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Getting Discomfortable with Proto-Friends
Discomfortable
English - February 05, 2020 12:53 - 19 minutes - 17.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 17 ratingsSelf-Improvement Education Society & Culture Personal Journals Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Keep your friends close, and your acquaintances even closer.
Proto-Friends
Inspired by another recent Twitter conversation, this episode looks at the concept of a “proto-friend”, someone you feel certain you would really connect with if only you had the chance. The Twitter discussion reminded me of a special proto-friend I made at World Domination Summit over the last two years and the surprising impact that non-friendship had on me.
I met Craig when he hosted an LGBTQ+ mixer meet-up at my first WDS in 2018, but I got a weird vibe from him that he didn’t really like me. He seemed aloof and disinterested, even though I fancied myself a cute, new gay on the scene. Feeling implicitly rejected, I created an enemy image of Craig and kept my distance.
But in 2019, at the very same mixer, I discovered that Craig was actually this really sweet guy and I slowly realized that I had allowed myself to spiral down a shame rabbit hole the year before and had therefore completely misjudged the situation and him! And though I barely knew him, I felt like we actually had a potential connection and I saw him as a good candidate for the elusive holy grail of platonic gay friendship.
Perhaps as a penance for my mistake, I made it my conscious intention to attempt to befriend Craig at the next WDS this summer…