the wisdom ive learnt is that becoming part of a friend group 1) takes a long time and 2) involves a lot of feeling awkward and left out at first. there’s nothing terrible about this but if you grew up chronically lonely or have any kind of trauma relating to social isolation this likely feels Really Wrong and activates danger signals. but both fortunately and unfortunately it’s just how becoming close to new people works most of the time
another thing that was not intuitive to me as someone who grew up an autistic loner: basically everyone on the planet is starved for connection all the time and almost everything people do is an attempt to reach out to another. most seemingly illogical interactions and behaviours can be explained by this. you have to take as many of these invitations as you can. even if you’re wrong you still attempted to bring more warmth into the world
Time + shared experiences rack up your friend XP like no other. For example, I joined a birding club full of other artists in the area, 99% of which no one knew anyone in the group. Of course it was awkward at first, wandering around with a cluster of strangers (and a bunch of queer birding artists are like the triple threat of starting off shy and awkward), but many of the same people kept going consistently, and suddenly inside jokes are made, and group brunches after club, then one day one proposes a movie night, now folks are going to each other’s houses and helping each other move and even a few finding love. All because enough of us chose to endure the awkwardness of starting off as strangers and deciding to grind that friend XP through bird club.
