exemplarybehaviour:

luxtempestas:

snakegay:

luxtempestas:

friendships happen naturally, if you have to keep asking for somebody to be close to you chances are its not gonna work out

related- sending someone an ask saying “let’s be friends” is one of the worst possible ways to make friends and will probably just make them very uncomfortable and MAYBE will get you a forced pity response at most if they feel bad for you. Please don’t do that

im begging some of you to go outside

TIPS FOR MAKING FRIENDS—

1. Accept that not everyone is going to want to be your friend. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with YOU. Maybe they’re feeling stressed and don’t have the emotional energy. Maybe they just don’t like talking to strangers online. Maybe your schedules don’t match up so talking is difficult. Maybe they saw your ask and just didn’t have time/energy to respond to it. Maybe they just don’t feel like making new friends right now. Maybe you’re thirteen and they’re 22 and they’re trying not to be a creep. 

2. Understand boundaries. Saying very personal things (like joking about how you want to die) to strangers is usually bad. Asking super personal questions is usually bad. You’re not going to start off as a level 10 friend; you’re going to have to start as a level 1 acquaintance.
***IMPORTANT TO NOTE: different people are gonna have different boundaries, and you’re going to misjudge it occasionally. Social interaction takes practice. Scary, I know. 
***ADDITIONAL NOTE: Understand people interact differently with level 20 friends and level 2 acquaintances. Just because you see them teasing and joking around with some of their mutuals doesn’t mean they’re going to be okay with you also doing the same thing. 

3. Online, a good way to start talking to people is follow ups to things they’ve posted (ie, things they’ve shared with the world as information they’re willing to expose to randos). For example: “hi, i saw your post about macaroni art. do you have any tips about how to get bowtie pasta to stick?? mine keep falling off :(” OR “hey i just found your blog and ive never thought about professional macaroni art but it looks AMAZING. how long have you been doing it?” If the person reacts positively to this, you can follow up to it– “Hey, remember a few weeks ago when you gave me some tips on hot gluing glitter? Here’s the finished product! Have you been working on anything new?”

4. If the other person IS interested in talking to you (or strangers in general), you will be able to start a conversation that develops ~naturally~. I recently I found an old ask from a friend, back when we were only occasionally messaging each other, that said something like “I could rant about this for pages but I’ll spare you.” A year and many conversations later, my friend regularly sends me entire rant-essays. This is an example of leveling up in friendship. 

5. Being bitter because you feel entitled to another person’s friendship is… not going to make that person want to be friends with you. Friendship is a two-way street where you BOTH have to be considerate to each other’s feelings. If you’re overstepping boundaries with someone, you’re not being considerate of their feelings. If you feel like someone isn’t putting as much effort into a friendship as you, you can bring it up with them, but it might be that you just have to drop it.**
**If you’ve been friends for a long time you’re more likely to work out a problem like this; if it’s a recent friendship it’s probably a symptom that the relationship just isn’t going to work. 

6. You can’t really… just DECIDE to be friends with someone. A LOT of factors have to match up, depending on how much time and energy the both of you are willing to put into it (and you can’t really EXPECT people to want to put a lot of energy into a new friendship that may not work out). One time I asked a new guy in my lab if he wanted to go see some skeletons, and he looked at me with Deep Concern. Later I asked another person the same question and she was like HELL YEAH and we went together to see the skeleton display case in the biology department. The first interaction was a moment of “hm maybe we’re not cut out to be friends,” while the second one was a moment of “oh cool, shared interest!!” Later, I noticed the skeleton-hater playing Pokemon Go, and we ended up going to fight a gym together. Then he transferred to another lab and I haven’t seen him since. So, friendship failed due to differences in schedules. You’re not always going to be successful on your first try, and sometimes you’ll have an opportunity to try again, but sometimes you just gotta let people go.