Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

All relationships begin with a “Hello!”  Ok, maybe not those exact words, but they begin with that initial introduction to each other.  And when I say “relationships”, I mean more than just the romantic variety. ALL relationships: friendships, familial, romantic, acquaintance, professional … even enemy relationships.

The thing we need to remember is that all of those types of relationships are “built”.  They don’t happen overnight.  Some people just seem to click and those relationships grow strong more quickly than other relationships.  And those quickly growing relationships could be the ones that last a lifetime or they could be the ones that burn so bright that they burn out quickly too. But the thing is, all relationships still need to be built, and it takes time to actually get to know another person.  As people get to know more about each other is when they learn if they are compatible or not. 

I have heard that the thing that makes you smile about your significant other when you first start dating could become the thing that you hate the most about them later on.  That what was once cute and quirky ends up being so annoying that you want to just rip off that person’s face! (What?  Too intense? Ok, how about … it becomes the thing that makes you want to run away … FAST)

That cute laugh with the snort ends up making you think you’re living with a member of the swine persuasion.  The way they question the waiter about every item on the menu may seem like they are really in touch with what they put into their bodies in the beginning of a relationship.  But later on, you just want to scream at them to “F*ckin’ order something already!!!”  That guy who seems so dark and mysterious when you first meet him ends up just being that secretive, closed-off person that never really lets anyone truly know him.  Or that person who talks to the television show or the movie as if the actors can hear them … “Don’t open that door!!  See, I told you not to open that door!” … ok, that person is just super annoying right from the start!!

So, how long does it take to get to know someone?  I don’t think there is any specific timeline for that.  As a matter of fact, how many times has there been a news article about someone who does something really horrible, and the people closest to him or her will say “He really didn’t seem like the type to do this.” or “I never knew she was a homicidal maniac, who stored dead bodies in the basement.”  (ok, maybe we don’t hear that last one very often.  Thankfully!!)

But the point is still valid.  It takes time to get to know someone. And I don’t think we every truly get to know another individual completely. Heck, we don’t even know ourselves completely.  But, with time, we do get to know others better.

The beginning starts with the basics.  What do you do for work?  Where do you live?  Where did you grow up?  What do you do for fun?  (For those of you who are on the dating sites, these are the beginning questions you can ask.  Please don’t start off with questions about sex or how many kids someone wants to have!  At least wait until the 2^nd date for those kinds of questions.)

I spoke with someone at a party recently.  He was upset because he felt left out of conversations.  I tried to explain to him that it takes time to be “one of the gang”.  That the others there had known each other for a really long time, and had built up their friendships.  How at first we are all just circling any group of friends.  But if we are patient and understand that they need to get to know us and we need to get to know them, eventually we may be inside that circle.  Or, who knows, maybe we will learn that we don’t want to be part of that circle.  Unfortunately, my “words of wisdom” didn’t seem to help this individual, and he ended up leaving the party very upset.

So, after the basics of getting to know each other are out of the way, hopefully the conversations just flow naturally. You each will get to know more about the other, and more about yourself as well.  And if you spend enough time together, you will get to know whether that person will be more than just an acquaintance. The getting to know each other will determine what type of relationship you two will have. That is, until you find out about the bodies buried in the basement!

(for those who are now concerned about me … yes, I have a storage locker in the basement of my apartment building.  But I swear, I only have luggage and the Christmas tree and ornaments stored there!)

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old

I’m not sure if you know that song.  “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”  I’m also not sure if there’s more to it than that one verse, because that’s all I ever knew.  But it’s about old friends being the gold standard, but that you should also make new friends, because they’re pretty darn good too!

When we were kids, making friends was easy.  Well, somewhat easy.  Ok, maybe not that easy.  But at least the opportunities were more plentiful.  We had school, after-school activities, clubs, summer camps, and so on.  We had natural social activities that were meant for making friends.  So, while it can be scary to approach new people and make new friends, at least we had places that would allow us to do that.

As we get older, it gets more difficult to meet new people.  There aren’t as many naturally occurring “friend making” places for us.  Work, yeah, but sometimes it’s best to keep work and social life separate. And the ability to approach someone and simply say “Hi, my name is  ….” becomes more nerve-wracking.

After high school, and maybe even after college, we hopefully had our group of core friends to hang out with. So together, we would go out to clubs, and try to meet more people.  But did we really meet and make many lasting friendships out in clubs?  Probably not.  Or at least, not many.

And then, a lot of people that we were friends with when younger may have met their “significant others” in college or grad school or shortly thereafter.  So they went on to a different social arena.  The “couples” arena.  They may have hung out with us, their single friends, from time to time. But being a “couple” meant that the single friend was the “third wheel” and it became easier to hang out with other couples.  Then their kids came along and now the couples were “families” and they were spending most of their time juggling their kids’ social schedules.  So while they are still friends of our, they are more likely not the people we’ll spend most of our time with, if we’re still single.

So those of us who are still single find ourselves in a smaller universe.  At least it is smaller if we stuck just to our age bracket.  If we pushed the slider a bit in either direction, we could hang out with more people. That is, until they may enter the “couples” or “families” arenas.

But where do we go to meet others?  I am not really looking to go out clubbing.  It’s not that I don’t like to dance, but it hasn’t really changed from when I was younger and would go out clubbing. I wasn’t making new friends. If anything, I may meet some guy and maybe we’d exchange numbers and maybe we’d go out.  But I didn’t really make “friends” by going clubbing.

For me, thankfully, I found Meetup.com.  I have met so many people through that site who are new friends.  Good friends.  “Silver-on-the-way-to-becoming-gold” friends. People I love to spend time with!  These are friends of all nationalities, races, ages, religions.  What do we have in common (other than being members of Meetup)?  Well, we all probably want to make new friends.  Yes, we’re definitely keeping the old friends.  But we find new friends to spend time with, to experience new things with. 

I don’t think I’ll ever stop making new friends.  And my cache of “gold” friends keeps getting bigger!  So I’m getting “rich” with both silver and gold …. friends, that is.  Wouldn’t that be nice if it were also just plain old silver and gold?  But if I had a choice, I’d take the friends over the metals!  They are much more valuable!!