this also makes it harder for people to be open about their limitations
I have been in *multiple* friend circles where someone got much more emotionally open/involved in others’ lives to degrees they would have preferred not to because expressing a lack of desire for closeness is stigmatized
And I think this leads a lot of people to “get political” about their personal lives - and again, this definitely includes me - because the idea of just openly sharing about your personal life because you think you’re cool and your life is interesting is pathologized
Like, some people are not people people
I wish anyone other than like two others of you on this website watched For All Mankind, because it has a couple characters who kind of exist to make this point. Some people get almost no emotional reward from most socializing
That’s obviously not me, but there’s a lot of folks who are like that
The kind of people who aren’t on here or if they are it’s to post photos of their Warhammer minis or doll collection or photos of t bf eir car they work on
Or people who really do just love their job
And a lot of those people end up feeling pressure to form close personal friendships and relationships with people in their lives because the expression of a lack of interest in friendship, with a person in particular or in general, is treated as fundamentally *unkind* rather than a neutral fact
Like, people feel bad declining dates/romantic advances, but it’s generally understood that you shouldn’t, that that’s fundamentally about autonomy
This seems to be somewhat less of a clearly agreed upon thing outside of romance/sex, but I don’t think it should be
This isn’t just about not wanting to be friends with people but also like, for instance, to broadly discuss stuff I’ve seen in the past, someone sharing details about their life and emotions and someone else deciding they need to be the kind of friend who can give advice, when they’re not
Like some people are not going to be able to give advice about your failing marriage or anxiety about politics, some of those people *would* like to be your friend as in talk about D&D or football or whatever passion you have, but *it is hard to be the one rejecting someone*
The adjacent principle, that you can just not like people even if they're not oppressive or predatory, has come up, and I think they're both really important. It's fine to wish someone well and not care about their kids or their car or whatever...
...and it's even fine to think that Russell from accounting is a grating know-it-all who should eat a hornet, even if he's not A Bad Person (tm). You don't have to construct an entire narrative to justify "ugh, *them*?"
Added, and then I swear I'm going to go be productive: you can even think someone did a kind of shitty thing without having to pass a grand judgment on them as a person. There were many, many breakups where I was like "...yeah, that person was being a dingus, I see why you left," but...
For a very long time my fear/recognition that I am that grating person to many people led me to engage in… idk, normalizing the idea that it’s good to make the idea of who you do or don’t like a moral question
My recognition that *I don’t want to be friends with people who I grate on* came later
And I am just… I’m never going to have a good time at a party, like the conventional kind, because I don’t do social substances anymore and my sensory sensitivities absolutely make it miserable, and also I prefer one on one interactions
So like I know some people who invite me to parties periodically, and I either go and have a horrible time, or I decline and to me it feels like I seem like I’m blowing them off, since I wouldn’t see them at all otherwise
Right! And I can do some parties, but not big crowds, and also a couple of hours of talking is generally more than enough, even with people I'm close to.
