Someone asked me why I keep chattering on about events in these posts.
It’s a great question!
It’s because I’m looking at friendship from a behavioral perspective first. In order to make and keep friends, there has to be reciprocal interactions that both people experience.
There have been times when I wonder why I’m lonely and not hanging out with people, and then I realize I haven’t reached out to anyone in a long time to initiate contact. I’ve just been ruminating all by my lonesome.
Conversely, I’ve had people who are long term friends go silent for months and then when I contact them they say some version of “so and so and I talk about you all the time” or “I was thinking about you the other week, how odd!” Meanwhile, I’m over somewhere else completely oblivious to this. This can be painful, especially in times when I’ve been short on friends and/or any base-level interactions.
We’re living our lives thinking friendly things, but not acting friendly.
Thinking positively about someone and not interacting with them is great! If I didn’t think about people when I’m not with them, then I won’t be able to reflect and sort my feelings and enjoy previous interactions.
But, thinking about someone positively builds friendship feelings, but doesn’t build friendship. Friendship requires behavior. This means that you have to send and receive signals from your friend, whether it’s meeting up in person, texting them, giving them a call, etc. This signal sharing constitutes an “event.” Which, is why I am focusing on events.
To build and maintain friendships, I must do “events.”
The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it 