the first poly woman i dated told me, in tears, "i only make friends with people by dating them now" while we were having a conversation about my insecurities, and while it didn't do anything for my insecurities it's stuck with me
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there's some kind of concept of deep friendship that seems to me to be missing in american culture, and i really really don't like the way some queer discourse in particular consistently tries to sexualize historical same-gender intimacy, as if intimacy were necessarily sexual
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not that i particularly have a leg to stand on in my own friendships. i have left behind a lot of friends and i am not happy about it but i also don't know what to do. we weren't meant to try to maintain friendships without periodic *unplanned* physical contact
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there's a kind of intimacy i had with my high school friends, especially the ones who knew me in middle school, that i *cannot* have with anybody else, because nobody else got to see me grow up like that, and grow up with me; similarly with college
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Replying to @liminal_warmth
we normalized moving away from our high school communities to go to college then moving a second time away from our college communities to get a job
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there's also an intimacy i've never had and never will have, which is with a family i felt loved and understood by. as much as i like the "found family" trope there is something legitimately special about your literal actual family, which is that they *can't stop being family*
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we talk a lot about "atomization" here on the birdsite and a big component of what that means is that it's normal to leave behind everyone you love except possibly a romantic partner to move cities for a job. everyone is disposable and we all know that about each other
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i suspect it may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to form deep friendships under these kinds of disposability conditions. marriage is now the only ritual we have for credibly publicly declaring to other people "this person is not disposable to me anymore"
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i was gonna go somewhere loftier with this but i ran out of steam. the emotional core is just that i'm lonely as shit and don't really know what to do about it. probably some of you are the same and, well, here we are on the birdsite together, hi
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Replying to
I have long wondered what would have happened if my college social scene had just settled in our college town, even if that meant taking jobs in coffee shops, living meagerly in crowded houses, etc. 4 years of group-bonding created something complex, powerful, and irreplaceable.
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Not sure if that would have worked out either way. I moved home and attempted to unite a large group of high school friends, but that also failed. Without a shared struggle requiring interdependence (like survival), people naturally drift into their own compartments.
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Romantic partners, friends, family, and coworkers are often mutually exclusive. Same with home, recreational space, workplace, etc. If one realm becomes inconvenient, you can shop around for a new one. Hence disposability of all things, atomization i.e. no tribe.