The vision I’ve set out for myself is – can you trust yourself to take care of your problems as needed, and also to reach out for help to the extent that it’s needed too? I’ve found that by virtue of this increased security I also find it easier to reach out when I actually feel like I need help. In the past I would often just “struggle in silence” and secretly hope for my friends to check in on me, and then develop resentment when they didn’t. I was continually reinforcing this self-story of “I have so much difficulty with basic things and no one understands.”

When you treat friendship—or anything else, really—as a crutch for an underlying insecurity you are doomed to be unsatisfied. No number of crutches will get you back to walking again.

You refer to yourself as an introvert and you seem to assume this means your desire to throw or attend parties is somehow false. When you imagined your boyfriend’s judgement, I was reminded of the Jungian theory that everyone in our dreams is just a version of ourselves: Do you really think he would respond that way, or is he just a stand in for your own inner critic? Either way, I think this is a limiting way to see yourself.

I’ve spoken before about my wariness of introversion as a social litmus test; I think it’s become an over-generalized term that tries to capture too many different social phenomena, like social anxiety, neuroticism, or even depression, which shouldn’t really be regarded as inherent, immutable traits. You may not agree—I trust you understand your own nature—but I don’t want a label to hold you back from doing something you are explicitly saying you want to do. Labels are only as useful as they are liberating.

as you become closer, instead of falling into the trap of always getting dinner (still great), I recommend activities that make you feel like a team: running errands, helping with a project, trying something new, etc. I love my friend Gyan’s advice to always help your friends move, or do other unpleasant things, because difficult experiences are more bonding than easy ones (think of how you made friends as a kid). It may seem easier to just get coffee, a drink, or a meal, but in repetition those things lack texture. You only see one side of a person.