Loneliness

Your post reminds me: A co-worker asked me a while back to blog on online vs. offline friendships. I really need to work on that.

Anyway: I'm wondering less about the technology than I am other factors, like: do we move around more -- especially relatively far from the networks we grew up with -- than we did a few generations ago? And were these findings broken down regionally at all? That would be interesting to find out, because having lived in HI, CA, VA, and MA, I can tell you that some areas of the country are friendlier than others, and not just friendlier in the sense of residents of those places being open to cultivating new friendships, but also in the way geography, culture, etc., facilitates or hinders building new friendships.

For instance, When i lived in a very small town in Hawaii, I found that friendships were easy to form with just about anyone -- it's a culture that's very hospitable and I think that allows a budding friendship to be nurtured more easily. Boston, on the other hand, has been an uphill battle in terms of forming a healthy number of friendships -- in New England, I've found that locals are more likely to be standoffish with people for a long, long time before they decide to 'let you into their circle.' And the fact that so many people work in the city but commute via public transportation from lots of different outlying cities makes it, I think, somewhat difficult to be spontaneous about spending time with friends, and can sometimes even render it 'more trouble than it's worth' for some folks.

I think it's telling that, here in Boston, the vast majority of my friends are fellow non-New Englanders, and that the bulk of the remainder are co-workers or local bloggers I've met at various blogging events around here. And like Jennifer, above, I think churches could do a whoooole lot better in this regard -- aside from the local Cursillo group, I don't get the impression that people around here form many friendships at church - or at least not at the 2 Catholic parishes where I've worshipped since 2001.

I've found that in order to cultivate enough friendships here, I really have to make it a part-time job. A friend and I started a monthly dinner club, and because it's a monthly thing, everyone does show up for the most part, and it's been a good way to meet each other's friends. If it wasn't a monthly thing, though? I'm not sure it would happen.>

You don't know lonely until you're a 40-plus single mom with four kids.

Not that I'm complaining ... (OK, I am.) I try to count my blessings, the main ones which are my children, but there are many times when I really wish there were another adult around here.>

My parents have two different sets of friends, one set they have dinner with once or twice a month, the other at least quarterly if not more often. They get this done because, with both couples, everyone makes a point at the end of the evening of scheduling the next dinner right then. Rescheduling's okay, but it has to be a real reschedule at that moment, not "something's come up, can we do this some other time?" But it's like this with these friends b/c the friendships are long-standing (one over 20 yrs) and just too important to my parents, and to their respective friends.

I think that anyone who is serious about their family these days tends to limit their activities to their job and a sensible few, and to limit their kids' (- of course, as noted above, many today are just not "joiners"), but even so that can add up to a lot of activity, and you can often just want to be home with your family. So you can be serious about wanting to get together with someone you don't know that well, but want to know better, but all the same let it slide. -- For example, my dad has been meaning to call you, Rod, to invite you out for a drink since, oh, since just after I got married! (two years ago) He'd really like to treat you and have a chat with you - but he and Mother do have social and work and church obligations, plus they just got their retirement house built out at my sister's in NM, where their granddaughters are, so they're spending more time out there (they both have seniority and so a good am't of vacation time) . . . and then Lord only knows when you'd be available if Dad did get around to calling you finally! :^) (Though I know you guys would have a great time, like we used to at The Monk.)

Then there's me adjusting to a whole new life in Canada, which also goes with this topic . . . I'll just say, it ain't easy to make friends in a new place, even if you're a relatively outgoing person. It happens, but not overnight. We want instant everything in our culture, and "instant friendship" is an oxymoron.>

Brian, my personal experience has not reflected that it's tougher to form relationships in a mega church and easier in a small church.

What I *have* found is that it has been far more difficult for me to form friendships in either of the Catholic parishes where I've attended Mass in the past 5 years than it ever was growing up in either of the two 'mega' churches (both evangelical, both with multiple Sunday morning services and seating for at least 2,000) I attended from age 8 to age 23.

How much that has to do with my age then vs. my age now, or location (CA then vs. MA now), I don't know. But I do know that my parents had no problems forming solid networks of good friends either, at those churches.>

Another thing to consider is the difference between 'acquaintances' and 'close' friends. What people seem to be talking about is a lack of time or scheduling to chat or spend time with other people (acquaintances). But isn't a close friend someone who is a true confidant, who is there for the common moments but remains when there are dark moments as well. In the Scriptures, Jesus mentions that an example of God's love is the love of someone who would lay down his life for a friend. Even in older happier times such friendships are rare, but isn't the problem that the article describes more an issue of our inability to even form the bonds for such a friendship rather than finding someone to spend an evening for dinner with?>

" don't know about some you folks, but I count my wife as my best friend, and yes, I will put off regular social activity to spend time with my children."

This is a good point. I read an article that compared friendship 'patterns' for a working class American neighborhood in the 1920's versus the 1990's. What they found was that in the 1920's people's closest friends were people of the same sex who lived in the neighborhood. Wives didn't consider their husbands to be their best friend and vice versa. Rather their best friend was another wife who lived down the street. In the 1990's things had changed. People often said that their best friend was their spouse.

The author proposed the idea that the expectation that a spouse should be one's best friend was partially responsible for increasing divorce rates.

It sounds like a good idea that someone who put their family above their friends but (this will sound a little radical) is that really 'traditional?' I'd suggest that perhaps the idea of the self-sufficient nuclear family unit is modern and maybe not a good thing. Of course I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't spend time with their children.>

It seems my experience in keeping close friends is fivefold: A) good quality beer (Abbey, Full Sail, Shiner); B) good food (not expensive, but good); C) smoking (sounds strange but smoking is social; not all my friends smoke though); D) organize; E) it does help to hold common shared values. St. Francis de Sales has some words to say on friendship in "Philothea.">

If I may be so bold, and rather than using them to fill up this space in a direct effort to toot my own horn:

The Failure of Online Community.

And it's immediate predecessor in context and background.>