Friendchazo
How to make new friends in your 30s
el flechazo: love at first sight (usually said of romantic partners but can also be said of things)
Fue un flechazo. - It was love at first sight.I want to make friends in Cádiz. Note how I couldn’t resist the urge to specify ‘in Cádiz’. Like I have to make clear that I am not a social outcast in the entire world but only in this specific city. I do have friends, they just live elsewhere. Okay, now that the social embarrassment safety rails are in place, on to the text.
One of my earliest memories is seeing my best friend for life for the first time. She was peaking at me from behind her mom’s legs as our mothers were signing us up to dance class. And that was that. Little did my four year-old self know that I would come to miss the ease with which my childhood friendships formed. They just happened.
Fast forward 30 odd years. After my move to Cádiz in early September, I found myself in somewhat of a no-friends-land. The local population was largely made up of 3 groups: 1) 20 year-olds running wild and free in Cádiz’ bars fresh at Uni or on their Erasmus exchange (I already felt too old for this when I was 20) 2) Expat American pensioners living like kings thanks to global income inequalities (I’m too young and outraged for this!) and 3) The rest: people my age who were still in Cádiz because they never left, started families of their own and are deeply embedded in their lifelong family and friendship circles (I’m too childless for this!). Add to this that I was neither going to an office, a university or anywhere else that would favour chance encounters and one thing became clear: Nothing would happen on the friendship front unless I made it so.
My initial search for friends in Cádiz followed an unnervingly romantic logic. Just as in my early dating days, I found it way easier to chat up people, who I knew would never be interested in me anyways. The shopkeeper, Rosa, who had no way of escaping my friendly (read: desperate) chatter. The couple of 17-year olds behind me in the queue to the Pilates class. In these interactions, I cunningly exaggerated the heavy lisp typical for the Spanish spoken in this region to convey that I wasn’t like the other expats just passing through for a few months of sunshine. As if my paleness and the fact that I towered over most people wasn’t enough of a giveaway. It was when a woman my age FLED (!!) from the movie theatre after I sat next to her at a film festival lest I should ask for her WhatZZZapp number, that I realised I needed to change strategy. Cádiz wasn’t ready for my cold-call, enunciation-challenged charm offensive.
If I wanted the slightest chance of becoming happier in Cádiz, I knew that resigning myself to solitude was not an option. Now I could cite a bunch of psychology and sociology studies whose insights have shaped how I think about this topic and say that they broadly all come to the same conclusion: ‘The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships’. There is not a set number of friends you need around to feel happy. It’s rather about whether the number and kinds of friends you have matches the friends that you would like to have, whatever that means for you. For most it means more than 0 though. However, whenever I read listen to a podcast about these studies, I actually think of an anecdote that drives home just how important friends are for my overall sense of self. Cue: ‘cheesy story time’!
I remember sitting in a pizza place with a friend a few years ago and being so absorbed in our conversation that I forgot everything: that I was hungry, that I needed to pee, that the restaurant staff wanted to close up. I don’t even remember what we were talking about but I do remember a feeling - as if my self was finally able to fully uncoil. Safe under the gaze of a friend who really saw me in all my periodically-petty, pseudo-philosophical, pizza-loving glory and gore. A self liberated from the shapes we push ourselves into when playing all sorts of roles all day long. Like pizza dough before it is backed! I live for moments like these!
I speak five languages but I am yet to find one that has the words to express the love I feel for my friends in those moments without feeding someone’s girl-on-girl fantasies or eliciting questions about the status of my romantic relationship. Newsflash: My boyfriend and girlfriends are not in competition! I am a better partner and friend because I have them ALL in my life. The title of this post, ‘Friendchazo’, is but a poor attempt of mine at making a word that somehow captures this strength of feeling. It combines the Spanish ‘flechazo’, based on the imagery of Cupid’s arrow (flecha) to describe the moment someone falls deeply and violently in love with someone, with the word ‘friend’. Let’s say it’s a work in progress.
Perhaps because of this lack of imaginative language, my next steps on the friendship hunt naturally took me to the least imaginative place of all: my phone’s app store. Unsurprisingly, there are 10 times more apps to find someone to fuck than to find someone to dissect the potential one-night stand’s mirror selfie with. In the end, the mere thought of making myself some friendship profile not only made me recoil but sent me right to the opposite end of the spectrum. I went analogue everybody! Thinking back to how I made friends in my childhood, a shared interest or activity was key. The heck! How hard could it be in a town of more than 100,000 people to find someone who shared my current obsession: speaking French. And so my Francophiles Club was born. Language clubs are great for finding friends because people literally sign up to talk to each other. I actually went to the print shop for this to make real-life copies of a lovingly designed poster. Proudly, I put up my wares (I guess me, in a way?) in local bookshops and cutsie cafes in my neighbourhood inviting fellow French lovers to meet me for French Walks & Talks at Cádiz’ Plaza de España.
Did I hang out by myself in the Plaza de España multiple afternoons as a result of this? Mais oui! This time, a book served as my social-outcast-insurance. There’s nothing that exudes a certain I-was-meant-to-sit-alone-on-this-bench-je-ne-sais-quoi like a hardcover book. But eventually, one stormy Friday afternoon Ana interrupted my reading. On an app, we definitely wouldn’t have swiped right (I literally had to Goolge just now, which side means Yes. Maybe I should befriend more 20-year-olds?!) on each other. I reckon 40 years of life experience separate us. But in real life, we somehow gel! So now I can’t write more, I’m about to head out to see her. À plus!
For those of you who are interested in the studies, here are a few podcast episodes I listened to recently that all build on the same 85-year-long Harvard study about what brings humans happiness:
The fact that people are not immediately taken by your persona when you chat them up, is nothing but baffling!
Wonderful piece <3