When I first proposed this topic, that is proposed it out loud, the person I was with stated do not lie. While this is may be important for keeping a friendship it does not help with acquiring one.
Perhaps it is my AS that allows me to look on social interactions from outside them and see how they work. Perhaps I am just scientifically bent to try to find rules of social interaction. Most likely it is a bit of both, but what I have found seems to always work. So I propose that the word Law be used instead of theory or rule.
People meet every day, usually you meet non random people, people who want to be at the location you meet them at. You meet them at work, you meet them at the grocery store, but you meet them and you never say another word. They are just people. Some people you start talking to them and you get to know their names and you interact with them and they become acquaintances. This means that you know a little about them. There are two kinds of acquaintances. The first time you have very limited contact with and may continue to interact superficially on an ongoing basis. The other kind is more interesting, you share a certain aspect of your life with them; it can be very intimate or it it can be very casual, but you see this acquaintance quite often. The most often activity is work or school and this is your only point of interaction. When work is done everyone goes their separate ways and everyone is happy. You remember this person fondly you have great conversations with them, but when you switch jobs, school ends, you cease having a common interest and lose touch. This can be quite sudden, especially if you think of each other as friends; it is very rare that contact can be maintained and keeping the friendship working.
The Law is: the more actively experienced common interests, the greater the bond of friendship. The second part of that Law is the strength of the shared positive experience, can also influence the strength of the friendship.
Two people can share multiple positive experiences and not be friends, but talking to the girl at the five and dime store every Tuesday, is not the basis of friendship either. Only active participation in multiple common events can true friendship develop. Sharing a passion for Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and Game of Thrones, reading each other's blogs and having a shared horrible working experience, means that Waif Girl and I are acquaintances, but not friends. If we sat down and had a weekly debate about Terry Pratchett novels, then we might be friends. There is simply not enough active positive interactions; we could both want to be friends but it is not enough.
I have an acquaintances who reads my blog and we text and we are both interested in a relationship, but want to be friends first. We're interacting almost entirely on the same page as our opposite, but we do not have many active positive common interests to be friends. We need to meet and have a good conversation. We need to meet and go hiking in the woods. We need to go book shopping together, we need to do stuff together to be friends. We don't need to have sex, we don't even have to be that close, but we do need to talk in person; we need active positive interactions. This is a blatant message to her, but I am not trying to force anything, it is just one cannot build a friendship with text messages and writing poems alone. I will try that route if it is the only route open to me, I will be happy to rewrite this entry saying that I was wrong, but I am not wrong; there is too much experience behind my words.
Hopefully yours,
Greenpsychopomp.
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