Am I Whittling Away My Social Connections?

Over the past year, I have slowly begun to remove people from my "friend" lists on various social networks, people with whom I have little or no contact.  We don't ever get together, talk on the phone, chat online, or even comment on one another's online movements.  Most of this process is playing out between two digital places.

My Facebook friend list has 75 contacts, as of today, down from over 300 just one year ago.  Of these 75 contacts, about a dozen of them are people I see in person with some regularity.  Another dozen are people who are not local enough anymore for us to get together in person.  The other two-thirds or so are people who post statuses that I enjoy reading....and I don't expect them to make efforts to contact me.  A few of them don't even post online but once every few months.

My cell phone is the other "place" that's experiencing a diminishing contact list.  I have 45 contacts in my cell phone directory and only 24 of them are people, the others being businesses and numbers for my work and Kaleb's doctors.  In the last 2 months, I have had incoming calls from only 12 different numbers, and have placed outgoing calls to only 8.  Anyone who knows me has been told that, unless I'm away from the house, it's pretty much a waste of time to call my cell phone.  According to my call logs, I only actually answer 1 of every 10 calls I receive on my cell.  Text messaging can be slightly more effective, but I often don't see and reply to incoming messages for hours.

Several of my friends have suggested that my social circle may be dwindling because I've become a parent, or because I'm not living in the same areas of town where they are, or because I don't talk on the phone often, or because I keep removing people from my online friend lists....or, they say, maybe it's being caused by some combination of these possible causes.  However, I believe that the truth is something completely different.

In fact, I don't think my social circle is shrinking at all!  Rather, I believe that my social circle is developing more realistic boundaries.  I am no longer driven by a desire to form as many connections as possible, even if they are with people from whom I receive no communication.  I no longer have a desire to update everyone I know as to what I am doing every moment of every day.  I enjoy visiting with friends.  But I also find that, when we're not invited, I don't miss going on social outings with my peers and their children.  In fact, many times when we are invited, I find myself declining the invitations without reservation if the plans include hours when Kaleb should be sleeping or napping or if the outing planned is not one that interests me, such as the beach, camping, tubing, or sporting events.

This past week, I even declined numerous invitations to attend my 10-year high school reunion after deciding I didn't see much point in paying $60 to spend a weekend socializing with people I barely knew back when we all saw each other at school every day.  Most of those people weren't my friends then.  Many of them weren't even nice to me.  Ever.  And I certainly haven't made efforts to stay in touch with any but a few since our graduation in May of 2001.  I can't think of any of my high school years that I have any desire to remember, relive, or reminisce.

Is it normal for a woman my age to have so little interest in socializing?  I actually have no idea.  I do know, though, that it bothers me less and less as time goes by.

I find that I don't feel lonely, even though many of my friends are dating or are involved in serious relationships.  The idea of a relationship, or any kind of romance, is something that interests me none at all.  My life has become so peaceful without trying to force it to accommodate dating or romance.

I find that I don't miss going out for nights of concerts, dancing, partying, or clubbing, even as so many of the people I know are spending every weekend partying while their children are home with babysitters or abandoned to the grandparents 2 or 3 nights a week every week.  On the occasions when Kaleb goes to spend a night with my mom, I take advantage of the opportunity to sleep late or have dinner (usually with my dad) at a grown-up restaurant.

Perhaps the problem is that I don't have much in common with the friends I do have.  We don't like the same movies or music.  They like the beach, and I don't.  They look forward to tubing trips in the summer, and I do not enjoy tubing.  I enjoy reading, and some of them don't even own a book.  Most of my friends are either Christian or atheist/agnostic, and I am neither.  Many of my friends are sports enthusiasts but couldn't care less about what's going on in current political races; I could live the rest of my life without sports, but I do my best to keep up with important politics.

These days, most of my social contacts are women, and never in my life have I been one to form close friendships with women.  Women are catty, conniving, sneaky, and back-stabbing....not all the time, of course, but they--we--all have the potential for it, and are far worse to one another than we are to our male friends.  Most of all, women have a habit of involving their emotions in matters which shouldn't have anything to do with emotions.  Men are so much better at being analytical and thinking rationally.  My closest relationships have always been with boys, then men, and single moms in their late 20s just don't meet many men who are looking for platonic friendships with women.  So many of my guy-friends have moved away, and they are what I miss in my life.  I've grown apart from most of them, because of time and distance.

And I don't know how or where to go about bringing new friends into my life.