I Lack An Intuitive Concept of Friendship

Post Reply New Topic

I want a romantic/sexual partner. I don't feel a need to have friends who are just friends, although I'm willing to be "friends first" (meaning companionship without physical intimacy and monogamous commitment) to see if that friend becomes a partner.

I don't know what I would do with friends. The things people talk about doing with friends, I want to do those things with a girlfriend, plus have sex and commitment. It's difficult to imagine how just hanging out and talking with someone would be fulfilling long-term. If I like that person, I would want to have physical intimacy with her eventually and have her as a stable fixture in my life as well.

It seems like other people have separate friend feelings and romantic/sexual feelings, and separate standards for each type of relationship. I don't. When I like someone well enough to interact in a friendly way on a regular basis, I also like that person well enough to want to have sex and commitment with her. I can sometimes get some temporary enjoyment out of isolated "friendly" incidents, such as strangers striking up conversations with me, but I won't usually have a desire to experience that regularly, so I have no motivation to befriend them.

Maybe once or twice in my adult life, I've experienced what I assume was a friendship urge towards another person, a stranger who began talking to me (never anyone with whom I was in regular contact, and thus would have had a firmer basis upon which to initiate friendship) and it caught me completely off-guard and I think the feeling was kind of mixed up with physical attraction anyways.

As for the standards, if I ever wanted a friend, I expect that I would prefer the same personality characteristics that I want in a girlfriend. There are a group of traits that I think are indispensable parts of anyone with whom I am to interact successfully, and other traits don't matter very much.

Since I don't have separate friend feelings, I think that I don't have an intuitive concept of friendship.

To me it's the opposite. I don't want a sexual partner I don't see the point unless you want kids. I totally do not understand why people care because it's not like you will die without it.

I'm sure that you care about many things despite the fact that you won't die without those things, so you must at least understand the concept of wants that are not tied to bare survival, if not the specific allure of some of those wants.

Yeah I suppose your right. I'm just curious because the majority of people desire to sleep with someone but I don't and it's very odd to me.

You keep saying her. Do you identify as heterosexual if you're male, or homosexual if you're female? Sexually interested in only women?
In either way, if you want to experiment with feeling what "friendship" may mean to you, maybe try initiating one with a male? Then the element of sexual attraction may be absent, and you can focus on what you might be able to develop with that person when sex isn't on the cards.

I have exactly the same problem! I get tired of most people really quickly, unless I'm romantically interested in them. I wonder if more people are the same way, but just don't talk about it?

I wouldn't say I tire of people. I'm good at getting friends, I find talking with strangers is much easier than talking with someone I know, oddly enough. I just tend to lose them again relatively quickly. I also generally only have one friend at a time who I focus on. My record relationship is funny enough my boyfriend of six years.

I might be a bit of a hypocrite to say this but it's dangerous to want everything out of one relationship. One person shouldn't accommodate all needs of the other, it's not fair to expect everything of onever person. I tend to do this myself even though I know it's bad.

For me sex isnt a big part of my life, its geat but I dont need to use the rest of the day thinking about it. But I also know that it is one of the basic instincts on the same level as eating, drinking and sleeping, so of course people think a lot about it, how annoying it may be.

Why? Don't you think it depends on what a person wants, and how much of it?

Well, I suppose it does, but depending entirely on one person is dangerous, like putting all your eggs in one basket.

It's the expirience I've had that tell me that. If you only have one person, if that person dissappears, or you end up at odds with each other, you're on your own. It's better to have two or three, so if one can't help you others can. Unfortunately I still "put all eggs in one basket" as physicsnut42 so nicely put it, but I hope other people might learn from my bad behaviour, at least if I can't myself

I have the opposite concern: spreading my eggs around too many baskets. I don't think that I have the energy or motivation to maintain multiple relationships. I think that if I had a friend, I wouldn't interact with that friend much anymore after I'd got a girlfriend. I don't want to treat anyone that way, so I'm wary of friendship.

Maintaining more than one relationship is though yes, kind of why I keep ending up with just one friend, or at the moment only my boyfriend. But even though we share some interests and get along well, some things we just cant agree upon and share, so other friends that I can share those interests with would be nice.

I can relate very much to what you've posted starkid. When I had a girlfriend before it was great and I felt like I was done. I just needed that one person. One stop shop for friendship and intimacy. We've tried many times over the years but it never works out between us. After a few months I lose energy pretending and acting like a normal person and when I become more myself and interested in my special interests and wanting time to myself she gets upset and angry at me and it falls apart. I think she just wants someone super interested in her and really has no interest in me beyond how well i can roleplay a normal person for those first months. :/ Then it sucks losing your only friend and your girlfriend and your only connection to the social world and other people all in one go.

This has very much been my experience through life.