I’ve never been good at making friends. Ever since I was a kid, talking to people felt awkward and forced, like I was playing a part: “normal person.” This is how you start a conversation. Here’s how to stick to safe topics. Now it’s time to ask a follow-up question.
I’ve been taking some form of medication for social anxiety since my 20s, but it’s never turned me into the smooth-talking social butterfly I always wanted to be. I’m still hoping for the right pharmaceutical cocktail to do the trick.
Alhough I’ve never been good at making friends, I’ve always succeeded at landing boyfriends. I’ve been in some form of a romantic relationship since my teens, some healthier than others.
With guys, I always knew the right flirtatious thing to say, and when I didn’t, a kiss or a touch could fill the awkward gap. With the prospect of sex on the table, I always felt like I had something to offer a guy to make up for my clumsy conversational skills and discomfort in social situations.
When I met my husband in 2012, it was no different. Flirting led to hooking up, which eventually led to falling in love. He was better at making friends, but not that much better. Now, more than a decade later, our social circle is still small, and it mostly consists of our daughter’s friends’ parents.
But for a few years, we did expand our social circle, and it was easier than it had ever been. We had ongoing dinner plans with couples from Hollywood to Ventura, ventured out to Orange County for a house party or two, planned bar meetups, poolside hangs, wine tastings and more.
Our babysitter was at our house almost every weekend because we’d finally found the secret to making friends in adulthood: sex.
When my husband and I downloaded the Feeld app, which focuses on “alternative” relationships including ethical nonmonogamy, polyamory and kink, we thought it was a one-off thing. We were on a weekend getaway in San Diego and planned to experiment while away and then delete the app when we got back home.
We’d already dabbled in “the lifestyle,” the modern name for swinging, having visited a clothing-optional couples’ resort in Mexico some years before and a private sex party in Newport Beach. We saw Feeld as an extension of that.
But when the hookup didn’t happen in San Diego — finding a match and making plans can take time, I realized — we decided to keep trying in L.A.
Our first experience through Feeld was a group date at an outdoor bar in Pasadena. And right away, the socializing felt effortless. Unlike double dates we’d sweated through in the past, my husband and I didn’t feel the pressure to stick to safe topics while we tried to find common interests. We talked about sex. Boundaries. Kinks.
When you talk about these kinds of topics right away, you’ve pretty much opened the door to talk about anything.
In ordinary situations, I was always trying to figure out how to appear smart, funny or interesting, wondering if they liked me, performing normalcy, coolness or good parenting. But on Feeld, it was already established that we liked each other. We wouldn’t be there otherwise. There was no need to perform.
We talked for hours that first night as we bar-hopped and eventually ended up at a hotel in Pasadena for group sex.
At the start, the thrill of being with someone who wasn’t my husband was novel and exhilarating, but at some point, it started to feel mechanical. I’d had this kind of sex before. I felt myself doing what I’d done in my younger years, performing the part of a good lay, trying to impress them. And it kind of felt like they were doing the same thing.
Afterward, on the drive home, I admitted to my husband that my favorite part of the evening hadn’t been the sex — it had been the lead-up.
Thinking maybe I felt this way because they weren’t the right match, we continued to meet up with other couples: business execs, creatives and healthcare professionals from Glendale to Long Beach, Boyle Heights to Azusa.
We met with first-timers and pre-dating app pros, people of various backgrounds, races, ages and body types. Sometimes the sex was steamy, sometimes it was awkward. But I almost always had the same feeling on that drive home: that my favorite part of the evening was before anything had happened. When we were just open-minded people hanging out and talking effortlessly about anything and everything. It’s how I always wanted friendship to be.
There were only a few couples we saw more than once. One couple we saw six or seven times and even started to consider them as friends. We’d text each other asking for work advice. We’d talk about our kids. But could I really call them friends?
There was something sad in our meetups always having to be clandestine. We’d never invite them over for game nights or birthday parties. While Feeld had made it easy to connect with people, the connection came with an expectation I wasn’t sure I wanted to fulfill anymore. Had I ever wanted to fulfill it?
Not long ago, a couple we slept with reached out to see if we wanted to meet up platonically. I thought it could be great, intimacy without sex, but something stopped me. Could we ever escape the expectation given how we met? It was kind of like how I never felt I could be friends with anyone I ever dated.
Recently, we deleted our Feeld account, and our calendar is emptier than it’s been in years. The board games are still in their packaging, and there’s no need for extra chairs. I’m still not sure if we’ll figure out how to make friends outside of the bedroom, but I know what I want friendship to look like. Open, easy conversation with like-minded people where we both drive home afterward saying the best part of the evening was the whole thing.
The author wrote the memoir “Getting Off” and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. Visit her website at ericagarza.com or find her on Instagram at @ericadgarza.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
