The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it

Birthdays are complicated for me.

In general, I don’t like sustained attention. It makes me want to go crawl in one of those caves in France where they age fancy cheeses and never come out. But, you get me around my birthday and suddenly I want attention. This confidence magically dissipates at about 8pm on my birthday evening leaving a diva hangover.

Over the years, I’ve learned that I need to plan my own birthday party and champion myself on my birthday in order to get my annual dose of attention. However, I have a few — ok a LOT — social limits that I have to work around with parties.

1. My home is my sanctuary and I rarely invite people over, so it’s stressful to have people in my space.
2. Because people rarely come over, it gets messy and requires a lot of cleaning to get to the acceptable stage.
3. Day of, I have been know to panic and cancel plans if something goes wrong, which is a dick move.
4. If people stay too long, I get majorly stressed and can turn into an ass.
5. If too many people are invited, then I can get stressed and shut down, which is awkward for others.
6. I end up with a social hangover for 2-7 days depending on the total stress incurred.
7. If something goes wrong, it goes into my shame bank to surface whenever my anxiety spikes far into the future (yay! it’s like an extra everlong birthday present).
8. I like to have control over things, especially food, when people are in my space (or whenever I am in charge).
9. I like routine, and events are about as far from routine as one can get.
10. I have trouble accurately measuring my stress levels in the moment, so I can’t just go take a break, because I don’t realize I need one until it’s too late. If I get too stressed, I get really hyper and unpredictable…and can turn into an ass (notice a theme?).
11. I get nervous/uncomfortable when people pay too much attention to me – and god save me from public present opening traditions and the happy birthday song.

Good lordy, that’s a list on top of normal “what if people don’t have fun?” types of standard event concerns.

All that said, I still like to have a birthday party. So, it’s a conundrum.

Here’s where the good advice comes in.

The Good Advice

A few years ago, I was talking to a friend about this, and she asked me “Well, what kind of party can YOU host?” This was such a good reframing. Instead of “what do you want to do?” or “what sounds fun?”

To decide what kind of party I can host, I simply figure out:

1. What is the max number of people I can invite?
2. What is a proven activity that I feel comfortable hosting?
3. What type of food / refreshments can I serve?
4. What is the max time limit I can host?
5. What else can make this easier?

The answers for me are:

1. 4-6 people
2. A group game – the past two years have been Pictionary on a giant whiteboard which makes it seem like more of an event
3. I like to provide all the food, so I created a very small, doable, but delicious menu for everyone and provided some canned beverages. I also don’t like alcohol in my house, so I don’t provide that.
4. Max time = 1.5 to 2 hours max. It helps to ask someone at the party to initiate the leaving time for you if you have trouble with getting people to leave your house.
5. I buy disposable plates/cups/cutlery for my parties. I only do it once a year, so I think it’s acceptable. Doing dishes afterwards can be stressful, and having people help with dishes at the end of the event (if they volunteered) would be chaotic.