The Boy Looking for Friends

Re: Good evening!

Do you have any interest in making new friends? I'm not currently looking to date, but I get the impression we might have a lot of fun together.

You have many interests but you must choose between them when you decide what to do with your weekends and such. What to you tend to do most frequently? What do you wish you did most frequently?

Feel free to write back and we can swap contact info if you'd like to chat. Hope to hear from you soon!

What are you doing on an internet dating site if you don’t want to date? Oh, wait. Not currently looking to date. Got it. I’m guessing recent breakup or wanting to play the field without having to endure the high-pressure situation of The Date. Which, if you want to meet people through the internet, is impossible to avoid.

But all of that is irrelevant. The answer to his first question is no: I don’t have any interest in making new friends.

I know this makes me sound like an asshole. What kind of shallow person am I that I would go on a date with someone but not hang out with them as a friend? “It’s all or nothing, baby! I want to know that at the end of the day I either get to turn you down or sleep with you!”

Here’s why it’s true: I’ve got friends. Fantastic friends. Oodles of ‘em. There aren’t enough days in the week to hang out with all the amazing peeps that I got. Okay, I just learned that I can’t get away with saying “peeps.” But you get my point. Why would I go out looking to add people to this list?

I would absolutely make room for somebody fabulous. And who can tell? This guy might be fabulous and I would want to make room for him as a friend. But the only way I’m going to find that out is if we meet in some situation where we are both allowed to determine if we like each other. A situation like, say, over coffee. Or dinner. Or taking a walk on a fall day with the leaves crunching beneath our feet...

It's not like we can just hope that we end up being assigned to the same homeroom. Ask a mutual friend to invite us to the same dinner party. Wait outside the other person's door and then "accidentally" run into them. That seemed to stop happening to me when I took my home address off of my profile...hmm...

You can take smooching off the table, but if we're going to meet, we cannot avoid The Date.