This Friend Can Be Yours With Just 3 Low Payments!

You could send my 9 year old into a room full of kids of all ages and in 30 minutes I can almost guarantee he comes out with a new best friend. Kids can make new friends just because they both like pizza or have the same favorite superhero or because they both breathe air. For adults, on the other hand, the process is a lot more complicated and involved.

In fact, making friends as an adult is a lot like dating.

What?! Did she just say dating? Yes, yes I did. Think about it. When you meet someone and go on a date, aren’t you really just trying to see if you’re compatible? Who wants to date someone that they have nothing in common with and don’t even like? An idiot, that’s who! And we’re not idiots. (Most of the time.) So we have dinner, polite chit chat, and start getting into the nitty gritty, the hard core questions that will let you know if you can spend more time with them, if they are attractive as a person, if they meet your inner list of dating criteria. (But most importantly, if they drink coffee and have a superbly witty wit.)

“So, what’s your favorite color?”

“Are you a cat person or a dog person?”

“Will you make me watch boring documentaries on PBS that I have no interest in seeing because if so, we are done right now, game over!”

Eventually you find the one person who has enough interests to keep you together and enough differences to make you not be a creepy couple and you’re done with the dating business. You keep some of your friends, he keeps some of his friends, you make new “couple” friends….life is grand.

Except, you aren’t done making friends for the rest of your life. It’s not like you have a specific number you are entitled to and one day meet your quota. Eventually you are going to have to make new friends, especially if you change jobs, move away, or lose all of your current friends in a freak accident involving a day hike and an unexpected avalanche. (It could happen.) Maybe your friends have moved and you still keep in contact on FaceBook (A.K.A. virtual friends), but they aren’t readily available the next time you are ready to make a bad decision like dying your hair, getting a nose piercing, or drinking an entire bottle of Peach Schnapps. For this, you need someone who will come along and keep you company. Or at least from falling on the floor and concussing yourself.

So you start the same process, only this time you’re hoping for a mark in that friend column, saving you from lonely, spinster cat lady status.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“What are your hobbies?”

“Are you a Democrat or a Republican because I don’t really care either way, but I want you to not care as much as I don’t.”

(Real quick side note: I don't know why we are so obsessed with people's favorite colors. I mean, what is the deal with that? Does it make or break a relationship if their favorite color is orange? Is this just filler so that we feel like we know something about a person? Or is it so we know what color to buy anything for the next fifty years because it's their "favorite"? I don't get it.)

I think it’s actually more stressful for me to find a new friend than it would be to find a new romantic relationship. Which thankfully, I don’t ever have to do again now that I am happily married to my awesome husband. (Plus the agreement that I will lock him in the basement if he ever tries to divorce me. I am NOT dating again in this century!!) If you consider that I hate to socialize 75% of the time, finding someone I would willingly while away the hours with outside of my introverted little world is a BFD! I’m not going to just spread that friendship around willy-nilly now. I’m going to screen those potential candidates thoroughly, potentially using a 38 point rating system and a 62 question survey. I’m (mostly) kidding about the survey.

And I honestly want this to work out. I mean, how many times am I expected to go through this torment of speaking to new people before I find “the one”? Okay, okay, I’m not really that introverted (or socially inept) but you know what I’m talking about, right? I want to find the Monica to my Rachel, the Gayle to my Oprah, the Sonny to my Cher (I’m an equal opportunity employer of friendships). I want to weed out all the ones who think that Algebra is fun, that think salads are substitutes for meals, or think that going on a hike is fun. (Which it totally is. For people who are not me.) I need someone who is sarcastically funny, gets my dry sense of humor, and likes to read and/or watch paranormal/science fiction. All the rest will work itself out.

Unless you’re a vegetarian. Then I’m telling you right now, it can’t work.