To Have A Friend...

Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Ones we can depend on

Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Before we go any further, let's be

Friends

I know I've said here before...  but it bears repeating.  I had a far easier time making and keeping good friends when I was younger.  My "friend-dar" (like gay-dar) seemed to be more finely tuned back then.  Or maybe I had more patience.  Or maybe my needs were simpler.

However, since moving to Virginia Beach, it has been hard to make friends.  No, I take it back.  It has been easy to make friends.  It has been hard to keep them.

When I first moved here, I had high hopes that the realtor who helped me find the beach house could be a friend.  Then, she did such a crappy job of maintaining and managing the beach house that I knew I couldn't be friends with someone who was flaky, flighty and irresponsible.  She never responded timely to calls and emails and made excuses for why she didn't disclose to me before I moved in that there was no frigging heat in the beach house, that some old fisherman guy would feel free to come and go as he pleased, using my water to rinse off his boat and ask to use my bathroom and kitchen at odd hours...  

Then, I met this lady that I had interviewed for a position on my team when I was a supervisor.  I didn't hire her because she couldn't work the hours I needed her to work.  However, we really hit it off in the interview and she did have some good skills, on paper.  I gave her resume to other supervisors who had open positions.  One day, I was in Harris Teeter (a grocery store) near where I live/work and heard someone saying my name.  I turned and it was the lady and a little girl, about 6 or 7.  She reminded me how I knew her and we made small talk and she told me that someone from my company had offered her a job and she felt she owed me a huge thank you.  She wanted to take me out to lunch to thank me.  I gave her my home phone number.  Then, she started working at my company, and started to email me.  At first, she was polite and friendly.  Seemed like a pretty decent person. I agreed to meet her for lunch at her "favorite Italian restaurant", which wasn't too far from where I lived.  The restaurant was a dive.  She was 15 minutes late and showed up with her daughter.  I like kids.  But, if I want to hang out with someone my own age, I don't want to have to play nice with their kids too.

I have been accused on more than one occasion of being "Sally-like" (from When Harry Met Sally) when I go out to eat.  I have a variety of things I don't like to eat and tend to drive wait-staff a little nuts with all of my questions about what can and can't be substituted, removed or altered in my meals.  I've gotten better... but mostly because I won't go out to places I'm not familiar with or places I can't fully research before I go.  That said, this woman was far far worse.  She talked to the waitstaff like they were dumb adults and practically told them how to prepare her food.

Then, while we were talking, she only wanted to bash her ex.  There are two things I don't like to talk about on a "first date" (and even though this was not a date, I think the rule should apply to "new friends" too)-- work/money and past bad relationships.  It just gets too awkward and I'm a big fan of a clean slate.  I don't need to know how much someone screwed you over in the past or how much you hate your job.  Let's talk about something positive...  like how I'm not like that person who screwed you over and how I have nothing to do with why you hate your job. :)

I left the meeting a little disappointed.  However, I am a big fan of benefit of the doubt, which I've said before.  Eternally hopeful and optimistic. She continued to email me at work and then we decided to meet up again, this time without her child, at another restaurant.  A BBQ place near the oceanfront.  She was on time for this one, but dressed a little on the revealing side.  When we got inside, the place was crawling with men.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love men.  I've dated a few in my time.  However, once we were seated, her mission became clear -- she was there to look for a man.  She told me that a friend had told her that firemen, construction workers and bikers like to frequent the restaurant.  We hardly talked because she was busy adjusting her very low cut top and trying to get attention.  

Things sort of disintegrated after that.  She would call me to ask if her daughter could come by and swim in my pool and sent me emails at work about how much she hated her job, etc.  I eventually told her it wasn't appropriate for me to be friends with someone at work, especially when I was a supervisor.  My company has no real policy against social or romantic relationships, which totally surprises me because at my previous company, they were very big on making sure that work and personal relationships were clearly defined.  However, she seemed to buy it.  She then started being uber chilly at work and when I moved to another department, would try to be the boss of me, because she had gotten a promotion and felt she was better than me. 

Then, I made friends with another co-worker who would ask me stuff about my life and then go and gossip about me.  I had some gut feelings that she probably wasn't going to have my back when she would tell me stuff that other people told her and then would make me swear to her I wouldn't say anything.  I kind of had a feeling that if she was doing it with me, then she was probably doing it to me.  She left the company and I saw it as a perfect opportunity to extract myself from the friendship.  I also unfriended her on Facebook, which led to some pretty nasty messages from her telling me to grow up and stop being so childish.  She also posted stuff about me on some mutual friends' pages, so I unfriended them as well so that I wouldn't have to see such toxic immaturity.  

Recently, I find myself in a kind of awkward situation.   I have a new friend.  We got to know each other through other friends.  I trust my other friends and this new friend seemed to be okay, too.  But, lately, I'm not sure.  We don't have frequent contact and when we do, it's usually with the other friends around.  Because I do have a fairly friendly relationship with the other people, they know more about me than the new friend.  I think the new friend may be a little envious of that and has been asking me increasingly more personal questions about my life, my interests, etc.  I don't mind answering the questions as it's part of getting to know someone.  However, recently, we were talking with some of our mutual friends and I brought up something we have in common.  She got mad at me.  I got a message from her later after we all went our separate ways that her other friends didn't know about the thing we had in common and that she would prefer that I not let on to our mutual friends that she and I have been talking outside of when we're with them.  Very odd.  So, now I feel like a dirty little secret of some sort.  I have to pretend like I don't really know her even though I do know her?  I'm not allowed to tell our other friends that we've talked and hung out without them present?  Sheesh... you'd think I was seeing a married man or something.   So, now I'm in this "f*ck it" kind of mentality.  I don't want to tell her anything else about myself or my life and I don't want to tip toe around our other friends.  I also have not invested enough in the friendship to really want to "fight" for it.  When I first met her, something inside me said that something just didn't feel right and that I felt like there seemed to be a heavy reliance on our mutual friends.

Now, on a positive note, I have made a few new friends who are decent people whom I hope to continue to get to know and be friends with.  I'm just treading cautiously and being, you guessed it, eternally optimistic.  The new friends are people who are more like me.  We have similar senses of humor, sarcasm, intelligence, life paths and hobbies.  We have similar passions, drives and motivations.  The above potential friends were people who were not like me and were attempts to broaden my horizons.  

Moral of the story: stick to what I know... and listen to my gut.