How have you met friends?  At work, school, the supermarket, the train, as
housemates or neighbors?  What sorts of things do you do with friends?  Play,
talk, work, trade childcare?  Which of you took the first step to get together
again away from where you met?  Do you tend to lose track of friends or keep
the same friends for a long time?  Do you have lots of individual friends or
a group that all knows each other?  What do you depend on your friends for?

123 responses total.

I am especially hoping to hear from grexers not living in the USA, who may
be more likely to continue living in the same place they grew up and have
lifelong friends inherited from their parents.

No.  I've never met any friends.  

I have no friends.

I met most of my current friends through work and the SCA.

Earlier in life I met my friends in school, sometimes by also being 
friends with their siblings.  These days, I have a lot of friends from 
RoS, but not nearly as close as some of my school friends.  I tend to 
lose track of friends . . . which is annoying in one particular case.  
I lose track mostly because my friends in school were mostly that, we 
spent most of our time together in school and very rarely did we hang 
out.  Also I'm not as good with correspondence as I used to be.

I have no really close friends, primarily because we have a quite close
family, and don't socialize much. My wife has formed very close friendships
with a few colleagues, though even those are not exercized often because
they also have their own families and circle of acquaintances. I've lost
contact with my closest friends from the past. In fact, a few of my
very closest friends from the past, who might have remained friends,
died too young, quite a while ago. 

        Everywhere.  I have friends from my high school and college days,
friends that I ran into through people I'd dated, people I'd dated, people
I'd started talking to in coffeeshops, people I've just run into on the street
and seemed somehow interesting.

Are they acquaintances rather than friends? 

Let's have a definition of "friend". Someone with whom just you and
he/she do something social six or more times a year, but without
any sexual undertones?

i disagree with that definition. but i wouldn't put all my friends into the
same 'friend category'. and i certqinly feel there are sexual undertones with
any heterosexual male friend or lesbian friend [platonic] i have.

one of my closest friends lives in malaysia. we used to be roomates. he's
buddhist and very very quirky. great guy, but we only talk a few times a year.
i'd still say he's a close friend.

i'd classify 'closeness' of a friend determined by mutual understanding of
each other and ease of conversation and comfort.

my other 'close friends' came from college (1 student, 2 former professors),
a linux server (the man i married), 1 from playing pool (and his girlfriend),
and i'd throw my dad in there too. everyone else i know are friends, but the
level of trust and understanding is lower at varying degrees.

I used to have a lot of friends until I learned about Unix. :)

I rarely had much in the way of friends until a fortunate combination of
curcumstances got me into science-fiction fandom.  Now I have friends
scattered about the planet in the SF community as well as the techno-geek
community which I linked to via SF fandom.  I have 3 friends, not very
close, who do not fit into either of these two categories.

Grex has been an excellent source, especially as Julie and I took the 
opportunity to meet some of the users.

Other than that, it's been a smattering of places-- church, school, 
gaming, work, etc.  Wherever I hang out, pretty much.

I seem to be wired to need one and only one close friend.  If my friend 
moves away, I find another one pretty quickly, but if I've got a friend 
then I'm not strongly motivated to make new ones.  I tend to pick up 
some second hand friends (friends of my friend) and that's fine.  But 
my social needs are pretty minimal.

(Another try...) People seem to be defining friends very differently. I
have a zillion acquaintances from involvement in many local and national
non-profits, but I don't define acquaintances as friends unless I am
in frequent, personal, touch with individuals with whom I share private
information and engage in one-on-one social activities. Maybe we need
here a scale of friends, say from 1 to 10, where 1 is an acquaintance,
and 10 is a bosom buddy with whom you share your most private thoughts
(but non-sexual). Add an "s" if sexual. 

I have several close friends I dont see very often. These are the 
people I know I can count on though. The ones I know I can talk to if I 
need to talk to someone. But, like Jan, I generally find that I need 
only one friend which isnt always so great because I am always afraid 
that they will move away or something. I guess I am not quite as 
confident that I will find another one quickly. 

One thing that I have noticed and I think is kind of odd is that I have 
no contact with any of my friends that I had before I moved to Ann 
Arbor just before senior year in highschool. I couldnt even contact 
them if I tried. I dont know where they are. A few years one of them 
called my parents house while they were out of town and left a message 
that his band was playing at the Blind Pig so I should come see him. I 
didnt get the message until several days later and of course, he didnt 
leave a message. grr. 

Actually, I have one friend from my childhood I know how to contact and 
once every few years, I call her up. She lives in Oakland, CA though so 
obviously I wouldnt be able to see her much. Although one of my best 
friends who I see several times a year and talk to on the phone all the 
time lives in Sebastipol CA so I guess I cant really use the distance 
as an excuse. Anyhow, Anna (my friend in Oakland) and I dont really 
have much in common anymore and talking about old times only goes so 
far although it does have its place. It is kind of weird though because 
I really care a lot about her. I have a picture of her in my living 
room but, of course, not a picture of her as an adult but a picture of 
her and me (and a couple of other friends) together when we were around 
8 years old. 

I am not in touch with any friends from high school but I still write
regularly to the mother and sister-in-law of a high school friend.
I have three friends who I met during a summer school in 1973 and we all still
keep in touch by email, and one has visited here and the other three visit
each other (they are in Europe).  Some day a reunion?  One was a housemate
at the summer school, one took pity on me because I obviously was not
understanding a word of Slovene, and the other spoke good English and also
no Slovene (Dutch).  I am still in touch with four friends from the late
sixties (college) who I may see once in ten years, or less.  At the other
extreme are some recent email pals, one of whom wonders why I had my messages
turned off - he wanted to talk some more about friendship in different
countries.

Jan's description sounded about right for me too, up until the part about not
needing other friends if you've got one good one.  For me, the impulse to meet
new people dries up if I've got a good friend or two, but I still get lonely
unless I know a good deal more people than that.  I usually end up with fewer
friends than I really want or need because of it.

I'm with you, Rane.  Most of the people I know fall into the category of
"acquaintance."  And I'm sometimes surprised by the number of them.

slynne reminds me that I exchanged e-mail with one of my highschool
classmates, while trying to arrange to attend one of our class reunions.  So
there is _some_ contact possible that far back.  It's just very rare for me.

I *like* meeting new people.  I tend to be less good about following up with
them, whether I want to or not.  I like meeting new people because it makes
me feel like I get new perspectives on life every time I talk to someone about
stuff and just listen to them.

I've been burned too many times in the "one close friend" model.  Inevitably,
we end up in a fight and then I'm sitting around with no one left who
understands.  So now I have several moderately close friends, with none of
the relationships being as close as the former "one close friend", but more
of a compilation that satisfies the need of the one.

So now I've got my math friends that I talk math stuff with, my church
friends, my dorm friends, the people I've met at Hillel, and the traditional
"friends from high school" who I try to talk with now and then to see what's
new, etc, and probably people who don't fit into any group.

(I don't call them "aquantainces" unless I don't like them/think they don't
like me but am too polite or something to say it.)

If I don't like them, I'm not inclined to refer to them at all.

I had a couple really close friends back in elementary/junior/high school,
but I've mostly drifted away from them (or vice-versa).  These days I tend
to have many more but not-so-close friends.

This response has been erased.

My impression is that women have more friends, of say level 7+, with
whom they discuss their personal lives, than do men. What do you
think?

I can usually socialize anywhere I am, but I only claim a few people 
into my circle of "friends".  These are generally people I feel I can 
trust and talk with, who care as much about me as I do for them.  It's 
harder finding people like that now and I find myself more an more 
often just tagging along with Jon to where ever it is he is going or 
else staying home and doing something quiet, like read a book.  I know 
I should go out and make more friends.  I love to play role-playing 
games, but I don't currently know anyone with a group that doesn't 
smoke.  Also, with a new baby on the way, I think I may tend to 
sacrifice my own social well-being in favor of taking care of my 
child.  I use to be such a social animal, but lately, I've just fallen 
off.  It may be something I've picked up from my folks, who are both 
introverts and don't really get out much.  Who knows?

Re #23: I think that can't be right.  I think closeness shows up in different
ways in stereotypical male friendships than in stereotypical female ones. 

There have been times when I rarely talked about my personal life to some of
my closest friends (ironically, all of them were women, but the point
remains...), because we knew each other well enough to go on intuition and
subtext.  There have been times when I've poured out my heart to perfect
strangers precisely because they didn't know me very well -- I _had_ to say
all that stuff or else I wouldn't be understood at all.  I think it's totally
possible to have superficial "feminine" friendships in which all the talk
about emotions doesn't lead to any real trust or understanding, and it's
possible to have deep "masculine" friendships in which all the talk about --
I dunno, carburators or something -- does.

Of course, I could just be objecting to the stereotype in #23 because I don't
tend to enjoy "masculine" friendships very much.  I suppose the fact that I
get along much better with women on average does say something.

I'm another who tends to have one close friend, or none at all.  It's 
really hurt me recently, since I have a divorce in progress, and of 
course my wife was the one person I was close to.  I'm introverted 
enough that finding a replacement close friend is not going to be easy. 

It's been my tendency to go through life meeting people, getting along 
with them fine for a while, but letting them drop out of my life from 
lack of contact.

My husband is my best friend, too, John.  I know for a fact I would be 
functionally dead if he turned around and told me he wanted a 
divorce.  He has said he felt similarly, so, rather than discuss 
divorce whenever we have a fight, we are more inclined to try to work 
it out.

I have trouble keeping up with more than five or six close friends at a time.
I've been pleasantly surprised, however, at meeting up with old friends that
I haven't seen in a year or more and finding that we still connect really
well.  None of us have time to do much more than email a couple times a year
and visit much more occasionally than that, and we're happier not trying to
follow the Miss Manners model--we talk when we have time, and it's great to
see each other when we can.  I still count them as good friends, though--
how can you not when I can call Anu in LA and bawl for an hour about how
screwed up my life is, when I haven't talked toher in six months?

Yeah, the people I consider my best friends are the people who I dont 
need to see all the time in order to maintain the friendship. I can 
think of over 15 people who I know I can call if something bad happens 
and they will listen and be there for me. I am not in constant touch 
with all of them because of various things. Some have moved out of 
state, a couple of them have had kids and are busy with their families, 
three of them are in grad school and also working full time so they 
dont have a whole lot of time for socializing, etc, etc. 

These are also the people I can invite over to my house and we can just 
start talking about stuff in the really comfortable easy way that old 
friends have. *shrug* In fact, sometimes the conversation is easier 
because we havent seen each other in a while. we have more stories. 

I'll agree that friendships made strong and solid don't really dry 
up.  It's that way with a very close friend of mine.

I like being with people, but I don't usually have very close friends. 
Instead, the continuum from "good friend" to "acquaintance" is dotted so
densely with specific cases that I have a hard time saying where the
boundary is. 

There was a fascinating article in Slate last October -- see it at
http://slate.msn.com/?id=117035 -- which is relevant here.  The author was
surprised that he didn't know anyone who died on September 11, and
wondered about the odds.  Among other things, he found that, according to
various studies, the average American has a "personal social network" of
290 people he or she "knows".  The sidebar says:

    Our working definition of 'A knows B' means that A knows B by sight
    or name; that A can contact B in person by telephone or by mail; and
    that A has had contact with B in the past two years.

I'm pretty sure that my "personal social network" by that definition is
larger than that, but I haven't counted it.  I got to know most of them
through politics, folk music and dancing, Grex and M-Net, the synagogue
and the Jewish Community Center, the science fiction community aka
Stilyagi and conventions, the local history and historic preservation
community, my workplace, and my web site.  Most of my interaction with
people outside immediate family is in group settings, e.g., meetings,
parties, concerts, fundraisers, group dinners, etc.

"You hate people!"
'But I love gatherings.  Isn't that ironic?'
(_Clerks_)

I'm not sure I could put my acquaintances and pretty good friends on a 
linear scale.  Each friendship is different.  You share different 
things in different ways.

Re 33.  Admittedly an oversimplification.  You'd need an n-dimensional
space to even approach the complexity of real life.

Still, that doesn't mean it's invalid to say that I know A better than B,
or that A knows me better than B does, or that I spend more time with A
than with B.  Those kinds of inequalities do tend to run in the same
direction, so that even if I have a mad crush on B, it is accurate to say
that A is a closer friend than B.

In one of the Tolkein books, Bilbo Baggins observes that people are often
insulted when reduced to mathematical constructs, for example, the guests
at his birthday party are taken aback when he mentions that there are one
gross (144) of them.  But math is just a language that some of us speak or
think in as part of groping to understand the world around us.

i am NOT ((1-m^2)(x^2+y^2)+2m^2cx+a^2-m^2c^2)^2=4a^2(x^2+y^2)!!!!

Still, what does that look like? 

I have no friends at all.  In fact, when I leave my apartment I have to
put a paper bag over my head so no one will know it's me.  Then I go
meet other people with paper bags over their heads and we tell each
other fake names and drink coffee and pretend we don't know each other.

Is that why [Dwore that bag when you stayed with me?  I was wondering . . .

 re #35 .. why 4 factorial commands      
  
 or does that make a better "NOT" mess, like bigger knots.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss