To me friendship is spending time with each other in which ever ways that friend can be. I have some friends that I can discuss my public life with. Others I can talk about the dating things, still others we talk about being parents and the "joys" that sometimes comes with that. Friendship to me is just accepting each other and their limitations. for example I know nothing about race car driving. and a nother friend was into race car driving. but when we were together we didn't talk about race car driving for it would not be much of a conversation in fact it would be only one sided her going on and on about race car driving and my sitting there not knowing the terminology or the mechanics of what she was saying. and then she would feel hurt because I could not identify with what she was talking about and then that could lead to her thinking I thought she was a bore. So where is the fun of our time together? in the end neither one of us having a good time together. So instead we talked about the common ground that we have - both of us had children with challenging problems. We both could understand and offer each other various parenting strategies that worked for us in that situation.

Kind of like sexual abuse and being DID. Someone who has never experienced either one cannot offer me anything from the personal experience point of view. All they can offer is what they have read or got through gossip lines. So I could sit there using words like dissociated, fragmented, parts, and talk about my developing co consciousness and integration with some memory pieces but the friend who knew nothing about it would be sitting there going "uh huh" and "Hmmm" because she didn't know what I was talking about. Having a 2 hour conversation and getting only "uh huh" and Hmmmm" from someone when what I wanted was someone who could really understand what I was doing and going through would not be a good or great way to spend our time right.

friendships are formed on common grounds. The more flexable you are at accepting the other persons limitations the more lasting friendships you have.

Your friend may not want to talk about dating because she is afraid of dating, or she just doesn't want to discuss her significant others with you. or she's really not interested in hearing the behind the scenes details of what other people do on their dates.

Now that you know she is not comfortable talking about your dating that is one topic that should not come up when you spend time with her.

Think about your own boundries. Would you want people forcing you to discuss things that you have no interest in, are afraid of or just don't want to hear about the behind the scenes details of?

She does not want to talk about your dating. To bring it up to her would be abusive of your friendship with her and she may also take it that you don't care enough about her to honor her boundry that this is not a topic that she wants to be included in.

You say you are making alot of new friends through dating. These are the friends that you can talk about dating with.

as long as you respect each and every friendship for what it is and isnt you will have lasting friendships. A person who is a good - great friend takes each one of the various friendships and finds the common ground and those are the things that the two (or more) parties in the friendship will be able to participate in and will be able to enjoy each others company for what it is.

A friendship becomes abusive when you have a person in the friendship looking for the faults and what that friendship isn't and continuing to partake in forcing the other party to partake in things they are not interested in.

you would not want others to force you into doing things you don't want to do so its time to accept her limitations and base your friendship on the the common grounds instead.

Good luck and take care.