How do you make friends/socialize??

this is a super broad topic and impossible for me to explain briefly what I’m talking about, but I’ll attempt to be brief and still make sense.

As with most heavy PMO addicts, isolation and introversion due to low self esteem has left many of us with very small social circles. During my recovery these last 6 months a huge focus for me has been to be “reintroduced to the wild” and start socializing again. It’s been quite some time, especially since I’ve been married too (which tends to shrink social circle a bit).

I have lots of opportunity to socialize now hat I’ve been sober, going to SAA meetings, and started a new job.

My questions revolve around finding friends vs aquaintences and understanding who I like and don’t like and how to deal with the don’t like group of people.

Here’s what I mean. Out of most of the SAA people, there is one who I can talk honestly about recovery with and he gets it, where others seem to be not on our level. However, I don’t really get along with him at all as friends. He’s not easy to socialize with. For example, we were suppose to hanng out today, and 3 hours later he finally calls me... so I’m like wtf??? This is awkward and weird and I don’t like waiting around all day to hang with someone. Very unnatural and seems forced. Could be me or him, or most likely a combination of both of us just not clicking... so I don’t really wanna chill with him cuz it’s such a huge pain to due so.

For this example my question is, how do I remain a distant friend or aquaintence, yet still talk recovery with him but avoid dealing with these horribly awkward days like today??

Example 2: there’s a bunch of people at my new job who like to go out to bars and drink. I’m not a drinker but don’t mind being apart of that circle, so I go along with them. They operate at a different speed then me, and it seems like they enjoy different type of conversations than I do. For example, an ex girlfriend (she’s a lesbian) writes one of them a 4 page letter and the response from he other 2 girls is “damn girl! You must have a pussy made of gold! Turning out bitches like that, making them sprung!” Followed by laughters. I’m totally fine hanging with this and being apart of the crowd because I enjoy socializing now and I want to be apart of the office social group.

My question for this scenario is: how do I participate in conversation that I don’t really enjoy, but still be social and hang out without being the weird silent person on the side?

Lastly, there one person in the office who seems more my speed and our conversations aren’t awkward at all. The flow is natural and moments of silence aren’t awkward or anything. And I briefly met her boyfriend and he seems cool, and she sometimes goes to clubs but also sometimes goes to pottery painting nights with friends. This is the obvious personality match of future friendship that I think I would like. So this is proof to me that the others people just aren’t clicking like me and this person do.

So my final question is how do you navigate all of these “aquaintences” and stay friends but not have to deal with the awkward or uncomfortable stuff??

 

Good points

I guess what I’m after is learning how to successfully participate in social gatherings to then start building relationships with the ones that I like but also stay friendly and inclusive with the ones I don’t like as much.

There’s gatta be a balance that I’m missing.

 

Thanks dude. Yea I think my recent conflict was because I was being fake to fit in rather than authentically myself.

The reason being my PMO addiction has caused me to become incredibly shy, introverted and insecure so there’s huge growing pains with my personality and with socialization.

I hope to eventually be more confident in my personality and be able to showcase that honestly.