Building Community

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the end of my relationship with my ex, M.  The anniversary of the actual end will be this Wednesday, but I'm going to be on-call that day, and in the interest of not being a disaster at work, I am trying to get all the feels out this weekend.  I spent Saturday alone at a Nordic spa, warming myself in hot tubs and dry saunas, and yesterday I basically lived in my pjs.  The only reason I bathed was because I had made plans to go to the Mister Rogers documentary with a friend, and I thought she might prefer it if I didn't smell*.

Today, Labour Day, I'm rejoining the real world.  My fourth load of laundry is in, the fridge has been emptied of moldy olives (who knew they could go moldy?), and the dishes are drying in the rack.  And after days of wallowing in the hard stuff, I'm searching for the good things that came out of my "failed" relationship.  What have I found so far?

Community.

M's family has belonged to the same church since her parents met at a local bible college, so their connections to other church members go back decades.  Soon after I started dating M (once she had come out to her church in the middle of a sermon she was delivering), I started getting invited to events with members of her church community.  Fundraisers, potlucks, small group dinners, reunions at the bible college, board game afternoons, and trivia nights...my social calendar filled up effortlessly.  And it was really lovely.  She goes to a very left-wing, social justice-oriented church, so while I didn't share a faith with these people, I definitely shared a philosophy with them.

And then, it ended.  At the same time as I lost M, I also lost my connections to the dozens of people in her life who had become an extended family to me.  My social calendar emptied itself out.  It's been a year, and I still find myself grieving some of the harder losses**.

But the upside is that the loneliness I felt after the breakup drove me to work on my own community.  I had neglected some important relationships while I was dating M, and in the past year I've done what I can to strengthen them again. And because many of my friends chose the past year to start having babies and to disappear from the social world, I've also been looking for opportunities to befriend new people.  I've become really good friends with R, who is the ex-girlfriend of another friend of mine.  I've developed a friendship with the woman I dated after M, because although we were romantically incompatible, we have a freakish amount of things in common.  And I'm becoming friends with another woman I met through online dating.  (One of the perks of same-sex dating...online dating can be a source of friendships!)

I'm also joining pretty much everything I can think of to join.  I became a board member for a local theatre company.  I joined a conversational French group.  I started going to a drop-in knitting group.  I've joined a group of lesbians of "a certain age" who are interested in local cultural activities.  I'm even going to an upcoming information night about co-housing!

I'm not going to lie - it's been hard.  It sucks to have spent over three years in the midst of a supportive community and to have suddenly lost it.  I miss the ease of having a partner and a ready-made social life, at the same time as I recognize that it isn't healthy to be dependent on another person for all of my social activities.  As an introvert, it's also really difficult for so many of my relationships to still be in the early phase.  I want the comfort of 20-year-old friendships, not the awkwardness of new relationships!

But I'm working on it.  I'm taking the opportunities that present themselves, and I'm putting myself out in the world as much as I can.  And trying to be patient as I rebuild the community I lost.

*You should go see this documentary, but if you have any heart, go with someone you're comfortable crying with.  And take Kleenex.

**How am I doing with the whole not wallowing thing?

Growing my Community

As a typical introvert, I have always had a fairly small group of friends.  I hate small talk and big gatherings and casual relationships, so I've always prioritized close relationships with a few people over superficial ones with many.  And for the most part, this has always worked for me.  I still have a friend whom I met in kindergarten* and another whom I met in grade five, and I am closer with them than I am with any of my biological family.

When M and I started dating, I was shocked to see how large her friendship group was.  She is as extroverted as I am introverted, and so she has accumulated an enormous collection of friends and acquaintances over the years.  People from church, people from university, people from her childhood camp, people from work.  We rarely went out in public without running into at least one person whom she would consider a friend.

I have never wanted my friendship circle to be as broad as hers (I don't think I could even remember the names of all the people she knows), but I was always envious of how easy it was for her to find someone to spend time with when she wanted to.  Many of my friends are physicians or new moms, so getting together usually involves weeks to months of planning.  There aren't a lot of people in my life whom I can call up at the last minute when I'm feeling bored or am in need of a sympathetic ear.

This wasn't a huge problem when M and I were dating, as I could always call on her, but I became aware of it again when we separated.  The weekend after the breakup, almost every person in my life was busy.  It was almost comedic to see how many people were unavailable that weekend - my mom was visiting her family halfway across the country, my aforementioned long-term friends were both away, my brother was on call, two of my friends had brand new babies, and another good friend had quarantined herself in her house with her three plaque-ridden children.  Thankfully a close friend whom I had met through online dating** years ago was free, although I suspect she could have done without being my primary emotional support at the beginning of my breakup.

So...this post sounds a bit whiny, which is really not my intention.  This post isn't so much about gaining sympathy (or worse, pity) as it is about being self-aware.  While my introverted tendency is to be insular and not deal with the stress of meeting new people, my newly single self is craving more connections and a larger community.  Which means taking risks and living with some of the initial discomfort that comes from dealing with strangers.

So far, my focus has been mostly on strengthening my existing relationships, which I unfortunately neglected a bit while I was deeply ensconced in my relationship with M.  But the next step is to broaden my circle.  I have recently joined a French conversation group, as I am trying to become fluent(ish) in French, and it's an opportunity to meet some like-minded people.  I'm also applying to be on the Board of Directors for a small local theatre company, which would combine meeting new people with my slightly obsessive love of theatre.  And I'm trying to reconnect with some of my cousins, with whom I've lost touch since my Dad died eight years ago.

All of this feels a little (a lot?) stressful to me, as I am very comfortable in my own comfort zone.  But even introverts need friends, so I'm going to use the opportunity of my newly single life to bring more people into it.  Fear and discomfort be damned.

Any other ideas for growing my community?  How do you meet new people as an adult?

*35 years ago.  How insane is that?

**One of the advantages of same-sex relationships.  If there's no romantic chemistry, sometimes you can be friends!