Social contraction

[jay]

Today I passed on two social events that I would have otherwise quite enjoyed, because prominent members of the (for lack of a better term) dot_cattiness group were going to be there. And I'm conflict-averse, in my personal life. Last weekend, patgreene stayed home from another event because she didn't want to go alone, and I wasn't going because of the same personal-enemy-present considerations. The end result is that my social connections and opportunities are contracting, a not-unexpected outcome of last month.

At the same time, I feel terminally awkward and insufficiently cool to hang out with, say, the House Dreamland folks and their circles of friends... I was planning to go to rosefox's birthday gathering in SF tomorrow night, but now I'm not sure. And reading bikerscum's comments about his "network of affectionates," I feel both a bit envious and creeped-out at the same time... and wonder what any mutual friends could see in both me and someone like the other Bryan. Our values and actions and backgrounds are so conflicting, and so different.

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I'd rather not devolve to the glaring-furtively-across-the-room stage at the same event with several of these folks. I can get my social needs met in venues where my enemies are fewer... but that limits my choices. And if one of them shows up, I may bow out of an event that I'd already planned to attend... I prefer not to spend a social event in constant wariness.

Diversity in friends is good... but I don't like one friend because of a quality and like another friend for *not* having that quality... the more opposites WRT each other, the less likely that two given people will both be friends of mine.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Re: parties with enemies: You're obviously the best judge of whether you'll have a good time at a given event. If you're happy doing things this way, I don't see any reason to change it. I was just suggesting that it's not necessarily the only way to go.

Re: diversity in friends: I find that people are a mix of zillions of characteristics, and that one characteristic doesn't usually overshadow the zeitgeist of who they are, so I guess I could like two people who are "opposites" of each other, because they have other qualities that make them attractive to me. But that's just me datapointing.