It’s a means to a friend

They’re right there, hiding in plain sight, thumbtacked amid the rainbow of hand-scrawled “Lost dog” paper scraps and “Seeking quiet roommate” 3-by-5 cards on coffeehouse bulletin boards. These squibs are squeezed, at times, between small-print classifieds -- “Women Seeking Men” or “Men Seeking Same.” And more and more, they find themselves on Web pages now dedicated to the pursuit.

They are chatty messages, often parroting the quick summing-up-of-self now commonplace in this age of online profiles that replace small talk. But what makes them different is what they are looking for. Not Heidi Klum or Tyson Beckford. They don’t long for romantic walks along the beach or paint picket-fence dreams.

They’re seeking friends.

* “Seeking LA Gal Pals ... Down to earth, attractive San Diego SWM 35, seeking LA area women 25-50 dining out sports events, shopping, clubbing, movies. Serious replies, no games please.”

* “Rocker Lady seeks friends. I’m female and in the 40s professional by day, rocker by night. Like new rock/metal/tribute groups/KROQ. Seeking healthy n/s, no drugs, friends for friendship, clubbing.”

* “New to the neighborhood. Looking for a friend to take dog walks in the mornings at the reservoir.”

* “ ‘Sex and the City’ kinda friends wanted, (preferably Carries like me) 28-38, in L.A. ready to hang out and paint the town. Please be real, dependable, hip, attractive.”

It’s between the lines, but loud and clear: Who has time to sit around and wait for the magic to happen? Let’s just nudge fate.

And why not?

Casting a line in the classifieds or on a Web page is a fresh option that is beginning to dawn on those frustrated by their heavy workloads, their long commutes or isolated living arrangements that shave away prime social time. Friendship is as much a numbers game as dating, so why not be proactive?

So much works against it -- the chance encounter. The 60-hour workweek and spread-thin lives are a potent combination, as men and women rewrite the template of “typical.” A cluttered corkboard, then, becomes a wishing well of sorts -- as does an electronic message group or a busy classifieds page. These messages become bait on the line, another plan for people confounded by ever-changing cultural roles and codes.

But just how did finding a like-minded companion to take a turn around the midtown galleries, or hunt for art house matinees, become such a vexing experience -- requiring one to post a flirty missive and wait on pins and needles for a reply?

In the world of the interpersonal, of late it has become almost impossible to read the cues.

Daily, we sift through mixed messages. Our self-help shelves are peppered with titles about “toxic friendships,” while headlines warn adults and children alike that talking to strangers might be hazardous to one’s health. At the same time, pop culture spins scenarios for us to hang our hopes on: Glittery “Sex and the City” gal packs; a “Friends”-style ensemble of interlocking friendships. Even the discordant Oscar/Felix yin/yang in fading “Nick at Nite” repeats looks attractive to someone with no one.

But seldom does one find information to guide us in our search.

Consider Cassie Laurence, 31, from Huntington Beach. She packed her bags, pulled up East Coast stakes and moved to the L.A. area ready to embark on a new job and new life. But she quickly hit a dead end. “It was really hard to meet people. People were busy with their jobs, their families, their friends.... I just realized, as you get older, it just changes.”

It gave her pause: How did friendship become as elusive and/or competitive as finding one’s soul mate?

Friendship is something many take for granted. For a good portion of one’s young life, making connections was simply one of those things that “just happened.” People wandered in and out of life -- some stuck, others didn’t.

We think that the endless possibilities that high school hoops or college study partners provide will never dry up. That there’s a spinner rack of friends out there -- ready for concerts, club crawls, hiking trips, coffee or just an open-ended weekend meander. And when we find out that there isn’t, there’s not much to comfort us.

Alison Hovancik had reached such a crossroads. After college, she had a network of friends in New York, but once the career kicked in, “it got harder to meet people,” says Hovancik, 29. “I volunteered. I took classes. I thought I might meet people through other venues. I didn’t want to hang out in bars. But if you don’t meet people, you end up being in your apartment in New York.” Responding to a posting seemed a breeze by comparison.

The very same factors that nudged people awkwardly toward newspaper and online personals in their campaigns to locate Mr. or Ms. Right have pressed them to seek alternative routes to friendships.

“It’s definitely gotten worse in recent years,” says Tina B. Tessina, a Long Beach-based psychotherapist who focuses on the dynamics of a range of interpersonal relationships. “While often the desperation that leads people to romantic personals is often discussed, what we really need to focus on is the fact that people are really losing basic social skills. They are isolated in their jobs and cars and neighborhoods. And that has stopped us from knowing how to connect.”

As organic, common-ground meeting situations fade, it becomes more difficult to seize on serendipity. “It’s hard to make friendships ‘happen,’ ” says Rosemary Blieszner, professor of human development at Virginia Tech. “We meet a lot of acquaintances. But in order to move that relationship from acquaintance to friend, you have to have enough privacy and time to talk about things that matter to you.”

But who has the time? Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll has been making note of the kvetching. Young women who had been installed in airless law firms alongside men at least twice their age. Young women who ended up with jobs -- and colleagues -- they had no interest in. “These very ambitious, world-aware, ethnically diverse young women -- 27, 28, 30 -- were all writing things like, ‘All my friends are getting married! I have nobody to go drink or shop or go to shows with! What do I do?!’ They were frantic to have friends,” says Carroll.

The frequency of the questions nagged at her. “I thought, well, I’ll write it up, put up a page on my website.” The response stunned her. Seven hundred people signed up in the first couple of weeks; now the site, www.greatgirlfriends.com, averages half a million hits a day and there are roughly 15,000 women featured there. It has become so popular that a spinoff site was created, www.greatboyfriends.com, a spot for women to recommend male friends to women for dates.

It was a difficult first step, admits Laurence, the East Coast transplant. Responding to a posting for a friend felt strange. It ran counter to her notion of what friendship should be or how it should grow. She navigated to the Great Girlfriends site after reading about it in Elle. “I was kind of nervous, it’s still kind of a new medium,” she says.

Hovancik visited the site, at first skeptically: “When I looked at it, I thought, ‘What? Is this some ... [place for] pathetic women who have no life? How pathetic do I have to be?’ But I had just broken up with my boyfriend and I needed some girlfriends.”

She put together an impromptu mixer at a local bar in Manhattan. “It took some of the pressure off,” she says.

Jill Whitehead, who moved to Los Angeles a little more than two years ago, was frustrated with her lack of options. After posting her own profile and responding to a few postings, she arranged to meet a few potential pals for coffee or cocktails around West Hollywood. “It was a lot like a first blind date! But not romantic,” she says. “You’re there to find out stuff about one another: ‘What do you do?’ Oh, well, what do you do? But it’s different. You’re looking for something else.”

It’s chemistry, sure, she says, but it also refines a sense of what a friend is. Despite the Internet’s virtual nature, there was something very grounding about having to spell out precisely what you’re looking for.

“You know more about who you are and what you want in this stage of your life,” says Stephanie Fabian, who joined the list after moving to L.A. from New York 2 1/2 years ago. Looking for diverse, “intellectually stimulated people,” Fabian has fallen into a group that meets weekly for sushi or movie night, or whatever else captures their fancy.

“As you get older, you’re more demanding of the people you hang out with and where and how you spend your time. So I’m quicker to wean negative people out and bring positive people in. Because when you’re working full time and paying your rent ... life’s too short.”

Rebuilding one’s friendship network after a move, career shift or a divorce can feel impossible: “You lose a lot of people in your life,” says Tessina, the psychotherapist. “We need to learn how to replenish. You can’t stop them all from falling by the wayside, but not all of your friendships have to give.”

“A lot of my friends have gone through this,” Hovancik says. “There are people who I hung out with in college who were once really good friends. But people grow up at different rates. They are at a different phase of their life. That can be difficult. It feels that you are letting go of your youth.”

In stitching together a new network as an adult, Virginia Tech professor Blieszner says, there are many intricate factors at play: “Some friendships are love at first sight.” But most friendships, like relationships, are work. “You have to work on your safety net of trustworthy, supportive people that is built out little exchanges and trust. And that is not done overnight.”

Just like romance, says Tessina, “you have to find the person who is as interested in being with you as you are with them.”

Lynell George can be contacted at lynell.george@latimes.com.