Friendship Honeymoons

"Once you're past the friendship "honeymoon" stage, where you no longer feel excited to spend time with this now-not-so-new person, what keeps you coming around? Or should you just move on? I try to maintain friendships which I believe to be mutually beneficial past the honeymoon stage. Is that "love" because I see reason to dedicate myself to that person even when it's not "comfortable" or "easy" or entirely "natural", anymore, to do so? And if that is love, isn't love more an action than an emotion? But then, that action leads to an increased desire for that person's welfare and happiness, which I suppose I could call love."
~Original Mohomie

I can't answer OM's questions--I have too many of my own. But I've never really thought about the friendship honeymoon until he brought it up. I suppose, for me, new friendships are so fraught with anxiety and mistrust that I've never really felt that initial excitement or desire to spend time with someone I've just met. In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit that any long-term friends I have now, with whom I spent time more often than two or three times annually, are those who persistently remind me that I love them. That can't be fun.

I talk about new friends incessantly. I do this mostly because I don't understand why, after a week or so, they're still wanting to talk or spend time with me. This does not mean I don't feel the same way about them. I adore the minutes I spend with people I love--I just don't always feel confident enough to initiate it. Consequently, those who are not quite as good at recognizing that I'm more timid than my external illusory self purports, usually end up fading away as I wonder how to keep that from happening, but feel trapped by the person underneath who tells me not to bother them or intrude too much in their lives.

With a couple of exceptions, the friends I'm closest to now are those I met through an online venue (blog/chat/email). That has given me the opportunity to learn about them before I actually spent real time with them, which in turn, has given me more confidence in the friendship itself. It seems a flawed method, since they can tell me whatever they'd like about themselves, and I have no way of determining whether or not it's true, but in the end I suppose it might not matter. People truly seem to conform to their perceptions of self, after all.

I'm wondering though if I actually do experience the honeymoon stage once the friendship has become strong--rather than when it's in the initial stages. There seems to be a period of about four or five months after I've established a trust threshold with a friend in which he/she can do no wrong and I could talk with them forever. Then my normal insecurities begin to hack away at the relationship until I become more trouble than I'm worth.

Ugh. I really don't get this. I hate it when I don't understand things.