TL DR: How do you all know when someone is open to being your friend vs when they are just friendly towards you? From the other side, what makes you decide not to be friends with someone that you are “friendly” with?
There was a recent situation on TikTok that made me think about this question. So on TikTok recently, there was a wedding MUA that basically overstayed her welcome at a wedding she was hired for and proceeded to get too friendly especially for a professional setting. If you search “the key look” on TikTok, I’m sure you can find the whole story. It’s pretty obvious in her case that this was a work situation and you are not friends with your client, no matter how much of a good time you’re having while performing your service. The MUA mentioned that she was so surprised and hurt to be asked to leave(many hours after she had completed the job btw) because the bride and bridesmaids had such a good vibe with her and were joking around about wishing she could stay and needing to have them at future weddings as a hype person, etc. All nice things, but also things that are commonly said as a partial joke, not an actual invitation.
Now that situation is pretty obvious, especially with it being a professional setting as well as it being the first time that she had even interacted with most of those people but I’m able to think of other situations where it might not be as obvious and I’m curious how you all decide. How the MUA acted was definitely unprofessional and a bit unhinged but I do feel for her in a sense because it really seems like something was missing for her and she just clung to that “instant friendship” feeling that she got from the group. I’m wondering if that same part of me is clinging to situations that should be obvious that we’re not friends or if it’s maybe more gray.
I can think of a few situations back in college where a couple of us in class had a really good vibe. We worked together often, chose classes to take together, joked about things maybe in a similar manner as that MUA mentioned, and even did hang out a few times outside of class. I would have considered those people friends or at least potential friends but I think they saw me as more of an acquaintance or just a class friend. It’s the same with others that I was in a Greek organization with. We were all friendly since we were part of the same group, but there are some people that I hung out with often and had great times with, but again it was more of either acquaintances or a friend for the moment situation. All of these people liked me and were happy to be friendly and hang out with me when I was around but they all had their own real friends and weren’t interested in our situation becoming a real friendship.
I may have answered my own question on how you know whether you’re friends or not; you can kind of just tell when you’re not included or thought of often outside of the specific places you see them but you hear about what they did with their real friends. I guess what I’m actually wondering is what was missing from these situations that didn’t allow us to become friends? I know there’s not enough info for you all to decide what happened in my situations, but I’m curious if you all have experienced this and if you were ever told or figured out the reasons for this. It feels like an “always the acquaintance, never the friend” type of situation.