Multilateral vs. Bilateral Friendships
Here's one of those posts where the person shares a story/perspective mainly just to see if anyone else has had parallel experiences.
For me, it's that I've always had a loose confederation of bilateral friendships, but can think of very few "crowds" that I've ever found myself in.
Bilateral friendships are easy for me to start. An individual will often find me interesting, trustworthy, or useful for something and take an interest. Then they usually start asking for my advice, or if not that, using me as a sounding board for whatever they need, and I ultimately end up getting an invite out with this person's group. There I'll occasionally meet another such person and continue the process, but I'm never "in". The closest I often come is when I introduce two bilateral contacts who then become friends - often closer than I was with either of them in the first place, but that's totally fine with me. With few exceptions, the friendship from all these people is or becomes entirely genuine, but there is an unspoken acknowledgement that I'm a "different" sort of friend in the best sense of the term.
These days I'm thinking that's not at all a bad way to go, and that I should lose all remaining prejudice that having a crowd or multilateral base of friendship is a goal to be sought.
Has anyone here had success at group inclusion, motely collections of one-on-one, or neither?
poopylungstuffing
Veteran

Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Age: 49
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,714
Location: Snapdragon Ridge
Only amongst other dysfunctional weirdos..where we all sorta either gave each other our own space or really got on each other's nerves causing some nasty meltdown scenarios at times....and now that group has since been fragmented...due mostly to girl troubles and mental health.
I do not have close friendships..I can't say I never have...but i currently don't have any.
I do have things to offer as a person..and I am capable of relationships....and I have a peer group of acquaintances...but I am on the periphrial
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Fitting in sometimes mean that you are good at chit chat and enjoy mundane talk. It's boring. My aspy son recently felt bad though that he didn't know how to jump into the comeradie of friends. He told me that he wished that they all had bonded over math because then he'd feel like a part of the crowd.
I only hang around wth crazy people now so it's no longer an issue with me.
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Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I know what you mean.
At one point in my life I had several friends, none of whom knew each other. When the situation eventually arose where some of them met each other, none of them got on!
I felt completely stuck in the middle, especially when my ex and his friend ended up badly upsetting a girl friend (I did not hear the remark in question so was unaware it had happened, & she was hurt because I did not stand up for her. In fact it turned out she believed I had told him a secret of hers which had caused his remark, which I had not.)
So it is probably best to keep such friends in their own compartments!