Making friends. Again.

I need to learn how to make friends.

I mean, I need to learn how to make friends again.

Growing up, I learned how to make friends as a kid. I learned how to interact with classmates at recess, and how to find a spot at the lunch table. Despite not being familiar with all of the Spice Girls, I learned how to handle fourth-grade birthday parties and later, slumber parties. I had friends at school and friends (well, cousins) to play with at home. Friends were everywhere I went. The same continued to be true in high school and college. I lived with friends. I lunched with friends. I studied with friends.

But then I graduated. When I moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Charlotte, graduate school was my job. I had three courses that met once a week, typically in the early evenings. My classmates were for the most part older than me. They already had established lives, many of them with full-time jobs and families of their own. They weren't looking for new friends.

See, all of my life until then, friendships had been fairly easy. Everyone needed the people around them to fulfill their need for friendship. This peaked in college, where we were all in the middle of cornfields and couldn't go anywhere else but campus for entertainment.

One of the things I am realizing, though, is that my perception of adults not looking for new friends is inaccurate. Many adults, even those who are married with kids, do not have a strong group of friends. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that many of them feel the same way as I do. They're looking for friendships, but just haven't learned how to make friends again. They're making the same assumption about me as I make about them.

But making friends as an adult is different, and in my experience, much more difficult. I'm still learning how to do it.

I read an article recently that explained key factors in forming friendships. Here's what I remember:

• friendships form from seeing another person on a regular basis, especially if it's a natural occurrence and you don't have to schedule to meet-up
• friendships form after spending a significant amount of time with another person
• friendships form as a result of confiding in another person
• friendships form as a result of asking another person for help

So, with these in mind, I'm going to be a bit more intentional about making friends. And since I often struggle with those last two things, I'm going to need practice.


Is anyone else learning how to make friends again? Do you have specific tips on how to do so? If you're in the same boat as me, I'd encourage you to intentionally seek out new friends with me.

Change the channel.

With access to both Hulu Plus and Netflix, I can watch almost any television show I want. Not only that, but I can watch episodes back-to-back without (many) commercials at any time. All I need to do is press play.

But I've found with the availability and ease of watching television, my standards have dropped. Growing up, there were only a couple shows per television season that had an on-going plot, and they only came on once a week. So, every Friday night my family would all sit down for one hour to watch Diagnosis Murder. These days it isn't unusual for my family to all sit down in the living room and plug-in to laptops and iPads to watch whatever show we're currently consuming. Mom can watch her cooking shows while Konni watches teen drama and Dad watches the Tour de France. And as I have begun to watch television series alone, I have been faced with decisions to make about where my standards are.

Here are some of the reasons I have skipped over or quit watching certain TV shows:

• Offensive language. This one is fairly simple. The more you hear words spoken, the more likely you are to think them or speak them. I don't want to subject myself to thinking or speaking offensive language.

• Violence. This is both a moral stance and personal preference. Not only do I not want to be de-sensitized to physical harm, but my stomach can't handle it either. Don't get me wrong, though. I can (and do) watch murder mystery shows. For some reason, I can stomach the gruesome body parts and autopsy scenes, but the actual acts of violence require a hand over my eyes or a quick turn-of-the-head.

• Characters with bad characters. Unlike the previous reasons, this one is harder to detect without actually watching some episodes. I tried watching Breaking Bad because I had seen lots of facebook friends post about it and knew that some respectable friends enjoyed it. But I only made it through three full episodes, and I regret the last two. Before watching, I was under the impression that the main character felt forced to supplement his chemistry teacher salary by making and selling meth in order to care for his family. As I watched, the main character made poor decisions and performed morally atrocious acts. I watched two more episodes hoping that the character would repent or redeem himself, but his moral character just got worse. I cannot continue to watch shows in which the main character the audience is supposed to "get-to-know" is someone I can't learn something from or shouldn't hang-out with.

• Glorified immorality. This is somewhat different than characters with bad characters. In Breaking Bad, the main character's immorality wasn't glorified. Here I'm talking about shows that manipulate the audience to desire its characters to engage in immoral behavior. The characters might otherwise be kind, generous, honest, and loving, but their immorality is portrayed as both understandable AND desirable. For example, I have seen a few shows recently in which a main character is in a "loveless marriage" and finds an attractive friend of the opposite sex who "understands them." These shows get their audiences to want the main character to have an affair. It is one thing for a show to depict an immoral behavior as acceptable, but I cannot tolerate a show to depict an immoral behavior as desirable. This is the reason I didn't make it very far in Nashville or Scandal.

And here are some things I watch, but need further thought:

• Homosexual relationships. I still watch because I also watch shows in which the audience is expected to approve of characters' pre-marital sex. I figure if my standards allow the implication of acceptable pre-marital sex it should also allow the implication of homosexual sex. I'm still thinking about whether I should watch this because at least the pre-marital sex is between a man and a woman the way God created sex to be. Homosexual relationships are an even further distortion of God's intention. The only show this calls into question for me is Modern Family, so not much is at stake.
• Reality dating shows, aka The Bachelor. Okay. This one isn't as relevant to me anymore because I gave up this show a few seasons ago. But I gave it up because my TV preferences matured, not necessarily because it fell below my standards. I watched for the awkward dates, romance, and drama. I question whether I should have been watching at all because of the immodesty, sexism, and horrible example it is for real relationships. Yet, it didn't seem terribly harmful to my psychology and I know many mature Christian women who enjoy the show. So I'm still wondering about this one.

Do you ever change the channel for moral reasons? What makes you change the channel? Is there something I forgot to list or that I should think about including? What is right on the line for you? I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this as I continue to think about it myself.