“Dating” for Girlfriends Part 1 of 4

Due to moving, getting married and other lifestyle changes, I’ve known for some time that I would like to expand my girlfriend circle. But with so many other obligations it has been put on the back burner for quite a while. Last week I finally did something about it.

In a way, finding new friends is more tricky than finding a new man, because:

1. The dating market, with all its faults, does have a very straight forward set of rules of engagement. People’s goals are generally clear (at least to themselves), ranging from wanting to get some, to wanting to get married, to everything in between.  In the quest for friends, it’s a lot harder to tell if the other person is also looking, or how things could proceed.
2. There are many levels of friendships: high school pals, acquaintances, work friends, business contacts, friends of the family, etc. There are people at certain stages in life where they do not perceive value in friendships at all, and there are people who could never become friends with their co-workers. I once considered a girl my real friend, and it turned out she was just a people collector (the type who maxed out her “friends” limit on Facebook). How embarrassing.
3. Society places a lot less emphasis on friendships than it does on romantic relations. There are far fewer songs and articles about friendships than there are about love.
4. Heartbreaks with the opposite sex tend to be explosive, and thank heaven, definite. But when a friendship dies a painful slow death, that profound sense of sadness is indescribable.
5. While people make time specifically to participate in the dating market, friendships tend to happen a lot more organically.  Not many people write “make more friends” as their New Year resolution over “lose weight” and “find Mr. Right.”

(continued in my next post...)