I am a bad friend. I’ve self-examined, I’ve spent hours angsting over just why I struggle with friendships so much, and it’s time I came to the real conclusion: it really is me. I say this not out of self-loathing or flagellation, but because it is quite simply true. I won’t message first, I often agonise over messaging people back. I bail on things more than I would like. Recently I was about half a mile from my old work friends and didn’t tell them, because I couldn’t face the disappointment of them being too busy, or not bothered.
I’ve been socially anxious most of my life. My brand of social anxiety is a weird one. I love public speaking, as a child I was the most dreadful show off, wanting all the main parts and the solos. I don’t have an issue with people looking at me from afar, watching me perform. The thing with performing is that the social rules are fairly obvious. You do your little piece, don’t say anything too outrageous, everyone claps. Simple. However, if you put me in a group of people I don’t know, where I’m expected to strike up conversation or get to know people, I flounder. I don’t know where to begin. I assume nobody would want to talk to me anyway, and unless there’s a very clear ‘script’, or I can rely on my knowledge over my social skills, I don’t know what to say. I feel hindered in so many situations where I’m reliant on one bolder person than myself coming up to me to start a conversation. I’ve hidden in toilets at conferences and gatherings. That song about “you’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties” was essentially written for me (and, incidentally, my mother, who I would find washing up at every “do” I attended with her). If the only role I have to play is myself, then I so often just don’t know where to begin, even though I can guess on a basic level that I am reasonably likeable and people like to hear what I have to say.
This self-esteem has not always been with me my whole life, however. And even with that knowledge, my behaviour in social situations is one big self-sabotage. I won’t start a conversation because I think you probably don’t want to hear from me. I won’t reply straight away for reasons I still can’t quite comprehend. I won’t invite you places or tell you I’ve gone somewhere because I literally cannot deal with the rejection if you can’t make it. And I know, of course, that what this looks like to you is that I don’t care how you are, don’t want to talk to you, and reject you by not inviting you in the first place. And I can know all of this and yet still I don’t put in the effort to be a better friend. Add in the fact that most people I make friends with are also socially anxious, it makes for a bit of a lonely existence in all honesty.
In the past I’ve fallen into the trap of envying other people who go off the radar or don’t reply who seem to still have loads of adoring friends who keep up their side of the effort. It occurs to me now that they are reaping the rewards of the friendship effort they have made in the past. This won’t happen for me because, whether I like it or not, I’ve rarely made that effort. There’s confirmation bias at work here too. I’ve not always made the best choice of friends, so when my efforts are rebuffed, I take it as proof that I’m not likeable, so why should I bother anyway?
This has always come to the forefront with “best friends”. When I was in Year 6, I was given half of a Best Friends necklace. Three months later, I was asked for it back because “I wasn’t really her best friend anymore”. Unsurprisingly I like to find patterns in my life, and I can think back to so many occasions where I would refer to somebody as my best friend, and it wouldn’t be reciprocated. One of the most painful was visiting a friend from university who I really had thought was my best friend, only for her to talk about her “best friend from first year”, when I had known her, and that person not being me. These days, I don’t long for a best friend, nor do I apply that label to anybody. Being in my thirties is a relief in that respect. Nobody’s going to give me a necklace these days at least.
So, I know I’m a bad friend, I know I’m probably never going to have or be a best friend. So, what do I do about it? Well, sometimes I am brave, and do put myself out there. Message first, tell people I’m in their city. I acknowledge, though, that I don’t always have the energy, the guts to do this. So, I have to look to other ways I can create my own communities.
Dr Judy Singer, who coined the term ‘neurodiversity’, predicted in her PhD thesis that the internet was going to change the social lives of neurodivergent people, as it would allow them to form communities in a place where physical social skills are not required, where you can shout into the void and perhaps somebody will answer you. For me, this could not be more true. I’ve been through many internet communities over the years, from a camping forum where I was at least 15 years younger than everyone else, to a hippy forum, a student forum, a festival forum, and, finally, Twitter. Each of these communities enriched my life in a different, often quite personal way. The student forum gave me a sixth form social life at a time where I was never invited to anything after school (which I barely turned up to anyway). I probably built more social skills through those raucous and badly behaved “meets” than I ever would have if the internet didn’t exist.
This isn’t to say I’ve never had offline friends, because I have, and this is where my being a bad friend is most pertinent. I seem to have cycles of making friends, being friends, inadvertently losing contact with those friends, and then having to start over again. When in the past I’ve maybe not behaved in the best way around people, it’s easier to distance myself than face the music of their condemnation (this is what led to me deciding to no longer binge drink, even though that did in many ways break down some of the social barriers I have).
I’ve lost contact with school friends, university friends, friends I had five years ago. Due to the fact I am, in fact, a bad friend. Or maybe “bad at friendships”, although let’s not beat around the bush.
The people who have stayed constant, steady, and supportive of me have always been those people I have met online. I have friends I have known since I was sixteen who I still speak to daily. I have a supportive bunch of people on Twitter who will always celebrate my successes and commiserate my failures. And I’m grateful. I’m so grateful to these very real people, many of whom are similar to me in many ways, who take the time and the care to listen to what I have to say, and whose lives I know almost as intimately as my own.
Many people would say this is not “real” friendship. Many of these people I have never met. Many I will never meet. But when your anxiety makes face to face social situations difficult, the power of online friendships really comes to the fore.
I’m a bad in-person friend. I’m probably quite a bad friend in general. But I know my online communities have my back, and for that I can never be more grateful.