how not to make friends as an adult (pt. 1)

a multi-part serial about the dangers of young adult friend groups - especially those made up of primarily couples

I landed in San Diego, solo, in the summer of 2019. Like a pipe dream finally realized, our plane soared over the mountains, quite literally through the city (iykyk), and made contact with the earth.

I had arrived on the doorstep of my future.

I cried during most of the flight (much to the horror of the middle-aged man seated next to me), reading little notes my family had sent me off with. I am a sentimental sap through and through, so I felt the weight of each and every goodbye. Friends texted me as I boarded the plane with congratulations and well-wishes. I felt loved.

I had no job, no plan, and though I was going to be living with my brother, I still owed him a rent amount higher than I’d ever been responsible for in my life. But something else seeped into my nerves and nostalgia… regret?

I had worked hard to get to the place I was leaving behind. It was no small effort to silently mask the scars left behind by my youth. To adopt adulthood with dignity. To swallow my emotions, as seemed to be what adults did, and march unto the breach (gilmore girls fans will get it) without looking back.

I didn’t feel particularly connected to my family, having traversed the growing-up process largely in spite of them. I had known for years that the West called to my spirit with whispered promises of detachment, independence, and long-coveted freedom.

My friends from school all had a year left to go, whereas I had graduated early due to my distaste for college as a concept.

Nothing was left for me on the East Coast; I had played my part well, and now it was my turn to be somewhere I was sure I belonged.

I stepped off my 6-hour flight and into paradise. My brother picked me up and drove us from the airport around the blue, glistening harbor and through the gleaming city that encompassed it.

And all I could think was holy shit. I live here.

I had imagined this day since I first decided I wanted to apply to UC schools back in my junior year of high school. Who I would be. The friends I would make. The tan I would get. The adventures I would go on.

That I would eat healthy, work out, and glow like the girls on Instagram.

And for a while, that’s exactly who I was.

I started shopping exclusively at the local farmers’ market.

I started a 200 hr yoga teacher training. (Truly a story that may come out soon because that was a wild ride of conspiracy theorists and cultural appropriation.)

I watched spectacular sunsets.

I didn’t bother to unpack the girl I was.

In the beginning, friends called to keep up. My then-boyfriend (now husband) R was contemplating his own path west. The girls in the yoga training were, on the whole, lovely. We ate lunch together every day at a little cafe down the block. Talking all the while about the bat-shit crazy things our teacher had said so far that day.

It was the closest sense of community I had possibly ever felt.

I wasn’t doing anything in particular to earn it either; I was just showing up. So I thought.

But then the yoga teacher nearly broke both of my knees, and I was forced to sit out two of the four training weeks. Then, eventually, those weeks came to a close altogether, and as it turns out, most of those lovely girls I’d met were due to leave the area for one reason or another.

August rolled around, and my school friends became preoccupied with the impending school year.

I didn’t have a reason anymore to go somewhere every day, so I started to edge back into the all too familiar habit of keeping to my room. My brother and I were never particularly close, and neither of us was an extrovert. Aside from a daily “hey” when he’d get home from work, that relationship didn’t offer much reprieve from the loneliness that slowly set in.

I started to wonder if I’d make it here. My people, the ones I had worked so hard for, masked too well to preserve, were slipping away as a lack of shared experience distanced us more than even the 3000 miles between us.

Thankfully, R came in the end. (Again, a story for another time. But if you’ve seen Good Will Hunting, that’s basically the premise.)

His presence was everything. I was no longer alone, because there he was, living just down the road from my brother and me.

After 3+ years of long-distance, the closeness and novelty of this city we now both called home thrust our relationship into a honeymoon renaissance period. We shared long days at the beach, tried new restaurants, took late-night walks to get ice cream, had sleepovers, and went apartment hunting.

I didn’t need friends to call or even friends to make. I had R.

me & R against the world

Enter, March 2020.

R and I had moved into our little craphole 1-bed apartment just 2 weeks before the world went silent. We got our sofa delivered 1 DAY before, and thank god too, because can you imagine being couchless during the pandemic?

R and I were certainly in the privileged minority who mostly enjoyed lockdown. We both were cut to part-time at work, but unemployment benefits more than made up the difference. We played games and watched shows, and shared dinner dates at our intimate kitchen island. We got a puppy who spiced up the monotonous days and filled all 500sqft of our quarantine with joy (and pee).

This time was the ultimate permission for our recluse inclinations and mutual co-dependency to thrive, uninhibited.

2021 rolled through, and we sank further into our ways. Connections to faraway friends dwindled, and the novelty of our seclusion wore off. We affixed ourselves to a way of living that was passable, but undeniably unhealthy. We enabled each other to forgo individual exploration in favor of the safe confines of our shared space.

We disconnected further from our families, preferring our little trio and its bliss to the unsavory schema of our former families. We counted certain friends lost due to distance and time. And the isolation made us cling to each other that much harder.

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In 2022, I cracked. I was working three jobs, all remote and online. R had taken up online game streaming, which had him confined to his office for hours at a time. I was no longer speaking to my dad’s side of the family, and my mom’s side of the family suffered a tragic loss that made them distant, bordering on unreachable.

So, in my desperation for connection, I downloaded Bumble BFF. I made myself a profile and started swiping.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. I have no experience with “dating” apps, but I found the profiles of friendless humans in my area neatly curated for mass appeal, making it pretty hard to find a connection that went beyond the superficial. Not to mention, I had no idea what I wanted in a friendship; my other friends made young and clung to mostly out of necessity. Dearly as I love them all to this day, there are few of them for a reason, and no two are really anything alike.

Eventually, though, after a month of small talk with random humans over DM, I had a match with potential. An unassuming, kind-looking girl, E, around my age who moved to San Diego with her boyfriend, L, too. They were from the East Coast, she was from the city where I went to college, and we even had 1-2 mutual connections on Instagram.

I swiped yes, and we set up a first date; one I came back from positively buzzing. We talked for hours, and, best of all, we realized our boyfriends were basically the same person.

I rushed home to R, interrupted his gaming session to tell him, “I just found us new friends! We’re going to double date next week, it’ll be great.” (famous last words probably immortalized on a vod of his somewhere)

And thus, a foursome was born.

continued here

E, L, R, & me

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how to not make friends as an adult is a multi-post serial about navigating new friendships as an adult, and what happens when a mix of misaligned, insecure, 20 & 30 somethings (who happen to all be couples) form a friend group.

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-June

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for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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art by the incomparable talent on Pinterest. cover art by @shagey_