Tag: relationships

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Friendship means showing up

I have SO MANY FEELINGS about this.

https://rojospinks.substack.com/p/the-friendship-problem

Thought 1

You know, I have better luck with friendships where it’s maintained via a group chat. That way, even if I am busy, other people still answer each other, and I can jump in to the conversation when I have the spoons.

Thought 2

And so people have easily 1000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat.

I HAVE BOTH AND IT’S MAGICAL.

Thought 3

“place-based friendships” – this sounds like Third Places but also, yeah, friendship is what happens when you Show Up.

Thought 4

People outside the constraints of modern western capitalism


Call a spade a spade. This is the knowledge economy. This (moving away from your support system) is how the knowledge economy WORKS. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem; it’s a world where you move to where the jobs are, rather than working whatever job and staying in your home town forever.

But, with remote work…maybe it doesn’t need to? IDK.

But the alternative is we all work at the one textile mill in town. Either you move to where the opportunities are, or you stick to the opportunities available in the town where you were born.

Would I still be happy, if I were a schoolteacher and attended the local Methodist Church every Sunday? Quite possibly. Or I could be clawing down the yellow wallpaper.

Thought 5

The best thing you can do to prepare yourself for climate change is live in an area with a high degree of social trust.


YES THIS OMG.

This is what I tell people who are like “I need to move to get away from climate change” – babe, you already live in the Piedmont, and the best prep is knowing and trusting your neighbors.

Thought 6

And this comment on the original post is what I am talking about when I get tetchy about Stardew Valley working out in real life:

Living now in a small farming town in New England after being a global nomad all my life, I realize that lots of Americans have had that stable interconnectedness of community that I never experienced in cities and suburbs. Town government, church, volunteer Fire & Rescue, annual festivals etc all require hours of interaction with fellow townsfolk. A barn fire or loose animal rallies neighbors’ help and covered dishes are brought to the sick or grieving. Problem is, not many people under 70 are carrying on any of this. The younger generations have moved out or do not participate. It took a few years but now I know that behind the Norman Rockwell scenes, a lot of these folks despise each other. They smooth things over and show up to the raffle or the funeral anyway because of a sense of duty and fear of social censure, sentiments lost in more individualistic, anonymous cities and suburbs. I admit to plunging in as a newcomer only to find that the busybodies who run everything want my labor, but have their own friend and family circles and are not open to outsiders for close friendships. They bonded long ago over babies and can’t understand my life. Conformity seems to be the entry fee for most communities, always a challenge for free thinkers. No tidy lesson I’m afraid, just another perspective on the struggle for connection in our atomized times. Thanks for your thought provoking piece!

“Conformity seems to be the entry fee for most communities.” Yws. Consider the etymological roots of those words: both “conformity” and “community” carry an original meaning/connotation of “togetherness.”

It’s important to allow for non-conformity in general; being able to express yourself is an important part of self-actualization. But bear in mind that that’s just the tip of Maslow’s pyramid; if you don’t have the base layers, nothing else will matter because you’ll be dead. This isn’t intended to excuse communities that exile people over stupid stuff; but I think it does, at least, explain the emphasis on conformity for a lot of communities.

Anyway. Go read the other post. It’s good.

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Disentanglement

A few years back, I read this essay about “The Most Skipped Step” (when opening up a monogamous relationship).

The post itself is specifically about the context of Non-Monogamy or Polyamory. However, I find it useful even for monogamous contexts, because it’s very important for the members of a couple to retain their autonomy and identity as individuals, even when they are exclusively having sex and romantic relationships with each other and no one else.

Our society prioritizes and elevates sexual and romantic relationships above all else; but our platonic connections with our friends are also important, and can be just as (or more) important than our romantic/sexual ones. If you fall ill, your spouse is likely to be your primary caretaker; but caregiving is hard work, and should never fall on just one person. This is where The Village comes in. And having strong loving friendships is so important for that kind of resilience and endurance.

So, without further ado: the essay!

https://medium.com/@PolyamorySchool/the-most-skipped-step-when-opening-a-relationship-f1f67abbbd49

I have been informed that the author of this essay is Problematic. I do not know the details; I’m just noting this as a reminder that we should read everything with a critical eye and really try to analyze it, not absorb it uncritically. (I expect you all to read my posts critically as well.)

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On groups and dyads

A variety of painful circumstances in my life recently have crystallized out a thought, for me: as much as we want a Group to be a cohesive unit, the group is only as strong as the strength of its various dyadic friendships.

When a group that had been constructed around one central Hub Person implodes, the continuance of the group is dependent on whether any of the Spoke People had actually formed individual (“dyadic”) friendships with each other. Without those interconnected friendships, the group would wither away without its Hub. (And maybe that’s why some Hubs feel threatened when they’re no longer the gatekeepers of access to the other friends?)

And when a large enough group (40 or so people) forms, not everyone will be as close to everyone else in that group; so it’s up to the individuals to build (or not build) their friendships with one another. If one person is having a crisis and reaches out, I am finding that sometimes, a larger group is *less* likely to respond. It’s the small six person chats that get things done for each other; or it’s an existing dyadic friendship within the larger circle that recognizes the need and answers it.

Is this the Bystander Effect in action? Are the larger groups prone to feeling too helpless to help? Someone else will do it?

Is this an effect of geography? Some of my Discords are pretty geographically dispersed, and I think that makes it harder (though not impossible) to build those sturdier connections.

It can also be hard to know what/how someone needs help. With closer individual bonds, there’s more of a chance that the person helping will actually help, versus accidentally making things worse. (I know that’s a thing for me as well: I’ve made things worse so often.)

But I just had an absolutely terrible week, and all kinds of people came to my rescue; and I am so grateful. And I witnessed someone else leave a group because they weren’t getting the support they needed, and my heart aches for them; but we were never directly close with each other, either, so I felt too distant (geographically and emotionally) to help. So it goes.

But anyway, my point in all this rambling is: If you are in a large friend group, make sure you aren’t neglecting the individual connections with individual people. In the end, “The Group” is a legal fiction. The people that help you move are the real individual humans that you can bond with, or not, as life takes you.

But try to take care of each other. Yes, The Village is built on unpaid labor. It’s transactional even though it’s not tracked, or shouldn’t be tracked, because Village Support is about having help with specific concrete actions that need doing.

I don’t know. I’m rambling and tired. But just. Look for the helpers; and be the helpers, when you can.

Update, September 2026: I realized that this is a form of Geek Social Fallacy #5.

Five Geek Social Fallacies

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Everybody wants a village, but nobody wants to put in the work

I think this is going to be a macro post, where I come back and add things as they occur to me.

This Slate column

My friend recently linked me to this, and man I got nothing. Just read it.

https://slate.com/life/2024/11/parenting-advice-friends-loneliness-village.html

These comics

I just got a Bluesky account and already the algorithm knows me.

https://bsky.app/profile/pervis.bsky.social/post/3lbqarh4u7k2p

https://bsky.app/profile/spookyforcefrancis.bsky.social/post/3lbshvyhf422b

Some thoughts

If you want people to show up for you, you have to show up for them. Modulo disability, being physically present really really matters. I can’t help my friend move but I helped her pack and purge and can store some of her stuff. I’ve babysat for friends without pay, including overnights, because that’s what friends do when they’re able. And when I was very sick last year, my people showed up for me.

I tolerate a lot of things in my life. I recognize that we can’t always build a village out of picture perfect people that we’ve cultivated like Sims, just like that columnist says. I’ve always been afraid to get close to my neighbors, because what if they’re awful? I’m stuck with them. But: maybe if we get close, they won’t be awful. Or maybe they were never awful to begin with.

For now: I’m just grateful for the friends I do have. Thank you for being with me.

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Resource: Why Does He Do That?

I just wanted to bookmark this resource for the next time it comes up in my social circle:

https://ia600108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf

The book “Why Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft is a classic resource for people in dysfunctional relationships to analyze the behaviors they are seeing. It may not apply to every relationship, but it’s something worth checking on when things seem “off.”

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Long walk in, long walk out

Today on the Internet, I saw a commenter talk about how her relationship with her partner was a “long walk in, long walk out” one: i.e. that they moved slowly in building it up, and if they ever decided to break up, they committed to talking about it first and working on any problems they had.

I really like that attitude/philosophy towards relationships.

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Stop mumbling!

Whewww.

When I first started noticing that everyone around me was mumbling, I realized that if I thought everyone was mumbling, it meant that I was the problem.

I’m so grateful that I did not turn into the guy from this advice column. Full link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/09/24/asking-eric-husband-hearing-loss/

Full link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/09/24/asking-eric-husband-hearing-loss/

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3N4orKx

PSA, folks: if someone close to you says you should get tested for a thing, or that something about your health is affecting their life? Please believe them.

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The better part of valor

Something I’ve had to learn over the years of being on the Internet is that sometimes I am wrong, and need to take a seat and be introspective instead of explaining why I think the way I do.

This was surprisingly difficult to do. I think part of it is the desire to not have people dislike me; but both learning that that’s not something I can control, and starting to care less if they DO like me, makes me better at figuring out what I did wrong and being a better person in the future, which (counter intuitively?) makes me more likeable as a person.

We all fuck up on occasion. (Or, even, frequently.)

We all have the ability to say “Sorry, will do” when a mod tells us to step off or take a break.

I like to joke that I learned How To People by reading a book. But that’s not so far from the truth. Thinking about things and analyzing social situations is how I managed to get social skills in the first place.