Anyone else wish their friends ask you about your relationships?

[Holmbo]

I feel like people only ever ask about progress for romantic relationships. Every time I meet with a friend I have to go through the obligatory update of their dating progress. Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for them and hope they find someone, but it's annoying that they don't seem to find any other relationship worthy of discussion. For example I've recently moved in with a friend (who I've not been particularly close with), cause I needed somewhere temporary to live while I'm selling my apartment, and I don't get any questions about our friendship and how it's working for us to live together. Also I feel like my friends are just assuming the relationships I want are the same as theirs, just minus a romantic partner. They don't seem to consider that maybe I still want some aspects that they get with their romantic partner just not in a romantic relationship.

I plan on talking to two of my closest friends about it. But with others I'm not sure. Maybe I should start asking them for updates about their friendships. Somehow that seems it could be a sensitive topic though. Many people have fewer close relationships that they'd like, especially this year with all the restrictions. Anyone have good tips for questions to ask people about their relationships without it seeming like questions about their popularity?

[Erederyn]

That's a good idea to start asking people about their friendships! I also feel frustrated that my friends don't ask me about my relationships, but then expect me to talk about their romantic relationships. I had a queerplatonic partner for a couple of years and I have a couple of very close and important friends, but none of my friends ever asked for updates about them.

I think you could just ask about how their friends are doing in general (especially if there are particular friends they spend more time with regularly). Maybe ask if they did anything fun the last time they hung out with their friend. (I do that with my friends, I just ask "Hey, how's so-and-so doing, by the way? Have you gotten to hang out with them recently?) I think it can be appropriate during this time with covid to ask people how they are doing with their friendships and close relationships. It might be sensitive, but if it's someone you know well and it's at a good time, it can be sincere and they could appreciate it. People might just not be used to it and could be surprised at first, but could like it.

[roboticanary]

sounds like a good idea. I have a few friends who I am happy to talk about my other friends with, and the only way that conversation will ever come up is if I ask them about their friends.  it is frustrating that very few people seem interested in asking people how their friends are doing.

I get the dificulty of asking people about their friends in these times but certainly as the year goes on it is something I would recommend trying out more.

[Kallie]

Until you mentioned it, I never noticed that I'm probably the only person I know, who actively checks up on my friends' other friendships :D

People usually share those things with me themselves, and then it's only natural for me to ask them about it next time we see each other, maybe talk about some conflict they had, etc. It helps to bring up your friends too, you can tell them about something that happened to you recently and ask what they think of it, and they would usually tell you about similar experiences. I'm sure if you do that enough, they will start asking about how your friendships are going too. 

[GhostyPeppers]

I do ask about others friendship statuses sometimes, but I do so out of instinct rather than on purpose. I didn't even notice that I did it until this thread! Wonder if thats an exclusively aro thing?

Anyway, I thought up on some prompts that could help:

"So you've been staying with X? How's that been?"

"I saw you've been hanging around with Y a lot recently, any particular reason?"

"So do you and X have anything in common? What kinds of things do you guys do?"

"Oh my goodness, my friend Y just did this crazy thing. Does X ever do stuff like that?"

Saying these things verbatim might come across as unnatural, so feel free to remix these however you like. I mainly based these off of how I usually start off conversations about other friends. Even starting as simple as "hows your friend X been?" is good!

I always want to know what my friend's friends are like, even if I'm not friends with them myself.