Friends

A startling realisation came to me as I woke up around dawn, and has kept me awake even though I feel tired having gone to bed late.

For no good reason I've made very few new friends in the last 28 years while other people - even in comparable circumstances - have made a good number. What they have done is normal, what I have done is not.

I was thinking over the various names and communications I've seen on Heather, Ian, Natalie, and John's Facebook pages, and it hit me that in all cases there had been enough knowing messages left by friends in all four cases to suggest they had made many close-ish friends over the years. I'm not counting the inflated numbers in the hundreds that facebook automatically counts as friends, but people who are in active contact with them with obvious personal knowledge.

In the 28 years since I left Art School, how many new friends have I made? Four, one of whom approached me and was a relative anyway.

There were perhaps four more whom I rebuffed, who would probably have become friends had I let them.

I thought about what I had written here yesterday, about joining clubs, about only children, and I also thought about the fact that I had been unemployed and skint for many years.

Then it occurred to me that Ian left everything he knew and went to America and made new friends, and that John S had been in a worse situation than me and John G after he left art school, in that he was unemployed and living with his parents for about three years, and what's more, his parents had moved from Birmingham to Norwich, cutting him off from the friends and acquaintances of his youth, and yet he and his sister made new friends and acquaintances, even if they were at first shallow friends. And he did the same when he went to live in London, and later to Tokyo.

Heather was in a different situation, and she says she has to make an effort to connect with people, but she has clearly made new friends over the years. Apart from friends from her marriage she has joined clubs and societies.

Nothing really stopped me from doing the same as any of these, except me.

As Ian said recently, I fail to get involved. This lack of social connection has played a big part in my failure to thrive.

I did nothing to find friends, year after year. I sat inert and ashamed of my circumstances. John G, who counts himself far more socially skilled than me has made no new friends so far in 28 years. He doesn't even socialise with his workmates outside the job.

So here I am with this insight - but how does one now connect and make new friends, especially at 50?