative}

• What I think is happening here is maybe this person is looking for friendship in the wrong places. When we are lonely, there’s barely any place to start, so we start with what we know, and what we know might be some random acquaintance who has no interest, not because we’re unbearable, but because we’re incompatible. So naturally, that leads us to frustration and ‘wrong’ ideas about the state of the world and people’s opinions on friendship. I’m not saying his theory might be right; people might have changed their attitudes around friendship thanks to social media, AI, and a long list of other things, but we don’t know that. What I do know is that many people still have a lot of friends these days (or at least a few), so I would only suggest a change in his approach.

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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via foreveralonearchives
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  via Toa Heftiba

  Him if he finds a group of friends

  _{Not actual subjects}

• For me, making friends was always less about directly telling the other person I was looking to make new friends and more about finding hobbies or activities that I found interesting. If you actively pursue those activities, friends follow along. One day you share a joke, the next day you talk about a book, and slowly, one day you invite them somewhere. To me, it’s a matter of patience and letting the friendship grow by itself; sometimes, asking the person to be our friend from the get-go is precisely what prevents it from growing at its own pace.

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