When am I happy?
When I’m around my friends.
When am I down?
When I spend an evening alone with just me and my computer.
When am I frustrated?
When I spend an evening alone with my computer after unsuccessfully attempting to make plans to go out.
When am I angry?
When people tell me how their mood was negatively affected by a night out with a group of people they deliberately chose to spend time with. AT LEAST YOU WENT SOMEWHERE is my cognitive response to that.
Just like when I hear people whine about their relationships – at least they have one. Stop taking it for granted, because I sure wouldn’t!
I’ve never been a cliquey guy. As a result, all my friends are now moving on in life without me. Friends that used to say I’d be “Uncle Daniel” to their kids are now married, moved away, and spending all their time out with other married couples. Friends that aren’t as close have their own cliques and spend an overwhelming majority of their time with those people. Which makes sense. Why deviate from the group of people whose company you enjoy so much?
You see, I’ve been very independent for the majority of my life. I’ve learned to depend on myself and God and my family, and that’s it. I was a loner all through high school. And you know what? I’m fine with all that. But now I can’t spend any time with any one person because I’m not part of their privileged group. Sure they enjoy my company, but they also enjoy the company of the 2-6 people in their well-established group of friends, their social circle. When it’s time to plan social activities, who wouldn’t rather spend an evening with 6 close friends instead of just one? That’s rational behavior. You’d make the same decision time after time. People like me are just SOL.
I even have a diagram to depict this scenario:
Notice how Charlie (yellow) and Tommy (blue) are within each other’s social circle. This represents a relationship between them. They are friends. Notice that Michelle (green) also falls in Charlie’s social circle, but he is not in hers. While Charlie might invite Michelle to a social gathering he’s hosting, she would not feel inclined to do the same. Black dots represent other people in Tommy’s network of friends, and they each have a corresponding semi-transparent social circle. Most of these people are friends with each other and all of them are friends with Tommy. Get the picture? Can you guess which person I am within this social conundrum?
It’s even more impossible to penetrate the social lives of females because of the romantic implications that exist when a male and female spend time 1-on-1. In order to play it safe for everyone’s reputation, it’s best to avoid that situation altogether if it isn’t true. But what if it is true? Given this virtually inescapable cycle of social non-activity, I have a wide open schedule. To date a girl means that if I’m not on a date, I’m not out of the house at all. It doesn’t matter that I WANT to be out there having a good time with a group of people I know and enjoy, a girl won’t even think about that fact. All she knows is that my social activities appear to revolve around her – a rational observation with an inaccurate interpretation.
So why not go out alone? Well… think about the times you’ve seen guys out on the town by themselves. What kind of things go through your head in those moments? Do you imagine they’re successful? Extroverted? Boyfriend material? How about creepy? Awkward? They’re just different from you and your friends, right? If I was a betting man, I would throw the dice that the last three thoughts are probably more common than the first. In other words, going out alone is simply not an option.
Ah, the joyous mysteries of my life which no one ever catches up to until I blog about them…
