The Three Strike Rule

Moving to a new country all by yourself is kinda tough. You don’t have any friends so you rely on your (new) husband to connect you with his friends’ wives. Which is fine, and you meet a lot of people like that, but honestly not everyone you meet will be bestie material.

I went through a long process of alternating between desperately wanting to make friends and not giving a f*ck. If you know me, you know that I do that with many things – I go back and forth a lot. As you can imagine, that doesn’t really help with the process and ends up making it take way longer.

But whatever. I made it so far.

During that process, I started realizing that I was the only one reaching out to some people. We’d hang out, it would be great and they did seem to be having a great time and interested in hanging out more, but they would never initiate contact. That made me feel kinda sh*tty and I decided to just stop reaching out to a couple of people for a while to see what would happen.

Unsurprisingly, we haven’t talked since ( liking my posts on instagram doesn’t count as contact, btw).

It’s hard. These were people I liked and believe that we could become great friends, but I guess they already had enough friends. Or maybe I’m not as much a match for them as I thought they were for me. Or maybe they just didn’t have enough time for me, which honestly the net result is the same. I can’t spend my days trying to figure out why so and so didn’t call me back.

I understand that sometimes life changes can be hard and unsettling, so I definitely take this things into consideration when evaluating who I should be investing my time on. But the only thing I can do is take care of myself and make sure that I’m not wasting my time, so I came up with the Three Strike Rule.

I’ll reach out 3 times. It doesn’t matter if we ended up meeting or not. It doesn’t matter if we went out for coffee, or dinner, or karaoke. Or if we just visited each other or went to the farmer’s market or went to the gym. Or if we just had a skype call. Really, it doesn’t matter.

But who reached out to whom?

If I reached out to someone 3 times and they didn’t reach out in between or after, I’ll stop. Seriously, I keep a spreadsheet. It’s updated. Yes, you’re on it (and if you’re not, then I’ve 100% given up on you).

And then, the ball is squarely placed on their court. And if they never reach out, it was nice knowing them. Sorry not sorry, I’m moving forward. If I’m not worth investing in, then neither are you.

At any point if someone reaches out to me their counter restarts.

The great thing about this strategy is that I never really lose a friend who was actually a friend. And they always have the option to reach out if they miss me.

You might think that this is harsh, excessive. That’s ok. I’m just kind of done.

When was the last time you reached out to me?