Making friends. It’s something I’ve always done very easily. Maybe it’s because I tend to adapt to people easily, or maybe it’s because I’m pretty receptive to just about anybody. Maybe it’s because I’m just genuinely friendly. Regardless of what it is, my friends tend to all have one thing in common: I chose them. Each person that I am close with has been placed in that position by me. My ability to be receptive to just about anyone gives me my acquaintances (at this point in my life I like to view those as the friends I see just at parties). But my innermost values and personality traits have cultivated my true friendships. However, as life does, every now and then we’re thrown a curveball. In this case, it would be my boyfriend’s friends.
Ah yes, the people that help define my boyfriend. It’s a rather scary thought, isn’t it? Honestly, when you think about it, you’re coming in contact with the people that reflect your “significant other’s” innermost values and personality traits. What if you don’t like them? Or worse. What if they don’t like you? My mom always warns me that when I marry a man, I marry his family, so choose wisely. Well I’m not close to getting married, but I am in college, so I think it’s time to look at a different type of family: best friends.
I don’t feel like I’m going overboard when I say that our friends become our family while we’re in college. Most of us don’t have our actual family around, so our extremely close friendships become their own little family. And for my boyfriend and me, being around his friends is something that is very prominent in our relationship.
I remember when I first met them. I actually didn’t meet them all at once. I kind of trickled through first impressions — do NOT be fooled… I was no less terrified the tenth time than I was the first time. I couldn’t tell you which was more terrifying: meeting the boys or meeting the girls. And I met them not too long after I met my boyfriend — who at the time was far from being my boyfriend — so the pressure to be likable was so on!
And here we are now. His friends are now our friends. Our GroupMe keeps my phone notifications looking like the Fourth of July. My top three friends on Snapchat are his (now my) best gal pals. We follow each other on Instagram, we’re friends on Facebook, and we text. When I leave my boyfriend’s — because he lives two hours away — I don’t miss just him anymore, I miss his friends – my friends.
So a huge shoutout to the friends you didn’t plan on having. At first it may seem like they accept you “because they have to” on account of your boyfriend or girlfriend, but then you realize how lucky you were to be so randomly introduced to one of the most wonderful groups of people. I had always thought the best friends I’d have would be the ones that I so specifically chose, but I couldn’t possibly love the ones that just happened to me any more.
