The 4 Steps Of Adjusting To A Whole New Group Of Friends
About four years ago I inherited a new batch of friends from my girlfriend. That's what happens when you start dating someone; it's life's way of filling in gaps without asking if there are gaps to be filled. "But I already have plenty of friends," I said to life. To which life shrugged its shoulders, as if saying, "Look, man -- I'm just doing my job. You figure it out." And then I was left with a box of preowned friends in my living room, no instructions.
Thus began my journey tumbling through the tangled mass of preexisting relationships. Long, complicated histories filled with laughs and tears, drama and silliness -- and all of it experienced as the stranger who asks a group of partying friends packed in a hot tub if there's room for one more.
Fully assimilating is a long-term project that may never have an endpoint. There's a lot of rocky land to traverse, and it all begins with ...
Learning To Speak Their Language
My girlfriend's friends aren't forest creatures who speak in a series of clicks and whistles. They're English-speaking humans, and none of them have a deep, mystical bond with trees. Though there are two vegetarians, so close enough. At first, talking to them was more about listening than speaking. One of the big things that separates different cliques is cultural reference points, which, as I wrote about here, are a language unto themselves. If I say, "I am the one who knocks!" to someone who's never seen Breaking Bad, they'll assume I chose a weird way to open up discussion about my career as a pizza-delivery guy. So the first step was shutting up and soaking in who they are through their collective likes and dislikes.
From there, it became a matter of hoping I'm familiar with whatever these people are into so we can have some common ground. If I can't connect with anything, I'm potentially looking at a lifetime of shitty barbecues. If it turns out they're super into dog-fighting, I'm going to have to find a way to deal with that, and that sucks very much.
Aerial dog-fighting. Did I forget to mention they're World War II fighter pilots?
Thankfully for me, her friends do not place bets on canine survival odds at their local bloody pit lined with cinder blocks. They enjoy things I like and know how to talk about. Arrested Development? I speak Arrested Development fluently. Overspending during Steam sales? I can speak that in all of its regional dialects. Wildly complicated European board games? Don't speak a word of it, but I'm open.
But then there was something I couldn't connect with: hummus. There was a lot of hummus.
Discovering Their "Things"
Every clique of friends has a list of "things" they identify themselves with. Maybe you and your friends' list of things includes dry humor and comic books, or maybe it's excessive drinking followed by groveling apologies, or maybe it's rampant, unapologetic racism. This can also be thought of as a collective quirk, a particular thing this new group of people seems to be all about. The first I noticed with this new group was hummus. I had never known people for whom hummus was a thing to get hard over. Then I inherited friends who so ferociously ate the stuff at gatherings that my life became a reality show sponsored by Sabra.
"I'll tell ya, when life gets me down and I want a creamy pick-me-up, I dip pita chips in paste."
I had never thought much of the khaki-colored chickpea mush. I always felt like it was better suited as an industrial adhesive. But I had to learn to accept this as an official "thing" of theirs. "Things" are a shortcut into good graces. They can just as easily be a sink hole to Hell. Their "things" are the greatest hits of who they are. Don't like one? That's a huge chunk of their long-standing group dynamic you recoil from like it's a pungent fart.
"No! Please! No more Star Trek references!"
Worse comes to worst, fake it 'til you make it. But you're with your boyfriend or girlfriend because you've got a shit-ton in common; for the most part their friends will be in possession of at least a few nuggets off that ton of shit.
This good intention has a downside. The more I discovered about her friends, the more I couldn't resist the temptation to start ...
Comparing And Contrasting Our Cliques
It wasn't until I gained dual citizenship in two circles of friends that I realized my friends, the ones I've had for years, are assholes. That's the way we like it. We're not gift-givers. We're not even ones to acknowledge each other's birthdays beyond a belated happy birthday text a few days later. My friendships burn low but far, like an ion thruster.
"Friendship Thrusters, Engage!"
Being in that friend-scape for so long, I assumed every group of friends was that way. My circle and our antics became my definition of how friendships are and should be. We are a stereotypical group of men: Empathy and sentimentality toward each other is inversely proportional to our high levels of cynicism and sarcasm. We've come to view that as a trademark of our crew. If we had a secret handshake that perfectly expressed who we are, it would be a series of mumbles and stern middle fingers. That's how I assumed everyone else was.
"Greetings!"
Her friends are generous. They're thoughtful. They buy each other gifts, even when the gift-receiver doesn't have a birthday in sight for months. They're really nice people. It's kind of creepy, actually -- like they have a hidden agenda I'll discover soon after they try to murder me in a way that makes it look like a suicide. Even still, it's inescapable: What they have in kindness they lack in history with me. I'd get lost in the shuffle of their conversations, buried beneath piles of nostalgia. I had to try ...
Finding A Place In Their Nostalgic Conversations
If you've never navigated through long-standing friendships you've been thrown into by association and not choice, imagine showing up a decade late to a raging party. You show up to the address on the Facebook invite page, but now there's a Korean family eating dinner where your party should have been.
"So ... you're not down to get fucked up?"
The only thing left is to reminisce about all the crazy shit that used to happen. One guy swung from a chandelier. Another shat in a piano and then played it immaculately. Someone else fucked everyone in attendance to completion in seven minutes and all agreed he was a decent lay for four of them. By all accounts, this was the friendship to end all friendships, and you're showing up right around when everyone's starting to look back with fondness for the days when they really had fun.
Tossing around names of people I'll never meet, but maybe that's good because, according to everyone, they were a stupid cunt who should die. Tales of the time they'd waste after school, the teachers they hated, the adventures they had, the weirdos they knew. It's like sitting in on a bunch of World War II vets shooting the shit about the war years, but instead of a war it's sixth-period English.
To the new group, I am their present and, potentially, their future. But I don't fit into their past. When people start hitting their mid- to late-20s and real life truly starts kicking in, they pine for the days when they didn't care about anything other than hanging out with their friends.
And their friends' genitals.
It's useless, though. There's no escaping the vortex of nostalgia talk. Well, I guess you could get close to them over years, experience things that makes you all grow closer, put in all the time and energy involved with being a trusted friend, and then, years later, ask them if they remember that one weird guy with the twitch from that party nine years ago and how strangely he pronounced "vagina" (it was "FAaao-China"). Or, you can just sit there pretending the rug pattern really is as interesting as you're making it seem. Your call.
If things are getting desperate waiting for your (hopefully) inevitable friendship breakthrough, you only have to do one thing to keep yourself in the game ...
Fake Laughing Until You Get Their Jokes
When it comes to a shared sense of humor, I lucked out. I have never in my life clicked with a group's sense of humor more quickly and thoroughly than I did with my friends. With everyone else in life, I'm not so fortunate; my inherited circle of friends included.
I would often find myself in a room full of people, wondering why the hell everyone was laughing at something someone said. It was beyond not getting the joke; I didn't get the perspective. I didn't get who they were and why this particular string of words would be funny to this particular group. They had their own definition of funny, and their own set of references and language that triggered laughs. All that shit led to falling back on a tried-and-true evolutionary mechanism as basic to human survival as eating and sleeping: fake laughing.
Faking it is a placeholder. It's saying, "This noise supplants understanding what the hell is going on right now." If I don't do it, the actual look on my face would be the same one people make when they're trying to solve the murder in Clue.
"One -- or all -- of you are actively trying to murder this conversation with shitty jokes."
It's through this that I finally learned what it means when people say laughter is subjective. If you laugh at something and I don't, getting to know you can eventually broaden my perspective to the point of maybe, possibly, one day understanding why you laughed, maybe even laughing at it too. But until that day of enlightenment arrives, keep fake laughing until you're wondering if you have enough humanity left in you to experience real laughter anymore.
Luis is currently living as one of many stolen identities as he infiltrates cliques across America. Meanwhile, you can find him on Twitter and Tumblr.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook and YouTube, where you can catch all our video content, such as 5 Rules For Sleeping In Bed With Your Friends and other videos you won't see on the site!
Also check out 5 Weird Overshadowed Creations Of Famous People and 4 Tactics For Preventing Spoilers Before They Happen.
