You Don't Need More Friends

Society is trying to pressure you into thinking you need more friends. You don't. You need friendship minimalism.

Folks, it’s purge season. 

Society is trying to pressure you into thinking you need more friends. You don't. You need friendship minimalism.

This is your reminder to wipe the dust from those boundaries you set up but never actually placed in action. Society tricked you into thinking you need hordes of friends, so you tolerate things from people who use your kindness, empathy, and vulnerability to exploit you and have leverage over you to feel better about their own desolate lives.

Every time you feel tired, anxious, or overwhelmed, your first instinct is thinking you need a break from social media, the big city, or hard work. No, you don’t. You need a break from people.

You need friendship minimalism.

But society will tell you the opposite: 

“You need more friends.”

“You need to open up more to get new friends.”

“You need to show your vulnerability to people, that’s how you get stronger friendships.”

All that advice is the safest way to the highest levels of toxicity you can subject yourself to. You don’t need to show your vulnerability to anyone but your family members if you chose to, and your therapist. The latter is trained to help you. And won’t badmouth you. Most of your friends don’t even want to listen to you, they just wait until you finish baring your soul to them so they can force their worldview on you, and list all the ways how you should think like them, be more like them.

It leads to nowhere, and definitely not towards the solution you’re looking for. If anything, you’ll feel worse than you felt before you reached out to them.

While I was working on this article, I got a notification for an article by my favorite online scribe - Jessica Wildfire. Is it possible we’re all on this subject? Someone else is wondering about this? Doubting the friendship construct? Is it that kind of springtime?

It’s a purge season, I tell ya.

In her article, Jessica writes - 

“The social pressure to make friends got me into more trouble than it ever helped me. It lured me into toxic relationships. In all honesty, I’ve never found anyone who actually listened to my unfiltered thoughts or let my soul breathe. I can’t be completely myself around anyone, not even my spouse.

Maybe the expectation itself simply sets us up for failure. Maybe we’re not supposed to do that. Maybe it’s a myth.

I don’t need friends. I just need people to be decent toward me. That would help me out a lot. When I look at my darkest moments, it wasn’t a close friend who helped me through. It was art. It was music. It was reading. It was the ability to sit alone quietly with my thoughts. It was my capacity for solitude.”

You might feel these words are harsh, and how I can possibly suggest not having any friends. For starters, I’m not suggesting not having friends; I’m suggesting minimalism when it comes to friends. I’m suggesting you don’t get pressured by society to open up to people whose style of friendship is superficial and exploitative. If you stay with me to the end of this article, I’ll break it all down for you. And for myself too, believe me, I need this lesson, more than you do.

Let’s examine how the construct of friendship is shown down our throats, daily. Generic, one size fits all.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few months about something called a “Friend Recession”. Experts say we are in it, and more so after the pandemic. Psychologist Marisa G. Franco, the author of Platonic, explains it:

“The issue we are seeing now is something called ‘learned loneliness’ — people have adjusted to isolation. It’s not that they have gone off socializing, it’s that they have learned to live with an unfulfilled need. A recent study from Pew Research showed that 35% of people feel that socializing is less important than it was before the pandemic.

For example, one symptom of loneliness is that you’re in a bad mood for [what you believe is] no reason [when really, a lack of social interaction is the cause]. … Ironically, loneliness makes us withdraw and perceive other people as threatening. We devalue how important connection is, we choose not to depend on other people, which makes us more lonely. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Vicious?

I think learned loneliness is literally the best thing that could happen to us. Don’t let the word loneliness scare you, it basically just means solitude. And learning how to be content in solitude is a skill much more important than collecting random people around you who don’t really care about your wellbeing. Nothing bad ever happened to you when you were on your own.

There was another video being shared around, also touching on a subject of a “Friend Recession”. The seriousness of these people discussing this “phenomenon” makes me think I’m listening to a speech about the great famine and not a made-up construct.

In this video, named “The Friendship Recession”, a guy named Richard Reeves tells us, right at the first minute of the video: “Study suggests that being without a close friend, being lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day”. He goes on to give you advice on how to make friends, the main suggestion being - make yourself more vulnerable to people.

Let's see; when I made myself vulnerable to people and told them I’m not doing well, one jumped to help me only to lie to me about the job she hired me for, blamed me for all her incompetence, and when I discovered her life (and her “business”) is all but a smokescreen, she trashed me to all of our mutual friends.

Another one, she offered to help me when I was between jobs only to throw me out on the street the night after a house party when her male friends gave me a bit more attention than her (new person in the circle, nothing epochal about it).

Another insisted to help me with something I never even asked for (I want to make your life better) then turned around telling a mutual friend I’m “torturing her and asking things of her”.

Another blamed me for her boyfriend leaving her, because I was at the same event as him a week prior (I exchanged one courtesy sentence with him, and did not see him all night), without ever having a conversation with me, blocked my number and trashed me to our friend group.

Another one, when I asked her not to talk to me in a certain tone and not give me advice I don’t ask for, she told me that never happened and I’m gaslighting her.

Imagine telling someone that something they say is hurtful to you and they tell you - that never happened, I didn’t do that, you are gaslighting me.

Be vulnerable they say.

Imagine if I opened up to a therapist, instead of all these people? This caused me years and years of hurt, pain, frustration - because someone told us we should show our vulnerability to “friends”.

Friends have been bad for my health.

I’m sure you can continue this series with tons of similar stories, from your own experience. I know you have them too since many of you DM me about it.

Jessica, again, thinks very similarly to me. In her article, interestingly called “Maybe You Don’t Need a Friend. Maybe You Need Something Else”- she says:

“In fact, I’m starting to wonder if “friendship” itself is a neurotypical construct, something forced on people like me. Maybe the entire western cultural construct of friendship needs to change.”

The groups that are trying to convince us “loneliness” is bad for us and leads to sickness and death (puh-lease) keep forgetting - we are living in a neuro-diverse society. One size fits all does not work anymore.

I don’t have enough paper here to count all the people that I’ve tried to explain this to - I’m neuro-diverse, I’m bothered with loud repetitive noise, the sound of loud TV for hours on end, talking on the phone for hours next to me, listening to your shit next to me without AirPods; do you know how many people accommodated me, understood this, and tried not to do it around me? TWO.

In fact, many did it on purpose, after I told them while trying to convince me I invented this. That’s when don’t say: “Go for a walk, drink a glass of water, it’ll pass.”

Jessica feels me on this one too. She continues:

“Some of us made ourselves vulnerable time and again. It only got us hurt, physically or emotionally. It’s not our job to find the energy (or bad judgment) to do that again. Maybe it’s the job of society, specifically the 70 percent who keep making our lives difficult, to show that they’re ready for our vulnerability. Maybe they need to go first for once”.

You know who helped me in life? Strangers. You know who treated me with dignity? People I barely know. You know who understood my noise issues and did everything to make it easier for me? A guy I’ve seen twice in the past 20 years. People I barely knew showed me kindness my friends didn’t.

The woman I met online, and never saw in person, still haven’t, became my very best friend and support in the last 2 years. We talk smack daily and she never judged me or told anyone my secrets, mind you - you can make money by telling my secrets. Every time we feel bad, me or her, we go online and talk back and forth, exchange ideas, support and boost each other - this woman saved my sanity in the midst of my real-life friends’ sociopathy.

I’m not advocating - don’t have any friends. I’m advocating, I say it for the third time, to you and to myself - friendship minimalism.

I don’t need friends. I need nice, thoughtful, decent people. I don’t need to be extremely close to anyone, I just need to respect people and have them respect me back.

I need people with the same interests. I need people to inspire me, teach me, support my work, share this article when you read it, buy a sweatshirt or a bag I make. Send me a link for your business and tell me how I can support you.

You know who always shares my articles online? People I have never met in my life. People I’ve known for 20 years so far shared - 0 articles.

You know what I don’t need in my life? People telling me how I should live, and when I should go to sleep, and the ones who ask me why am I up so late, with 7 question marks, like being up late is an offense that warrants that level of shock. People are shooting people in the face that enter their driveway by mistake, and someone being up at 2 am shocks you? And you need to share that with me?

I’m sick of ADVICE CULTURE.

It’s infuriating!

You tell your friend one sentence about something you’re trying to do, and within a second - in follows: “You SHOULD do this, and you MUST do this, and I mean I DO IT that way”; unsolicited pieces of advice ALWAYS come from people that did the least with their lives. As if telling you how you should do something makes them feel better about their own failures, for a few minutes of talking to you.

It’s damaging. It’s unnecessary.

Why do you think I want to know how YOU do things?

Interestingly enough, successful, accomplished people NEVER tell you what you should be and how you should live, and when you need to sleep.

It’s fascinating to me, people not being able to have a conversation about anything without telling you how they do something and what you should do. I so far know two people who have never done it: one friend, and my sister.

It’s exhausting.

Mass, horde mentality, those are the ones who always have a lil advice to share with you. You literally can not utter a sentence without having - you should and you need punching you back in your face.

Learned loneliness, the one we honed during the pandemic, it’s life-saving.

You think you should take advice on friendship from people who can’t be alone for 15 minutes? People who need a large social circle and many friends clearly aren’t fond of their own company. You are taking advice from people who can’t even stand themself?

Those people, mostly girls who move in hordes and are proud of their 20 + year old friendships? It’s laughable to me, thinking that’s an accomplishment.

Boundaries always go hand in hand with the word - rude. Every time you insist on some boundaries, you are clear, honest, and direct about it, people call you rude. You know what, I’m also sick of rude.

Rude is a non-starter. It doesn’t exist. Rude is just a word people call you when you dared to call them out on their bullshit. People calling people rude - are rude.

Jessica again: “Maybe I can go out for coffee with someone or work on a project with them without having to classify them as one thing or another. Maybe I don’t even need to be especially nice to people who tell me to smile, or insist that there’s something wrong with me because I see the world differently from them. Maybe I can be a little rude to them. Maybe they deserve it.”

My sister is an impressive human being. She has no friends. She has many people who love her and appreciate her and regard her with the highest respect, everywhere she goes people want to sit down with her, have coffee with her, have food with her. But she doesn’t have a horde of friends she grew up with that she’s in touch with over the years, she has a husband who has her best interest at heart, and she’s feared and respected by the rest. Not once in my life have I heard any grief about a friend, coming out of her mouth. This woman truly broke the code, she’s so socially smart, I can only strive to finally learn it one day.

Friendship as a construct needs to change. So far it’s people who wake up early and go to bed early, have steady mundane jobs, and an apartment - who don’t have the depth to understand not everyone has the same path, neurological system, opportunities, or interests. Some people want more, or something different, and need more time to get there

These are the worst kind of people in my opinion, one size fits all I call them, thinking they’re morally superior to other people who are different then them, who, when you try to confide in them or tell them you’re hurt or ask for help - don’t really hear you, and are just waiting to tell you how you SHOULD do it, and what you NEED to be. Those are the people who are trying to implement their way of life on you, and their thinking; the ones who use every vulnerable information you gave them in the past to judge you and belittle you.

Who needs that?

That construct is over for me.

I don’t need friends, I need people without judgments in their hearts, the same offer I extend to them, who will respect our different lifestyles, not try to impose their lifestyle or thinking on me, and will hear you when you tell them something that bothers you.

And you don’t need it either.

Folks, it’s purge season.

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