meat: View

Looking For?

This month our man in Wales is looking for friends and maybe even 'friends'.

Meeting people as an adult is tricky. It’s not like at school where you can just go over to someone, compliment them on their toy Triceratops and get invited home for chicken nuggets; it’s hard. Add in the complexity of also wanting to meet people you wouldn’t mind taking your clothes off with and it gets even harder.

When we moved to Wales, one of the things we said we definitely wanted to do was to meet new people and make new friends. Some friends to just be friends, and then some friends where we’d be friends who drop their drawers after dessert. That was the aim anyway, but the reality of trying to make that happen has been tricky at best.

The plethora of apps and websites available now to find a mix of fun'n'friendship should make it easier, but each of them seems to come with its own quirks and user-types. You get the no-faces, the just-bum-photos folks, the 'everything is acronymed' chatters - wuut? And don't get me wrong, everyone's entitled to be searching for whatever suits them best, of course - but it gets confusing when you chat to someone who seemingly wants exactly the same things, loads in common, great chat ... only for them to ghost you when you mention in passing that you don't enjoy having your nipples clamped* (*insert sexual activity of choice here). But I thought you wanted to be friends? Can't we do that without getting clampy with it? No? And then at the opposite end of the scale you have people you chat with who seem dead keen on the genuine friendship angle, but have no photos, no socials, no details - and when they do finally send you a picture it looks like a blurry print-out you would have picked up from the Kodak counter about 30 years ago.  And if you've got anxiety to the levels I have, at that stage you're already picturing yourself as the subject of a Netflix limited series about your mysterious disappearance. 

And then on the ‘literally just friends’ front, there's no apps for that - so I’m now at the point where I’m bordering on being creepy. I take myself to a co-working space some days to get out of the house, and every time I do I see some of the same people there. Now I'm finding myself doing things like bobbing around trying to make eye-contact when they come back to their desk with a coffee, or pointedly stretching and sighing loudly in the hope that someone might ask what's up. I know that's mad, no need to tell me, but we are where we are at this stage. The other week a woman asked me to mind her stuff whilst she nipped to the loo, I got so excited I actually leapt up in my seat - that stuff got so well minded, you don't even know. When she returned I was fizzing with anticipation of further chat, but alas no. 

So yeah, not a tonne of progress on either front there, but I'll keep at it. I'm nothing if not determined. The next time you hear someone sighing loudly, have a look - it could well be me!

@talldaddysam