I would rather meet through a shared thing than over coffee
Posted as chalk_and_tape
- Looking for
- somebody who wants a friendship with this in it eventually
- Experience
- Two years, tentative, and mostly conversation.
- Around
- downtown, Los Angeles
Every time I have tried to do this the standard way, sitting opposite a stranger with two hours to fill and the whole subject hanging over the table, I have been the worst version of myself. Awkward, over explaining, and somehow both too keen and completely absent.
Twenty eight, downtown, switch, two years in and none of it deep. What I am good at is being next to somebody doing something. I climb three times a week, badly, and I have made more real friends in the last year through that than through any amount of talking. So what I am actually proposing is that we find something to do that is not about this, and work out whether we like each other while we are busy.
I know that sounds like avoidance and I have thought about whether it is. I do not think so. I am asking for the order to be reversed: familiarity first, then the conversation, then whatever it turns into.
I switch, and at two years in that is a hypothesis rather than a conclusion. I have been on both sides once each and both were with somebody I trusted, which I now understand was the actual variable.
I am not looking for a session. I am not looking for anyone who wants to make my inexperience the point. And if doing something ordinary first sounds like a waste of your time, that is useful information and I will not be offended.