If you’ve read about my love of dining alone, then it should come as no surprise that I have no friends in Saigon.
This is all my doing: I love to be alone; I want a strong boundary between Work Rhianna and Real Rhianna; I often feel awkward or insecure around the younger people I meet; I’m not attracted to the sort of events that I see advertised for meeting people closer to my age or in the off chance that I am, they conflict with my work schedule; and absolutely, I hate mingling and networking. I’m also quite salty (see: Larry David love).
But no friends is a bit dramatic. I say that to introduce the idea that I currently don’t have any “first-tier” friends in Saigon, only “medium” friends as Lisa Miller outlines in a recent piece in The New York Times.
Medium friends are genuine friends. You share history (such as the same alma mater), circumstances (an employer) or interests (rude jokes, the royals, thrifting or squash). Medium friends make you laugh, bring news, offer insights or expertise.
My life is full of medium friends; it always has been. It is tricky to know exactly when to stop referring to a person as “someone you know” and start calling them your friend—to classify them as a medium friend. It is especially tricky now as many acquaintanceships and friendships can be virtual.
We make that choice to call someone a friend when we’re okay with allowing a thread of connection to exist. I take being okay to mean I’m willing to steward the friendship somehow, whether that be through regular chatting or initiating an in-person hang. Miller outlines this as the introduction of reciprocity—but investment in it that might not be equal.
Reciprocity is the foundation of every friendship: mutual sharing and caring in a context of trust. The tension embedded in medium friendship is this absence of clarity, allowing for the possibility of what Claude Fischer, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, referred to in an interview as “asymmetric expectation”: You may like your medium friend less (or more) than they like you.
What is absolutely true for all my medium friends and any man I have or would want to date is that I have always defaulted to or preferred asymmetry. I have always been okay with liking someone more than they like me.
Because of the control.
The coping mechanism I learned as a child to deal with family drama and which continues now for dealing with any kind of life drama is to control all that I can. My schedule, my food, my body, my space. Everything might be crazy, but if I can control what I can, it might feel less so. I never took the course, but this seems like Psychology 101.
With medium friends, even some first-tier friends, I’ve always felt more comfortable doing the initiating for socializing. In a tightly managed life, being the one to initiate allows me to find space that I’m comfortable opening up and then see if friends are free. It takes away the stress of someone asking me for space I’m not comfortable opening up and the subsequent guilt if I reject them.
I like holding the baton; I’m okay with holding the baton.
What I’ve increasingly recognized, however, is that with many medium friends and boys I might like, holding the baton and being the dominant initiator is not always about control. Initiating can be a form of reminding. Reminding the other person that I’m here and want to be a part of their life somehow.
Control related to space, maybe, but it can easily be insecurity about the relationship. Does this person actually want to be my friend? Does this boy actually like me? When such medium people take the baton from me, I’m always genuinely surprised. I’m very open to being a planner, so when I don’t have to, it feels like a gift (or winning and Oscar?). Because. They like me!1
And so I hold the baton to also chase validation. Even with first-tier friends. I control, I gauge, I chase. Which we all know can’t be healthy. And who wants a friend who’s always holding the baton? I know that some friends appreciate my stewardship because of what is viewed as busy lives. But I assume the appreciation always comes with sentences that start with “Rhianna is so good at…” or “She always…” Sentences that could be tinged with guilt for always letting me hold the baton. In controlling the space, I can make it such that others see no need or don’t bother to try.
I’m getting tired of controlling the baton.
There’s a notorious phrase when it comes to how men may treat women when getting to know them. If he wanted to, he would. If he wanted to see you, he would ask. If he wanted to talk to you, he would call. If he wanted you in his life, you would know. This oversimplification has prefaced advice to never chase a man and never initiate because it changes the male/female energy dynamic or some other bullshit.
But I’ve thought about that sentiment when it comes to medium friends. If I let go of the baton, would they remember me? Would they want to steward the friendship in their own way?
When I was in my 20s and feeling more figurative freedom in my life, I held the baton as much as possible to find more medium friends and to elevate medium friends to the first tier. I needed to wedge a new type of family into my life to make up for the shadow that increasingly existed over my given one after I took a step away from it.
To write that forming these relationships was about validation and control insults how deep, meaningful, and long-lasting most of them have become. But it was there. It’s still there in the deep recesses of my heart and mind.
In the last decade or so, I’ve become less anal about holding the baton because I’ve increasingly seen no benefit. Where you once saw people multiple times a month, it can be a gift if you see someone once every other month. Life gets in the way. With the relationships that exist more virtually, daily chatting also dwindles because. Life gets in the way.
With first-tier friends, I am still okay with holding the baton more often and chasing after that infrequent contact. That’s just my role with some. I’ve been able to let go of the validation pursuit and see it just as the more likely way we might see or talk to each other.
My loose grip on the baton is with the medium friends, or with once-first-tier friends who have faded. Because, life. Where I once had twinges to send them a message or ask them for dinner, I now ignore the guilt.
If I wanted to, I would. If they wanted to, they would.
My first-tier friends are everywhere but here, and I’ve never felt more comfortable ignoring the baton when it comes to acquaintances or medium friends.
My interests and job mean that the majority of people I meet in Saigon are younger than me. By a lot. Like 15 years on average. Old-enough-to-be-their mother older. Connection is easy, but a pull to steward is not.
Because at a certain point, the generational divide shows itself. It’s always innocuous, like a discord in shared cultural references or a mismatch in life experience. Sometimes I feel I’m seen as old; at others, I see them as charmingly (too) young. I often come home and wonder if we have enough in common to be medium friends. I drop the baton and forget about it.
A word I have used when discussing this with my first-tier friends is “peer.” The age differences that are larger than what I have with other friends has me recognizing that I have yet to forge a medium friendship here with someone I feel is a peer. Meeting people isn’t the problem, but meeting someone where I feel we have a lot in common, is. In the busyness of my current situation and my need for solitude, I overlook this a lot when it comes to my emotional health. Am I lonely, I wonder? It’s a feeling I have only ever articulated once before and then, it sent me to go find a romantic relationship.
I’ve thought about how maybe now is a moment when it would be nicer to have a romantic partner than a peer. Dates, affection, falling in love again. But then I remind myself of having to find space for someone and the chase and the need for validation and the control. And then also the fear of hurt and loss. It’s easier for me to stick with dating retirement and crushes. I know the position well.
An important life lesson I learned while living in New York was that nobody is thinking about you. Everyone is too wrapped up in their own lives to register you. The momentary glance they might give you—which might cause you to be insecure about your clothes or your body or that pimple on your nose—is just that, momentary. In a city of millions of people where anything is possible and it feels like everyone is chasing an ambition with American bravado, do whatever the fuck you want. Because everyone is doing just that and isn’t giving you any notice. You might have an internal Piper Laurie talking to you, but no one has time to laugh at you2.
I would never have become the passionate solo diner and traveller that I am if it wasn’t for New York. I learned to turn down the volume on my self consciousness to do things that I love. And I kept the volume down when going to other places (such as Edmonton or Saigon) that aren’t the same as New York when it comes to a palpable DGAF attitude.
While I look at the batons on my floor, I am trying to channel that mindset. Not in that people don’t like or don’t care about me, but that they are not waiting for me to grab the baton. It’s not about me. It’s not about anyone. Strangers might not become acquaintances, might not become medium friends, might not become first-tier friends. If something should, it will.
And maybe I am not lonely; I am just dealing with being more alone.