Social Slut

I'm a bit of a social slut. I like being around cool people who like me. It keeps me from steeping in the murky swill of my mind too much. It's also edifying and entertaining. My friends are often smart, funny people. And it boosts my ego when my friends laugh at stuff I say or enjoy a song I play.

All this sharing of thoughts, experiences, and jokes is pretty wondrous. To feel understood and appreciated by another human being is a great salve for the blisters that life can leave on your spirit.

But, like any slut, I sometimes take it a little overboard and wake up next to friends I don't like all that much. Ok, this analogy is breaking down a bit. I'll explain further.

A friend of mine recently commented to me that, "you know, it's not enough anymore for a person to be nice for me to want to hang out with them. Most people are nice. I need something more than that."

Damn, this isn't coming out well! Ok, I'll keep trying to elucidate my concerns. Let's take the issue of parties. I generally don't like parties thrown by casual acquaintences or strangers. Though I am a social slut, I hate schmoozy gatherings where I don't know many people. I've experienced enough of these occasions that I can reliably predict them to be net losses to my total utility (with exceptions here and there). And yet, despite my hard-won conclusions about them, I still find myself at these sorts of occasions with some regularity. What is my problem? It's that I'm a social slut who just can't say no.

I've come to realize that I just don't have much room in my life for new friends. With each stage of my life, I've accumulated new friends, and I count myself among the luckiest people in the world for being able to ingratiate myself to such a large number of hilarious, brilliant, big-hearted people. But as these friends scatter across the world, and as I acquire more of them, maintaining the closeness of those friendships becomes a time-consuming endeavor.

Perhaps other folks simply have a more willy-nilly approach to their friendships. They're perhaps more willing to accept change and change's caustic siamese twin, loss. So, for them, friends move away, or they move away from friends, and such is life; a call or email every year is perhaps enough "maintenance" for them. And I agree, sometimes it is. Some friendships are so natural and easy that time apart does little to deaden the connection. Or, perhaps they're just willing to say, "hey, it was nice when it lasted. At least we'll always have that fart joke."

Maybe it's cause I'm a lonely old bachelor, or a bleeding heart romantic, or a wannabe Everyman. But I just can't stand to let a good friendship go to seed.

But I digress. The point is that I am stretched thin in the friendship world as it is. I don't think I can ad much more without significantly detracting from the friendships I already have. I have reached my equilibrium point; my marginal utility of friendship is equal to my marginal cost (thanks microeconomics).

There's another dark and twisted element to this story; I'm a people-pleaser. I don't like it when people don't like me. I'm not that proud of this apsect of my personality. Paradigmatically, "real men" aren't supposed to give a shit what people think of them. They're supposed to be slavishly devoted to their own integrity and honor (ironically, we're also supposed to beat people up if they insult us, and isn't that about caring what others think of you?). But I'm more ok with this "weakness" now than I was as a younger man. Caring about how other people feel is not such a bad trait for a member of a social species to have.

How is this connected to my friend problem? My people-pleasing impulse leads me to enter social situations whose goal is primarily to prevent other people from disliking me, rather than to bring myself pleasure. Hence, the social slut. There are parties I shouldn't attend and outings I should avoid and people I shouldn't invite and calls I shouldn't return (I assure you, reader, that I'm not talking about you). There are some social connections that I should simply allow to wither.

My ego-mania plays a role here, too. I always assume that I play a larger role in other people's mental lives than I probably actually do. For example, If I don't invite somebody to a party, chances are they wouldn't care that much. If they are a peripheral friend to me, I'm probably a peripheral friend to them, too. But in my mind, I picture them finding out that they were snubbed, then weeping as they burn me in effigy. And my messiah complex plays a role. I always feel guilty for not calling old friends enough. Of course, they could just as easily call me. I rarely blame them for the lack of friendship-maintenance, though.

What a long and self-involved post! Blogs are an ego-maniacs wet dream. We allow ourselves to give-in to the illusion that the minutae of our lives is actually worth the rapt attention of other people, and we can pretend that millions of people are reading every word we write.

Anyway, here's the point. I like people, but I have to learn to say no, even if it means that some people won't love me as much.