34M - Looking To Make Genuine Friends

Hi there 👋🏻. 34M, US/EST here and looking for a true blue friend.

I'm going to leave the kind of post that someone who I would get along with might appreciate, which is to say, long, heartfelt, and utterly meandering.

The first half of my 30's has been a strange balance of feeling as self possessed and confident in my professional life as ever while still feeling slightly unsettled in a broader sense. I am married, and my wife and I don't have kids yet but would like to, so we're in this liminal space where we've outgrown partying and bar hopping but still have a lot of free time and energy. It's important to me that I maintain a healthy sense of community around me. Having said that, I do struggle with making friends, due in large part to heavy anxiety but I think also due to being very particular as a person in how I express myself and communicate. I tend to get along with people who, like myself, are willing to be open and vulnerable to some degree at least with their emotional experience. I'm very empathetic to and familiar with mental health struggles, so it's understandable if you might be slow to warm, but I really value a person's willingness to try when it comes to building connection. There's not enough of that anymore.

We might get along if you also:

• Play with LEGO's* (and also know that it's LEGO but are not pretentious enough to correct people*)

• Agree that cats are the ultimate life form

• Tend to get unabashedly enthusiastic about the things that you love, whatever they may be. I tend to be into horror media, fantasy, gaming on my Switch, cooking, or playing Magic and DnD. I don't like to yuck other people's yum, so I'll support you and show interest if you have a stamp or rock collection you want to show me.

• Aim to be kind and considerate, even if you don't always hit the mark.

• Have bad jokes and would like to trade

We might not get along if you:

• Support ideals I tend to associate with the current American presidential administration (i.e., bigotry, intolerance, or mocking and ridicule of groups you feel are lesser than you because they're different)

• Are looking for more of a NSFW experience than a friendship. There are other spaces for that, please don't bring it here.

• Lack an understanding or willingness to understand mental health and related challenges

This became a novel, but I think that laying it all out clearly can help to inform potential buds and avoid misfires when possible. Thank you for the brave souls willing to traverse these sentences in the interest of building fellowship. I look forward to knowing you.