Why does it seem like every job I go to, most people are able to make friends? I’ve been at my company for 5 years now and one of the longer standing members of my team. The two people whose cubicles sit behind me always talk and joke around and I feel like if I want to join in the conversation then I have to butt in. It doesn’t help that one of them brought in a friend of his to the job and now his friend and the two of them seem to always have inside jokes and whatnot. At my last job (college IT help desk job) this other group formed pretty quickly and even though I was part of it, I always felt like an outsider. Why do I never meet people with my interests? I guess it doesn’t help that my main interest is music and I work with engineers who play video games all day. I always try to have good conversation but it always seems like I can never make the jump from acquaintance to friend.
I was lonely and matched with a 51 year old women on Tinder who I talked to for a few days (was just interested in FWB with her). She seemed confused that I was single and having trouble looking for friends because in her words “you are smart and have great taste in music, why are you single?”. The next day she unmatched me for some reason.
It just seems like everybody else just makes friends more organically than me and I never run into people I really have enough in common with to naturally become friends. Nobody new ever really asks me to hang out with them even though I feel like I get along great with people I work with and have no problems having good and fun conversations with everybody. I always feel that they think I am too weird and are just being nice with me.
Anybody else experiencing not being able to make the jump from acquaintance to friend?
5 comments
I cannot stress enough how much I relate to this. I’m 20 and in college and I’ve also never been able to become a part of a group even though I tried really hard. A thing about groups is once they’re fully formed getting in is so difficult. I feel what you’re saying and trust me this sucks because there are times when I’d say something and no one would even listen and that feels so bad that I usually just walk away from the conversation because I don’t feel like a part of it. My counsellor asked me to keep trying tho. She said I try to protect myself by not trying too much because shit like this hurts. The only way about it is to keep trying.
I thought I made a friend at work. Then she ended up becoming my boss. Then she got really religious and started going to the same church that the president of the company was going to. I can’t prove it, but I think that they had conversations about me.
I dont know how you are at work, but might as well take it as a bless. Coworkers are not your friends, in my opinion. You wouldn‘t talk smack about your boss with your coworkers. But with your friends you do. Dont mix them.
But yeah, take work fun meetings like christmas partys as a chance to chat with others, even in the kitchen when grabbing a coffee. Rest is networking, and not making friends
>I feel like if I want to join in the conversation then I have to butt in.
Honestly, I’d just butt in. “hey I heard you guys talking about X, here’s my two cents.”
Sometimes it’s just geography – if they’re in the cubicles behind you, they can talk more naturally than you can. So butting in might be necessary to bridge the gap.
I’m also a fan of asking people to lunch. I made most of my work friends this way. Even if they say “we already have plans” they may invite you along or you go “maybe next time” – because you may also just have to accept that they’re not that interested in being friends.
You gotta take the initiative. Don’t wait for them to invite you to hangout you have to invite them. Say you’re planning a get together and invite a few co workers to meet at a bar or something. Also when you’re talking to girls don’t tell them you’re lonely and desperate that’s a turn off. You don’t need to have similar interests to be friends with someone. Joking around and having a good time can happen between two completely different people. My best friend is OBSESSED WITH MUSIC. To the point where he carries around a speaker everywhere he goes and constantly has music playing at all times. If his speaker dies charging it becomes his first priority almost to the point where it’s like he has to take a really bad piss and he can’t focus on anything else until he relieves himself. The point is, I don’t care about music at all and I’m super annoyed because having music playing constantly gets super annoying. We are still really good friends tho.