How Do You Make Friends and Influence People?

The kind Bishop Birch and his wife Kim set up a social night with four other couples and us at their house. I appreciate this, both because they made a social initiative, but also because they actually have a large enough house to hold all of us.

Going tonight felt like going on a blind date, but with couples instead of individuals. I really want to make a close, bonded girl friend here, preferably who has a husband who is like this (twisted fingers) with Avram so we can all be social and close together. Coming home, I analyzed our relationship rating with all of these couples more than I ever did with boys when I was single. Back then, if I felt any chemistry (physical, emotional, whatnot), and I thought he did, that was good enough. Now, I could care less about how they all look, and so one easy qualifier is out. Instead I'm analyzing how they could possibly feel about our eclectic hobbies; Medieval Re-enactment, Role-playing, cooking with friends, having intellectual (or pseudo intellectual) conversations 'til all hours of the night (this was our Matt & Sarah specialty), camping (this is more a hopeful hobby than an actual one). Don't forget our "non" hobbies; we don't watch sports, we're not athletic, and we don't really do pop culture things.

It's not that I want to find an SCA D&D camping cooking couple. Honestly, I like variation. It's more that I want to find a couple that "gets" us. That understands people liking those things, even if they themselves don't.

Maybe I just need to run a personals add in The Lantern (OSU's student newspaper): Couple with two daughters, 2 1/2 and five months searching for best friends forever couple. Likes Middle Ages, Semitic Languages, Boggle, Cooking & Eating, and long conversations. Member of the LDS Church. Willing to consider all possible types of friends. Please apply.

I am willing to consider all types of friends. At BYU a lot of our friends were single, carried over from before we married. Avram and I were lucky enough to marry out of the same friends' group, from the Quill and the Sword, so we just kept the same friends we had all along after our marriage. This means that right now is the first long term, real (as in we're not going to move countries in a few months and we also don't live in the middle of nowhere Yarnton with no car) time we've made friends as a couple. I also don't think that we need friends with kids, although if they did have one Lydia's age that would be good for keeping her occupied, but she's great at playing by herself.

Which reminds me (Quill and the Sword, that is). Tonight I made a social gaffe equivalent spilling spaghetti sauce down your shirt in front of your blind date. I mentioned that Avram and I had met at the Medieval Club at BYU, and one of the women asked me if I knew a girl in it that had lived with her. They had been roommates in the German language house when Cooking guild met there ever Saturday and cooked all afternoon long while speaking English, which you are not supposed to do (I didn't know this at the time). It created great stress in the apartment, and Winter semester we moved to the commons room to cook. I suddenly remembered this girl back then, mainly when she would walk through the room and not really talk to us at all (because we were being jerks, but I didn't know that at the time).

Err. Awkward. I mentally wrote her off my list of people who might become my friend, because she probably thinks that I am a jerk (although I hope I am wrong in this, and that she won't always think of how rude the Quill and the Sword was - because really, we were in that situation). I apologized a lot tonight, but maybe that was just the equivalent to wiping spaghetti sauce all over the rest of your shirt while trying to clean it off.

I must say, there is one couple that we already know here, Carrie and Linus, and we're even going to have them over for my birthday next weekend (did you know I turn 26 next Saturday? Now you do). Look at us be social! (They're not in our ward, but rather Sarah's sister and her husband. Because we're fated to live by various and sundry relatives of Sarah, like her third cousins. Watch out Hans-Jeurgin, we're coming after you next...).

Any advice on how to catch a couple? Should we pretend to play dumb and let them figure things out for us? Will doing my hair and makeup help? Does Avram need to change his major to Family and Social Sciences so they know we're not planning a competing career with them? Please, all advice welcome. And I mean all advice. Because once, I read a blog that asked the same thing, and I posted a comment the size of a novel, and it was the first comment I ever posted, and I felt so stupid after posting it (especially because hey, certainly I don't have making friends all figured out per this post) that I've never commented again. I'm sure none of you will top my gaucheness, so you should all give me ideas. Or names and phone numbers, if you know anyone locally.