It doesn’t take a scroll down Sidechat to realize that not everyone at Columbia knows how to catch a vibe. We’ve all been there. You meet someone in class, strike up a conversation, and it slowly dawns on you that, perhaps, you don’t actually crave their platonic company. The question remains: Is it possible to practice healthy social distancing with the peers who don’t get the memo to just be casual acquaintances? Can we be the kind of people who, when they see each other in the cafeteria, smile, nod or maybe even laugh, wave goodbye, and then sit at separate tables?
Can we, when we see each other on the subway, nod at each other awkwardly and then avoid all further eye contact?
Can the only details I know about you be your first name, where you’re from, and what your major is? And absolutely nothing else?
And yet, for some reason, they don’t get the social cues you send their way, and suddenly you’re stuck in an uncomfortable situation, where you don’t want to hurt their feelings (they are relatively nice people!), but you also just don’t want to be their friend. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like you, I just don’t like you.
So what do you do? How do you let them know it’s time to step back, in the face of persistent social contact you just don’t wish to take part in?
I went on an adventure to find the best answer to the question: How can we tell someone “can we please just be casual acquaintances?” without insulting them or polite society?
The Problem
It’s a series of unfortunate events: You go to orientation, classes, maybe even a few clubs, and suddenly you become acquainted with a huge amount of people, most of whom aren’t really best-friend material. But here’s the rub. On a campus so big and yet so small, you just can’t seem to hide. The people you want to see the least are going to be, inevitably, standing in line in JJs, on the steps of Low, or lurking in your favorite comfy Uris chair. But is it only a Columbia problem?
Chris, 38, is a bartender who lives in New York with his husband. When I approached him with my question, he had a clear answer in mind. “Sometimes regulars will want to meet up outside the bar. They invite me to go out, and I have to be clear about wanting to keep a work-life balance. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to go out in this neighborhood so I wouldn’t run into them.”
“When I went out with my husband the other night, one of my regulars from the bar recognized me, and asked if he could sit with us. Then, all of a sudden, he started talking about his friend who tried to commit suicide that morning,” he recounted. “So I told him, listen, I’m sorry you had to go through that, but me and my husband are trying to have date night. I don’t need to know your entire life story.” I found myself agreeing with Chris: Should it really betray social norms to not want to be someone else’s therapist on a night out?
The Guilt
Now that we’re all aware of the problem, you’d think it would have a pretty easy solution—just tell them: “Sorry, I don’t want to be your friend.” But it’s not always so easy.
“I felt really guilty,” shared Yumi Cho, GS ’28.
“She wanted more, and I just couldn’t reciprocate,” added P.C., a current GS student who chose to speak anonymously.
“I find myself resenting myself that I didn’t try harder. Now in Columbia, there are much less opportunities to meet up. Plus he lives in Brooklyn, which feels like a different country now,” shared Paolo Godcharles-Mendez, GS ’28.
We don’t want to hurt anyone, especially not someone who wants to be our friend. And so, in procrastination of the inevitable rejection, we look for different ways to avoid contact, leading us to even more dread. But what do we do in the meantime?
The Excuses
Chris brings up one of the main questions we’re forced to ask ourselves when coming across a casual acquaintance: How much are we willing to change our ways in order to avoid them? Will you move to a different seat in class? Will you go to a different cafeteria? Will you choose another room in the library?
Miya, GS ‘25, is one of the many interviewees who chose to keep their identities hidden. I think it speaks to the guilt we feel when encountering these kinds of situations, and the fact that, ultimately, we don’t want to seem like bad people. “I just made up some stupid excuse.” Making up an excuse is actually the most common answer I got from the interviewees, with excuses ranging from basic to outright insane. I’m not in the city. I moved to the suburbs; I don’t use this phone number anymore…I prefer to change my phone number seasonally. You know?
The Solution?
In an obvious bind, I turned to public opinion for an answer, meaning I Googled the words: “How do I deal with casual acquaintances who want to be closer friends?”
Surprisingly enough, most of the articles I came across were about the exact opposite. Instead of the social boundary guides I was hoping to explore, I found Reddit posts like “How do I turn friendly casual acquaintances into friends?” and blogs entitled “How to move from acquaintances to friends in adulthood?”
Suddenly it dawned on me—am I in the wrong here? Perhaps I’ve disregarded my own privilege of having so many friends and acquaintances around.
But this is also where it becomes complicated. We don’t really owe our friendships to everyone who asks us for it. We’re pretty busy people, and not everyone has to like everyone. But treating someone else’s attempts at making a connection as embarrassing or uncomfortable can’t be the solution either.
The Bad Guy
When I was in high school, there was a girl that I considered a “hallway friend,” meaning the type of friend you say hi to in the hallway, and then maybe talk to when you’re free and around. When finals were coming up, she asked me if I wanted to have coffee with her before class. I said yes, and we hung out that day for about two hours. Then school was over, and I never expected to talk to her again.
Then the texts started. Every day she was asking me out to coffee, or to a restaurant, or just to hang out. And at first I politely said yes, but I wasn’t really interested in her. It’s not like I didn’t like her, but, again, I didn’t like her. So I started making up excuses, like “I’m too busy today,” or “I’m not feeling really good.” And at some point I just started dreading her texts, and finally ignoring them. It all ended when she finally understood the message, and sent me a long and angry text about ghosting her like that. And at that point I was mad too: why couldn’t she just find another friend? But I also felt really guilty, which I was masking in my mind, by making her “the bad guy.”
In Retrospect
“Friendships are hard. It’s not an easy thing having a friend. Especially for a long time,” states Keval Deliwala, GS’ 28.
None of my interviewees had a solution for our problem. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think I have the words to solve it either. The only thing we can really do, I now believe, is try and be upfront with our emotions, as much as possible.
“The best policy is honesty,” shares Chris. We don’t owe anybody our friendship, but we do owe them respect.
So yes. We can be casual acquaintances, the type where I kinda know your name starts with an L and I’m pretty sure you’re from California. We can also maybe be the type that sits together on the bench in front of Butler, even for a bit. And maybe, just maybe, we can even share some eye contact. Even if we aren’t the type to stay up until 2 a.m. exchanging our entire life stories, it’s not hard to respect and care about each other’s wellbeing. A casual acquaintance is a perfectly valid category of “friend,” as long as you both know where you stand.
Ms. Shai is a current first-year in the School of General Studies, studying creative writing and cognitive science. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.