Something I have noticed more and more as I have reflected on getting older, growing up, chose your turn of phrase.. is that expanding your circle becomes increasingly harder to do and yet in some ways is more important.

You work, go home, maybe have the odd day/evening out and return home. If you are learning to do more things on your own and you approach someone it can come off a bit strange, especially in this day and age where technology rules and verbal conversations are becoming a thing of the past despite being one of the most important structures in real human connection.

Making new friends, acquaintances or connections seems to be especially hard when it’s with the opposite sex, in school you are put into mixed groups and in a way forced to speak to people and make connections and end up making new friends… from school I have guy friends that I still talk to now and I think it’s nice and in my opinion it’s just as nice to have guy friends and it is to have girl friends.

Same when you very first start at a new job you get to know new groups of people, again guy and girl friends. If you stay at the job a while and it’s  big enough place, people come and go and some people who have been there a while but you haven’t spoken to you start speaking to … by this point though your older and I personally feel it’s harder to make the innocent and honest connection like you do when you’re younger. I mean when you’re a kid you see any human you think is interesting or want to talk to..and you do… it’s so simple!

Yet when your older this approach seems to put people off. We’ve gotten locked in these social constraints, in our own past experiences of how things go or how they should be. It becomes more nerve wracking to go, hey want to grab a coffee? Because you get all these social opinions that are stored in your brain, when in reality and again in my opinion a coffee is a great way to get to know someone and potentially start a friendship. Again, when a girl says to a girl “hey wanna grab a coffee?” It’s pretty casual and basically “hey you seem interesting, let’s talk” however it seems when a girl says to a guy “hey wanna grab a coffee” it can often be read in a thousand different ways and often instead of hearing “hey wanna grab a coffee” aka “you seem interesting, let’s talk” the guy will often hear “hey I fancy you and want to go on a date” *you can switch the roles around and make it guy asking girl, this shoe fits either foot I believe*

We seem to have this predetermined rule that if a girl asks a guy to coffee or visa versa that it must be a date, there must be more to it etcetc. Which to be honest I think is crazy, like when did it, in this day and age, become a thing that basically if you don’t know each other from school you can’t just go for a coffee???

Now for me, coffee is not classed as a date..because ..I mean really unless you have specifically stated coffee *date* coffee to me is getting to know another human being in a comfortable environment.

A date should be..well.. date like no?!

So ladies and gents how about we all actually just try and get to know each other as real life human beings and see if we even get along before making any kind of assumptions when you’re asked or asking for coffee..

(Unless, as I said, you actually say date)

I for one just find human beings interesting, enlightening and everyone has their own story to share.

So let’s just be friends and find our own inner circles yes?

Great!