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Maintaining friendships

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Maintaining friendships Empty Maintaining friendships

Post by reboot Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:58 pm

Something BaseBuzzed mentioned in the "Rants" thread about sustaining friendships over time got me thinking. Lately I have been struggling to be a good friend to my geographically dispursed and growing friend network. It is getting to the point that I dread liking people and developing stronger relationships with new people because I do not know how I can fit any more people into my life. It is to the point that I have good friends that I only contact once or twice a year and only see maybe once every few years. Even local friends it can take 3-4 months for us to find dates that work for both of us

So how do other people manage close and long distance friend networks, particularly large ones?

Oh yeah, added complication, I do not use Facebook or Twitter for a variety of personal and professional reasons.
reboot
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Post by azazel Wed Oct 22, 2014 9:27 am

I'm starting to reach that point. I'm at the moment unemployed, which means I'm able to sustain my friendship network well, but I really can't fit more appointments in my agenda without getting a social burnout, so for new friends old friends would need to go Sad. Already I'm more often invited than the invitee, which makes me feel like I'm freeloading on friendshups.

It doesn't help I pathologically hoard friendships. I'm not sure why, I'm completely fine on my own. I think I just like it when people like me.

Do you use whatsapp? It's great for group talks, makes meeting up with large groups of people rather easy.

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Post by kleenestar Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:01 am

I've set up a biweekly Google hangout and invited a bunch of my closest friends. We all bring our creative projects and drink tea and chat and do some light work and point the camera at our pets. Different people show up each time, but it's a really wonderful low-impact way to have casual contact with people I love and miss.

I think we're going to take a little break while we have a newborn, but I'm actually pretty excited to come back to these hangouts and sometimes point the camera at the baby as well as at the cats. Smile

ETA: Part of what makes this work is that there's no logistical overhead. The time is the same every two weeks; it automatically updates to people's calendars; someone just has to be there to start the hangout going. That way we can focus on actually spending time together!
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Post by reboot Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:37 pm

azazel wrote:I'm starting to reach that point. I'm at the moment unemployed, which means I'm able to sustain my friendship network well, but I really can't fit more appointments in my agenda without getting a social burnout, so for new friends old friends would need to go Sad. Already I'm more often invited than the invitee, which makes me feel like I'm freeloading on friendshups.

It doesn't help I pathologically hoard friendships. I'm not sure why, I'm completely fine on my own. I think I just like it when people like me.

Do you use whatsapp? It's great for group talks, makes meeting up with large groups of people rather easy.

You sound like me so imagine adding in a job that is 10-12 hours a day, volunteer commitments, yoga/fitness, PTSD therapy and moving around a lot so you have friend networks flipping everywhere.

What's App sounds good, but big, local hangouts are not hard to organize. My friend network here is pretty much restricted to folks who all know each other from our work, so someone is always organizing something. What I struggle with is trying to schedule in 1:1 or small group activities with people who have schedules as packed as mine :/

kleenestar wrote:I've set up a biweekly Google hangout and invited a bunch of my closest friends. We all bring our creative projects and drink tea and chat and do some light work and point the camera at our pets. Different people show up each time, but it's a really wonderful low-impact way to have casual contact with people I love and miss.

I think we're going to take a little break while we have a newborn, but I'm actually pretty excited to come back to these hangouts and sometimes point the camera at the baby as well as at the cats. Smile

ETA: Part of what makes this work is that there's no logistical overhead. The time is the same every two weeks; it automatically updates to people's calendars; someone just has to be there to start the hangout going. That way we can focus on actually spending time together!

Hum. This might work, except I would probably have to schedule about 7 different ones due to time zones, cultural differences/antagonism (e.g. Kosovar and Serb, Sunni and Shia, Lendu and Hema), etc. My high school, undergrad, graduate, and US work friends might be able to mix a bit but I think they might have to be sorted into at least 3 groups. It does not help that I have almost no intergroup crossover.

My other problem trying to implement this idea (which I think is great) is my schedule is so freaking unpredictable. I do not know if I can auto schedule anything and not end up canceling and having to reschedule a bunch or have it so that it only happens 2-3 times a year for each group. Oh shoot, and then there is the tech access issues. Many of my friends only have dumb phones and limited internet access....

I like this idea though and might be able to swing it for at least a few friend networks.
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