You social agenda

[jhonny9546]

There will be times in life when people find themselves not going out or making new friends for a long stretch. It happens.

It often becomes clear that the most important thing that has changed in their habits is their approach to socializing. (exposure)

Right now, someone might be facing this situation and start to think: why not schedule regular outings every month? For example, they could plan to meet their best friend on the 3rd of every month, their gym group on the 10th, their piano friends on the 15th, and so on. This approach would help maintain a calendar brimming with social events.

While people don’t want to come across as overly controlling, they aim to use every possible strategy to maximize their opportunities for social interactions for their own benefit. And this might be You and Me. I think that having an agenda for your social life, other than work and other grinding stuff, it's a must.

It would be amazing and cool to hear from you guys what do you do in order to do so, and what your social agenda look like, if you never tought about it!

 

[FlexpertHamilton]

I think the key is to have 2 different types of friend groups. Group 1 is the group of tight knit, authentic, and long-term friendships that can survive indefinitely because they are formed out of the mutual shared values, respect, and high quality characteristics of the group. Group 2 is the more superficial friend group, typically consisting of locals that share similar hobbies/interests (such as a sports club), that you can have socialize with on the regular. This way you can get your more superficial social needs met and not place such high expectations on your primary friend group. I've been working towards meeting new people for this very reason, and recently joined a trivia group and now looking into joining a rock climbing gym to meet folks that way.

My struggle is maintaining the cohesion of your main friend group. In the past, my main friend group was formed in high school and it was 100% maintained by me for over a decade. After I moved to away, it completely fell apart and don't even miss it anymore because of how frustrating it was; I had pretty much abandoned it before the move anyway.

Today, I have a considerably better friend group of solid guys with close and real friendships that I've been with since my early 20s, but we're now in our 30s and spread out across the country, two of them married (ugh), and so we don't see each other as much as of late. Just getting them to commit to our yearly week-long-get-together (typically backpacking at national parks) is difficult. Getting them to commit to a weekly or even monthly POKER session online has proved impossible. Staying in touch with each other can be spotty sometimes but most of us are making an effort to stay in touch with phone calls or group texts at least.

It's harder than ever to get friend groups to commit to regular social outings nowadays. So it gets tiring to expect people to stick to any kind of schedule you've alluded to and being forced to act as the glue that keeps the group together...but I guess someone has to do it and maybe there's a way to do it effectively.

Anyway, I'm not sure why this has happening, but I know I'm not alone, it was a persasive issue even before Covid. I don't even know what to call it, but everyone knows what I'm talking about.