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Hi everyone, I am looking for thoughts on approaching making friends. Any advice or similar experiences welcome! For reference I'm in my mid 20s.
I recently got divorced last year and I found myself pretty much friendless because of my controlling ex so I decided to hop on bumblebff last spring/summer. I've met up with a few women from there but I find that I start to dislike them after knowing them for a while. I'm trying to figure out if these are just my standards when it comes to friends or if I am judgemental and this is something I need to work on.
Me and two other girls made a little group together early on but they're both in relationships which are pretty much their entire personalities. As I've made other friends I've figured out that I don't have anything in common with them and they definitely have pickme tendencies so I've been kind of pulling back from seeing them. One of them has said some things that has rubbed me the wrong way: she seemed to get jealous when I mentioned going to an art museum with another friend one time (related to the conversation we were having), and too often makes comments about getting me a boyfriend when I am not interested in dating at all right now. The other one is in an awful relationship, she's been talking about leaving him for over 6 months and even cheated on him like two months ago but still won't leave.
Another one I met added me to a friend group that she's trying to make, but the whole group seems kind of forced. I have more in common with her but some things she does bugs me. When we've been out she's very unaware of her surroundings and it makes me feel unsafe because she seems to be unaware of danger and too trusting to strangers. She went to a really "sex-positive" college, but it's libfem sex-positive, and I've tried explaining to her how porn and just talking about sex isn't necessarily sex-positive but she still says things about "poly" people and how her friend used to do porn, etc. The other thing is she's always making groupchats on snapchat and non-stop texting everyone on there, and I ended up getting in a little bit of a argument with her and someone else becuase I was complaining about changing your name after getting married and how women are expected to do that. She and someone else claimed that women don't do that anymore and that's just straight up not true and that bugged me they were both so confident about something they were wrong about.
As I'm typing this out I'm realizing I'm just not meshing well with any of these women. I do have one woman I met on there that I like a lot, but I don't see her a lot, along with a friend from high school who is like my best friend but I also don't see her often.
How do a lot of you approach making friends? I do have hobbies that I'm involved in and so I think I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and focusing on myself and see if I end up meshing with anyone while in the process of finding myself.
It's really difficult to connect with people I find. People are ideologically divided, confused about their moral standing and just all over the place in general.
I think you nailed it with your last paragraph though. Do what you love, focus on yourself in meaningful ways and I think you will come across people you genuinely mesh with eventually.
I don't have many women I like to spend time with. I adore my cousin, but she's such a pickme that I find her a bit exhausting. Right now my only real friend is 20 years older than me. She lost almost everything she had in a fire, and she sees that as a blessing because it finally caused her to walk away from her alcoholic husband. She's very wise and understands narcissistic abuse, so we have good conversations. But most women are so happy in their chains that I can't stand to be around them.
It’s not you, these ladies aren’t good friends. I haven’t kept a single friend I made on bumble BFF because they don’t want genuine friendships. You have to meet good people in real life. Good people are rare. Keep looking and see who is consistent, shows interest in you and your life and isn’t overly prioritising men. Female-only spaces are a better bet but realistically it’s the luck of the draw.
I made a post about building female friendships a few days ago with some great comments from the community. There’s also an FDS podcast episode called “How to Level Up Your Pickme Friends” you might be interested in.
I share your sentiment. It seems very hard to come across people who are both morally good AND secure enough to form friendships. So many people today are avoidant or anxiously attached. Can't blame them, we have been alienated from other people and meaningful communities for many years now (some say it's designed to make us dependent on consumerism), and the pandemic didn't help either. It's tough. My advice is to find hobbies and volunteer work where you can, slowly, nourish female friendships. Much luck