I’ve noticed a pattern in my friendships that I’m struggling with, and I’d love to hear other people’s perspectives.
Whenever I suggest something I genuinely want to do with friends, the plans always get changed around — often to fit schedules or budgets — until they no longer resemble what I originally suggested. By the time we meet up, I usually don’t enjoy the activity itself, though I still value being with my friends.
This cycle tends to repeat:
I suggest something → it gets reshaped into something I don’t want → we meet up but I’m bored/miserable → then we don’t talk for 6–12 months until someone breaks the silence.
Recently, I’ve made a change: I started doing the things I enjoy on my own, without waiting for friends. For the first time, I’ve actually been happy doing what I love — but it also means I’m doing them alone.
Part of why I’m trying this is because I’ve lost friends in the past from being visibly miserable all the time when I adapted to things I didn’t actually like. Honestly, it feels like for most of my life I never really chose my friends — I just adapted to the people around me. Now, I’d really like to choose friends who genuinely align with what I enjoy.
So here’s my question: Is it wrong to want to choose my friends? How do you balance doing what makes you happy with maintaining friendships, especially if your happiness and your current friend group don’t line up?
Any thoughts, advice, or personal experiences would be really helpful.
ai disclaimer
I’m going through a lot and instead of just dumping my feelings here I thought it would make more sense to have Chatgpt handle it.
Here’s the source chat but if you want to cite my words I’d prefer you just cite my post instead.
Regardless I stand behind Chatgpt’s output as my own words and am accountable for it as though I wrote it.
You could try “I’m going to do this thing on this day. If you would like to join me, I’ll be there at this time. Let me know if you’re coming by (RSVP date) so that I can book you a spot/plate/room: it will be $this much.” And then make your plans and do them anyway.
This way it’s clear that you are doing the thing. If people say “can we do this or this instead?” you reply with “Hey, great idea! Maybe next time. I’ve already planned the other thing for this time.”
Sometimes it will be on your own. Sometimes others will want to join you. Sometimes you can join others on their quests, too, but remember to not try and change their plans to suit yourself.
You could try “I’m going to do this thing on this day. If you would like to join me, I’ll be there at this time. Let me know if you’re coming by (RSVP date) so that I can book you a spot/plate/room: it will be $this much.” And then make your plans and do them anyway.
I thought alot about doing this but I cannot wrap my head around how to actually do that? Like ok I’m gonna try to express some of my mental blocks I have right now:
- I feel rude, I feel like I’m bragging to my friends that I’m doing stuff I know they just won’t do
- If I did this then I’d have to plan for the real possibility of doing an activity alone, that’s gonna bias me towards doing things that might be less social than if I was picking things to do at random
- If I do this than how do I know if I’m being too inflexible when my friends want to make changes? In the past year I tried litterally letting go of everything and just going with the flow for a year straight and I made friends who deep down I don’t think I like, while doing things that were objectivily painful (that is a seperate thing I’m working on I need to excersise more lol). There has to be some sort of goal/point/reason to hanging out with friends and if that is nothing more or less than “I feel good when I’m with my friends” then what do I do when I don’t feel good? Do I change what it takes for me to feel good or do I change my friends?
Wow tying that last bullet point really coalesed what I wanted to ask in this post, thank you <3
making a decision and having an opinion is not rude. And actually, often people are glad that you’ve removed the mental labor and discussion.
It isn’t rude to tell people that you’re doing an activity and that you’re open to having company.
As for being inflexible, you’re doing an activity and inviting people, not finding something to do with people. If they want to do something else, plan to do that a different day, because you’ve already made plans.
I always appreciated being in the receiving end of such plans. It takes a lot of the thought out and I just need to figure out how to make the schedule. Fwiw it also makes the yes/no decision easier.
An additional reason I don’t like making plans like that is I like to think I do things on impulse. In reality I have to admit I often don’t do anything so the gift of someone making plans is appreciated even if I grumble a bit.
Instead of making plans with friends, plan your activity and invite friends. If you’re the defining factor, and plan your activity as it is, others may join or not.
The fewer people you involve, the more stable the plan will be as well.
Sounds like you’re meeting up with big groups and many people pulling different directions? Try smaller meetings.
it gets reshaped into something I don’t want
It is bizarre that this happens so regularly to you. Could you go into detail, like at least 3 examples of this? What’s going on?
HUGE CONFOUNDING VARIABLE
I am diagnosed with OCD,
That being said I still assert that the changes made are sevear enough that anyone would agree that two plans are not similar:
I summarized a list of ideas for things to do in this comment but this list is a subset of a much larger more specific list (I don’t want to share) so let’s keep using it.
There was a time where I had no idea if I did or did not like any of these activities and wanted to find out if I did and it did not make sense to me to do these activities alone when I can ask friends to come with me because any friend can text me “why didn’t you invite me I would have liked to come”:
- Luxury spas => hang out in a cold basement with candles and facemasks and phone playing
- Guided tours => their average opinion of the concept was negative, I didn’t have the energy to go do that by myself so I just didn’t
- Bar standing => we got older I thought we should try more mature things, they disagreed
- Board games => this was the only plan that stuck, problem is I’m a goal oriented person by nature, even video games don’t intrest me as much as writing code does. I used to be a senior redstone developer in minecraft
- Movies => I don’t really have much free time to discover movies I like enough that I my friends would like too, I mean I’ll find movies that I like but there’s no guarentee that it would be something they like. So when they want to watch a movie (usually at home) they’d default pick the most popular one and when I offer an alternative I get shot down. I watched the MCU series and I don’t like it. I don’t hate it but I wished I had watched other movies
- Shopping => my friends are either broke or paying nyc rent. I guess the world sucks too much anyways and shopping as a friends thing is gone anyways
- Museum standing => my whole body hurts if I stand for >40 mins… I timed it… after 15mins I start walking funny… after 30mins I struggle to hold my head up… if I get dehydrated I loose the ability to banter or be funny. I slowly decay into an unpleasent person and there’s nothing I can do about it
In summary:
me: “Hey let’s do anything”
most of the friends I had: “Come to my apartment”
I know I’m not blowing this out of proportions. I’m alittle more sensitive then the average person and I can compensate for that but what do I do if my limits perclude me from doing things with friends.
inb4 “it sounds like your friends are lame” what are normal people such that they are not like the friends I’ve had??
Apologies in advance if you are disabled, but if you can’t stand for 40 minutes+ then I think the first thing to work on is your endurance. Even if it doesn’t lead to more hang time with your friends, it will be rewarding for you and probably mitigate the chance of early death.
the first thing to work on is your endurance.
Incorrect: the very first thing to investigate is the shoes that @danhab99@programming.dev wears. Correct footwear is a game-changer in one’s ability to stay on one’s feet for hours. 40 min doesn’t sound like just a standing issue, but rather that his insoles may not be contouring where his feet actually apply pressure. Some stores make custom insoles just for this purpose. There are also numerous shoe brands out there that look good but feel bad to wear. I would ask what brand of shoes he’s wearing.
I bought these 3 weeks ago bc my chiropractor recommended, the Atrex insoles are also really nice. I’ve been walking better and maybe I can stand for >1 hr now ¯\(ツ)/¯
Edit: meant to write “chiropractor” instead of therapist
Interesting, thanks, so New Balance 9060 + Aetrex insoles; I may follow suit myself! By the way, you dropped this:
\(to properly type out that emoticon in markdown, you must use\\\instead of\, since one alone will act as an “escape character” instead of a literal character to be printed).
but if you can’t stand for 40 minutes+ then I think the first thing to work on is your endurance
I am not disabled, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to stand for 40 mins, or do 10 pushups, or lift myself over a wall, or carry someone my exact weight a distance of idk 60m??? Why shoudn’t I beable to do these things?? Ok, thank you for helping me type this
Everything but that last one is within your reach. I weigh 180 pounds but there is no chance I could carry someone the same weight 60 meters, and I consider myself in decent shape.
I just did some work with a tool that weighs 70 pounds and i can barely lift it into a truck.
Thanks for the reference point, I weigh about the same so I guess I don’t have to be able to carry a person
what are normal people such that they are not like the friends I’ve had??
It does not matter if you have OCD or not; these people seem to consistently not care about your suggestions. If I tell my friends, “I really wanna play Space Base,” then we make it happen.
These people sound like the type who would not check up on you if you just suddenly stopped responding, and those are not friends. I would try to make new friends elsewhere… Sorry!
One thing every other comment has failed to mention is that, to be comfortable around other people, you must first be comfortable with yourself fully. And, because of that, I recommend you keep doing activities by yourself, and try new things by yourself, at least at first. Discover who you actually want to be, while still respecting everyone’s freedom, including your own.
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Make friends with people who also love what you love?
I’ve learned that it’s important to spent time on my interests, and it’s important to spend time on my friends, but trying to do both at once sometimes cheapens both.
I’d suggest scheduling just chill hangouts with friends, and keep doing the wild things they can’t afford by yourself.
No, it isn’t wrong to want to choose your friends based on your hobbies. It’s healthy. Sure, you will need some flexibility. It can’t all be your way all the time. But generally you want friends who enjoy the same activities and “things” you do. You want enough similarities to have stuff to do and talk about, but enough differences that you aren’t just repeating the same things to each other.
And as with most relationships, a small handful of great ones can sustain us for longer and more deeply than a deluge of shallow and circumstantial ones.
This is very normal. Especially if you don’t have kids and some of your friends do, or if your work schedule isn’t a standard 9 to 5 and all your friends are on that. Once your group gets bigger than 5 or 6 people, coordinating schedules is basically impossible.
Don’t take it personally. It’s likely nothing about trying to change your plans, but rather just trying to find some middle ground in the plans that works for everyone. Don’t set your own expectations so high that anything that isn’t perfect leaves you miserable.
You have 2 options: 1) As mentioned, just say at this time in this day you’re doing something and anyone who wants to join is free to do so, knowing full well that some people will feel FOMO. 2) Try and do something and be fine with the plans changing to get the larger group, because that’s the point, not the activity itself.
I am mostly unsure about what you consider friendship. From your description, they are a (big?) group of people that you meet once or twice a year and when you do you don’t enjoy it. At most, I would consider them acquaintances.
Try looking for connections in groups that tailor towards what you like. Join meetups and such on topics of your interest and try to scout for interesting people in there.
they are a (big?) 2 group of people that you meet once or twice a year and when you do you don’t enjoy it
That is what it has been recently. Prior to that it has been gigantic groups of which I belonged to a subset of 2~6 outcasted people who usually represented 90% of my awareness of the rest of the group.
I know why I was an outcast for most of my youth, I’ve fixed that.
At most, I would consider them acquaintances.
That’s the thing, those two were the people who I feel like I had the deepest connection with ever. They were there when most of my support circle went away and I think I even had a crush on one of them. But the thing is that I realized that my relationship with the one I had a crush on was completely my own projection who I objectivly know very little about and the other one was a semi transactional relationship. Was any of it ever real?
Join meetups
The meetup app has gone downhill hard in NYC, I’ve just about given up on it
such on topics of your interest and try to scout for interesting people in there
:+1:
they are a
(big?)2 group of people that you meet once or twice a year and when you do you don’t enjoy it
I don’t have any shared hobbies or interests with any of my friends (and very few with my wife!) besides going somewhere, putting things in our mouths and yapping the day/night away. Idk, it never felt weird to me, but I might just be a bit of a boring guy since I mostly like reading, talking (IRL and online) and playing single-player videogames so it all fits for me?
going somewhere, putting things in our mouths and yapping the day/night away
I fucking hate that this is all that I have. I am so dry and 2 dimentional, I’m litterally just
[ Gay, Linux ]. I’m searching so fucking hard for more
I started doing things that I want, and if others join me, thats awesome, if noone comes along I’ll just go alone. I’ve met a lot of new people this way and it has worked wonders on my social skills.
It allows me to get a lot of new experiences without the hassle of having some miserable being tagging along. And it gives me interesting stories to tell when I meet up with my long time friends. Some of them even want to join some of my adventures.
I started doing things that I want, and if others join me, thats awesome, if noone comes along I’ll just go alone.
Nobody knows what I do… that means I should post it on instagram but how does that help when I posted something in the past? I could post it in advance?? That feels rude!!!.
What are these “friends” of which you speak?
“Friends” are characterised as individual’s not related by any other recognizable class of relation who convert your time and attention into enrichment and fulfillment while also providing you with an optional datum point for regulating yourself (am I too far behind the people who I like for making good choices, do I have habits or addicitons that I don’t know are toxic and I need to see if other people are like this too so I can tell if I’m normal, do I like my definition of normal if not then should I find different friends who might be an environment where I can be a different normal?)
I think it’s a television show
It would be helpful to have an example (or more) of what you suggested and what ended up happening.
Other people have good advice, but I’m wondering if you are planning things which are a bit niche, or if your friends have strange interests, or if you find it difficult to enjoy normal activities.
There are lots of activities that people do that I’m not that interested in, but I’ll go along anyway and still have a good time - it wouldn’t be my first choice, and I’d be annoyed if my plans always got taken over in favour of them, but I wouldn’t be “visibly miserable” doing something like this: for example, one time we ended up going out for “electric shuffle” (just shuffleboard which is electronically scored) which is pretty expensive for what it is, but whatever. The main attraction is being with friends and interacting, anyway.
I remember one time I planned a cycling trip and everyone I invited ended up doing something else (I can’t remember what, but I remember distinctly it being something they could have done on any weekend). I was a bit miserable at that but still had a good time on my own.
Listed some of it in this comment: https://programming.dev/post/37296315/19332878
but I’m wondering if you are planning things which are a bit niche
There was variaty. I strived to recommend varying levels of specificity in the plans, anywhere from requiring tickets to just going to the park bc I’m sick of being inside.
It does sound like a good variety and not overly niche. I host a film night and we rotate who picks the film with the idea of bringing a mixture of ideas. It works a lot better than all trying to agree on something IMO.
I think your difficulty standing could be something to work on. Standing isn’t comfortable for anyone, but I think most people can stand comfortably for longer than you describe, so perhaps you can build up your strength, or perhaps you have a mild disability and would benefit from something to lean on. That might open up some of the opportunities you talk about.
I see a connection between several of the things you said that your friends don’t want to do expensive stuff. That is a common source of difficulty in friend groups, but there are lots of ideas for cheap or free days out - I’d start with walking. It’s also something that, for me at least, is something I’m very happy to do by myself and be alone with my thoughts, so I can always say, “I’m going for a walk around X on Y, anyone want to come with? I can pick you up at Z” or whatever.
