Good Friend or a Bad Friend? by Sam Cummings

Am I a good friend or a bad friend?

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Friends – I love them and I love the idea of friendships that are full and supportive. I have this dream where I’m 30-something [I already am 30-something but this is a dream so shhhh] and regularly meeting up with my pals for breakfast/lunch/movies/home hang outs and we spend hours just talking and bonding.

The thing is, this is only a dream and something I’m not sure I’ll ever attain.

“I have this dream where I’m 30-something and regularly meeting up with my pals.”

That sounds sad and defeatist but it’s partly my fault and partly the fault of life. Me? I’m kind of a hermit a lot of the time. I have a lot of projects and I’m selfish with my time. I like to stay in with my boyfriend and my dog and do my own thing. I shy away from going ‘out’ [bars etc] because I’m not into that anymore, but it seems like most people still enjoy standing in a crowd with drunk people? IDK, I’m over it but it means I’m cutting myself out of the social crowd sometimes.

And then there’s life. My closest friends all have their own lives, away from me. They’re carving out careers and we just don’t have time for each other, bar the times we meet up a few times a year. It’s great because everything is always the same but I also always go home feeling like we’re surface friends now.

“They’re carving out careers and we just don’t have time for each other, bar the times we meet up a few times a year.”

I don’t know what their daily lives are like, I don’t know who their other friends are, they don’t know what I do as a job [not really], they don’t ask about my writing [which is my main career goal but none of them have ever read any of my stuff]… The thing is, I can’t tell who is the bad friend? I want more from them, from every friendship I have, but should it be me trying to get more out of people? Shouldn’t it be effort on both sides?

The truth is I’ve always struggled with the friendship balance. I’ve always spread my attention over a lot of different groups and because of this they are all my friends but I’m not really one of their friends. I’m constantly passing from one group to another.

“I want more from them, from every friendship I have, but should it be me trying to get more out of people? Shouldn’t it be effort on both sides?”

I recently tried to start a weekly meet up with some creative friends I have – we’re always talking about getting together more to write/make stuff/ hang out but when I suggested doing just that on a weekly basis… no one turned up. So, even when I reach out and try to make an effort I’m still not living that dream I had.

I suppose the question is, do I give up? I enjoy being alone so maybe the dream has to remain a dream. I will just be the person people say ‘we need to meet up more’ to – because I invited them to my house but I’ve ‘still never been over to theirs’ [because I’ve never had the invite].

It really does seem defeatist but at 32 will I ever meet people who want to do the same things as me? Will I ever find that gang of cool people who will want to hang out?

The question still lingers in the back of my mind, even now – Am I a good friend, or a bad friend?

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Sam is a blogger, beagle owner and currently unpublished fiction writer living in Cheshire, UK. Check her out on Instagram @prettythoughtfulblog, Twitter @pthoughtfulblog, and visit her blog for more.