Making Friends: Dating Edition

If you've been around here a while, you may recall this post. I just stumbled across it yesterday when I was looking at the stats on my blog. Someone ended up reading that from over a year ago. Crazy! And here's the thing, I didn't necessarily forget to write a follow-up post, but I didn't necessarily remember either. Sorry!

And as I promised at the bottom of that post, here's another installment of Making Friends. This time, it's the Dating Edition.

When Kyle and I started dating, we were transitioning from being friends into being...more than friends. It was an interesting scenario. We met sometime during the fall of 2009 while I was working at the Huges Fine Arts Center Music Library. Again, nerd much? I thought he was cute. So what did I do? I tried to figure out who he was. Duh.

As it turns out, he was a friend-of-a-friend. Okay. I know. Not the point.

Fast forward to February 2012. We started dating and we were trying to figure out how to make friends with others. I had my friends. He had his friends. We had our mutual friend group. How in the world could we make all three of those groups work together?!

It's chaos, I tell you.

Okay, it's not really. But what ended up happening is that we took turns spending time with different friends. Sometimes we would have a game night with my friends. Other times we would go out to eat with his friends. Even other times, we would make sure to see our mutual friends. And do you know what? Eventually my friends became his and vise versa.

It was magical!

The hardest thing for us as a couple, was making new friends entirely. Usually it would happen if one of us knew someone from work and we'd meet their S/O (significant other) and then we'd all be friends. This happened with Kyle's music colleagues.

The main thing that I recommend for making friends when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, is to be open to new relationships. Sometimes your S/O's friends really are cool. Sometimes your S/O will be wary of meeting your friends. If this is a relationship that you want to make work, be open to involving your man friend or woman friend in your life. He/she will greatly appreciate it.

Happy Friday, all! 

Next week is Christmas!! Woo!

Making Friends: Grown-Up Edition

When I think about making friends, I always picture my baby sister at the campground at Bemidji State Park.

"Hi, my name is Emma. Will you be my friend? We can play."

Those sentences will be forever ingrained in my memory. 

As a small child, it's easy to make friends. You consider everyone who appears to be younger than Dad and Mom, friend potential. Simply saying, "Hello." to someone could keep them in your life for years to come. 

As an elementary aged child, making friends (initially) comes with very little risk. If you're (un)fortunate enough to go to a small school, your friends or non friends could be in your very class (the horror)! If you're (un)fortunate to go to a large school, you might only see your friends or non friends on the playground or the bus. Again, these friends could stay with you for life. 

*Disclaimer: I do still talk to classmates from elementary school...but we aren't close anymore.*

Middle School and High School are harder. In my case, everyone in my class in High School had been in my class since Pre-k. If I wanted to make new friends, I had to look to older or younger classes (say what?!). 

College is where it starts to get easier again...at least for your Freshman year. You're all in orientation groups together. You have dinner together every night with your "brother/sister" hall. Maybe you're fortunate to have familiar faces in a GenEd class that you know from Freshman Orientation. Hopefully 3 or 4 of tense friends from that first college year will stick with you to the end. 

*I DID love my Orientation group! Honest!*

Then, say you transfer to a different college. You end up in a random apartment placement. You have NO idea who anyone is. Your roommate seems nice enough, but your suite mates? No thanks. 

This happened to me. It was hard making friends that semester. Most of the Sophomores had made their college friends last year. So...the next best place to meet people...class. Yep. I'm a nerd and some of my best friends I have are because we took classes together.

Maybe you made friends at a Christmas party and someone duct taped your leg to someone else's leg. *Hey...it happens! I'll find the photo to prove it!* And she could be your best friend for years to come!

Now, all of these things are entirely possible. They're also some of the easier ways to make friends. Early childhood, Elementary, High School, and college are all perfectly acceptable places to make friends.

My big dilemma is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I MAKE FRIENDS NOW THAT I'M A REAL ADULT WITH A BIG KID JOB?!

That's what I'll be exploring throughout the next few weeks.

Stay tuned and Happy Monday!

**Oh...and if you have some sure-fire way to make friends as a grown-up, pleeeassseee comment and let me know. Or Facebook/Tweet/IG me if that suits you better. I'll be putting feedback on here one day coming up too!**