So the best advice I would give anyone is spend your college years making friends because in my experience your ability to make and maintain friendships falls off a cliff after college.
The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children.
This acts as a shared experience just by proximity. If people aren't in the same life stage that friendship tends to be trasnactional or unstable. By "transactional" I mean you might be friends with people in your softball league or who play basketball with on the weekend but mostly those friendships will tend to revolve around that common interest or activity. maybe that'll develop into a deeper friendship but the odds are against it.
Likewise, you will develop "work friends" by virtue of spending so much of your time at work. For the most part however these aren't friends at all. If you leave that job, that shared shared experience ends and you will likely never see them again. Maybe you'll promise to catch up. Maybe it'll happen once or twice but again it's now in an unstable state and won't tend to last.
As time goes on your friends will be replaced by family.
The only way friendships in adulthood tend to survive (IME) is by scheduled activities. You set the expectation that that's what you'll be doing at a particular day and time. That's why you'll see sports so often here because a softball game needs to be played at a particular place and time. Pick-up basketball however is less the case for this so you'll likely see the same people less.
It's also why parenthood tends to spell the end for many such friendships. If you have 2 young children at home it makes it harder to maintain a scheduled activity long-term. There'll be times your children will be sick, you'll need to go to school or whatever.
This has played out for me. A couple of friends moved away. We had kids and the ones that stayed didn't. I talk to one out of my four "close" friends on anything resembling a regular basis. I realized I hadn't spoke to one in 8 months.
If you have kids and your friends don't, expect that to put a strain on your friendship because you won't have time to spend the way you did once upon a time. You will plan more because your time is no longer free, just borrowed from your spouse or whoever else is watching your children. You will lose those serendipitous moments that form the contours of your relationship.
As an entrepreneur, I have found it really difficult to make friends. I have a business partner and a distributed team, it is extra hard to make new friends. If you work in an office, you come across people. I always found it easy to make friends at work and took it for granted. Now, it's nearly impossible to do. Then again, my mom has exactly zero friends and gets by so I have to imagine friendship is not a necessity.
That's sometimes how it goes. I'm in my late 30s and been through many phases in life. Different careers, different cities, etc. It's very difficult to keep friendships together when the circumstances that kept you in the same place change. After university, people go in dozens of different directions and disperse around the country. If you work in some job for many years, you'll find the same thing to be true when you leave.
There's only probably a handful of good, close friends that will last for more than a few years as good, close friends. That's okay. You'll make new ones in the new endeavors you take up. Do what you can to hang on to the ones that stick around.
Times change and friends change. As an adult, I also view ending friendships in a similar manner. Some friendships burn bright others simmer, but the latter group seems to always lead to more sustainable long-term friendships.
Interestingly, college friends who I no longer live near are my most sustainable and closest friends. I still largely believe that the strength of a friendship is largely a function of how long you spent with that person, via your own volition involved in a mutual struggle.
This is why IMO making friends as an adult is hard, because you're either forced to be around them at work (and work relationships are notoriously transactional / forced) or generally if you meet a mutual friend you're trading on some kind of mutual similarity in work / hobbies or because they offer you something in return.
For now, I'll keep living where I want. Who ever wrote this seems to have never lived with a friend as a roommate only to realize that spending too much time with a friend can lead to resentment or the end of the friendship entirely.
Honestly, it's hard as hell for adults to make new friends. It's hard as hell for most adults to even maintain the friendships they have, what with moving around and more formalized obligations like family.
In practice, you make them at work - and that's it, because that's the only place where you end up spending enough time with others to actually form meaningful social bonds. I've also made friends when I've been thrown into an atypical experience with a bunch of other people simultaneously - an incubator in South America, a long boat trip to somewhere remote. But just going about your normal life - eh, it hardly ever happens. Even when you put work into it by inviting people out to do something fun, most adults are busy enough that you just can't see them often enough for a real friendship to develop.
If you find a decent solution, come back and tell me what it is.
I am 39 yo and I am not close anymore to any of my HS friends. But I am very close to lot of my University friends. I don't think you need to worry about missing something irreplaceable for life.
Also, do not take other people's memories and nostalgic feelings at face value. These memories usually filter out the bad, boring, irremarkable stuff to make the past sound like an anime. Also, it is often compared to struggles they are facing in the present and wish they could escape.
All that said, I think you do should do something to not feel solitary. I am not so sure that friendships must develop naturally. Sure, they can't be forced, by I think they can (should?) be consciously pursued. That's my approach to keep my best friends close in my adulthood.
Keep an eye open for good people, people who are kind to others and that happen to have some common interests with you. And if the interest seem mutual, make an effort to hang out with those people.
For me, the bottom line: make an effort to be nice to nice people and nice things will happen
Making friends is getting tricky and here's why I think. Where most people good friends are from? school, college, work, and the like. What's common to these? You get to spend a lot of time together with the same people which creates bonding. That's the key I think. Later in life it's just much harder to spend a lot of time together, and now with remote work it's worse. You kind of need to work hard and once you find people you like, keep trying to meet them and doing stuff together. In the beginning it'd be meeting for coffee or playing tennis together. Then if things go well it can become something that creates more bonding, like traveling together for the weekend. Keep in mind that it takes two to tango. Sometimes you'll try hard and initiate but the other side won't make the effort. Move on.
I think this idea works in some cases. For instance, many childhood friends, or friends that people had when they were growing up, were the result of simply being around the people for so long through classes and through other hobbies or just hanging out. It's very easy to make friends as a child and in adolescence has a result.
But for adults, I would say that this is not the best method. It can work, to be sure. But as adults, when various demands pull at your time (be it your job, your family, etc.) you can easily get in a state where...
> Pursue your own interests and the truth of your circumstance as fully as possible, as often as possible, and - crucially - for its own sake. Not to meet others, but to meet more of yourself.
...just leaves you still without friends because everyone else is also focusing on themselves and their own interests. This is especially rough in 2023 when people spend so much time online, alone, and so much of their hobbies revolve around being online, alone.
I have a lot of friends, and I think I'm pretty good at making and keeping friends. Friendship in adulthood looks different than childhood friendship. One of the ways it does is that it requires a certain amount of concerted effort by both parties to maintain the friendship, at once because you share interests, but also because the reciprocal effort is part of the friendship, it's constitutive of the very loyalty that typifies great friendships. It's about how despite all those competing demands on someone's time, you still decide to spend time together as friends.
It will feel unnatural and like "work" only because the preexisting social context of school or a job does a lot of work in the background. But once you realize that making and maintaining friendships takes a certain kind of effort, you can find it very rewarding. You also have the benefit of making lots of people different from yourself your friend, which people could probably use more of nowadays. I'm far more left leaning than some of my friends, but one thing that I think saves me from going completely off the deep end like some people I know is the exposure to alternative POVs that I get from my more right leaning friends.
Most of my life-long friends come from either the summer camp that I went to as a kid (and later worked at) or I made friends at work. There are plenty of ways experiences you can commit to that will allow you to make friends, you just need to find a year of your life when you can go and commit to those experiences.
This is why most friends are made in high school and college.
The difference is very stark. I probably made 1-2 good friends in the _10 years_ after college, compared to 30+ friends in the 10 years prior to that. Luckily, I managed to keep most friends from before starting work.
Full time work is an absolute black hole of time and relationships.
People who don't have good networks _before_ they start full time work are absolutely boned and I don't think there's an easy solution.
I have made plenty of friends after the age of 30. The problem is that is is hard work. New friendships consume more time than old friends.
The ratio of people actively befriending me, is lower than people I befriend. Maybe 3:1 Making me think most people don't put much effort into making friends.
My advice would be:
1. Networking is not making friends. If you want to leverage someone, it's a business relationship not a friendship.
2. People who befriend you might not be the kind of person you would choose to be your friend, but they obviously like you enough to make an effort so give them a chance and reciprocate. People probably try to befriend you but you don't even notice.
3. Let bad or superficial friendships go and concentrate on making good ones. I have loads of really close friends, but keep my Facebook friend count (relatively) low.
4. If a friend is having a problem, help them. This is how you move past the superficial friendship. Prove you are worthy of being a friend.
5. Never screw a friend over. See rule #1. If you intend to play a zero sum game with a friend, be willing to lose that friend. (I do business with good friends, but only if I know I will never be in a position to have to choose between my wealth/happiness and theirs). Also always be honest. Friendship requires trust.
6. Make an effort. Ask people out for a drink or a coffee. Invite them over for dinner. It's hugely time consuming. This week I am running out of time with friends wanting to hang out and friends who need help. But it's worth it.
7. Join clubs, organizations and/or religious institutions. Not just one. Friends of mine had good success with dance classes.
8. One close friend is worth hundreds of superficial friendships.
Friendship is an opaque, organic process. No one understands how to "make it happen." So it pretty much becomes a numbers game. The more people you are in steady contact with, the higher your chances of that process taking hold. Before 30, people are in institutions that provide this kind of environment: school.
Work can provide it as well, if you want it to. A lot of people aren't comfortable with trying the process there because, unlike school, it's really hard to avoid someone if things go sour. For this same reason there's usually a little taboo around workplace relationships.
Then there's the knock effect of having a couple real friends in our youth: all their friends become our acquaintances and maybe even our friends. The numbers game at work again. All these acquaintances make our social circle feel a lot bigger than it actually is. This is what makes the drop off after a certain age so hard. When we look back, it felt like we had so many friends, but most of us really didn't.
The NYTimes has an article "Why it is hard to make friends over 30" that gets reposted almost every year [1]. There's a quote about friendship conditions:
"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added."
But it's worthwhile noting that these conditions are simply that: conditions. Their existence do not inexorably lead to friendships. They are necessary but insufficient conditions.
I've been in many situations where all 3 were present but I didn't feel a simpatico with the other person. I've taken weekend trips with people whom I never wanted to interact with again because I did not like what I saw on the trip (vulnerability can backfire -- if someone is vulnerable about how evil they are, I'm not likely to appreciate that). I don't really keep in touch with most college friends either.
On the other hand, there's something that does lead to fast and lasting friendships for me: it's that indescribable feeling when someone is on the same "wavelength". It's a collocation of a bunch of things: the way they view the world (even if they are of a different political stripe), a shared sense of humor, and something you admire about them.
Shared context definitely creates the conditions under which such people can be identified, but mere shared context itself cannot create resonant frequencies that are not there.
An argument is that friendships are rarely planned, and involve a variety of unexpected, fortuitous encounters. It's easy to make friendships in high school or college, as you really get to see a bunch of people over and over again, and eventually a few will become your friends. A long enough tenure at a job can do something similar.
But look at how we have life set up in a US suburb, where all our travel is in an environment where we cannot talk to anyone, most of our commerce is done in places designed to get you in and out as fast as possible, and where employees rotate often enough it might not be all so easy to ever make them register as people, much less build relationships with you. Stopping anywhere is inconvenient enough that that few people spend a significant amount of time lounging anywhere other than their home. So where are you, exactly, supposed to make friends? You have to be trying pretty hard.
People's best bets is to pick up a hobby where people meet regularly, like an exercise class, or a boardgame meetup. Then you have enough people that the probabilities of finding someone compatible go up.
Quite a few people find a life partner and/or a best friend or two during college -- if you're lucky, these people won't go down the same career path that you do, and you'll have an automatic link to new potential friends that way.
It's important to find ways to expand the people you meet, though, and nurture the connections you value even though you may move to a different city, etc..
Getting new real friends as an adult is trickier than at university -- most of the other adults you meet already have their circle of friends, routines of interaction, etc., and even if you click, spending time with you would mean spending less time with their existing friends and activities.
Yeah, that's a conundrum to be sure. It sort of feels logical that if you weren't successful at making friends during the prime years for that (youth, young adulthood) then there's not much reason to believe you'll have more success in the more difficult years.
For example, I sort of maintain 2 friend tiers. Tier 1 friends are the "friends for life" I've made along the way. We all maintain a chatter and we may not see each other frequently but we do when the opportunity arrises and we just pick it up, totally natural, etc. This group is pretty much immutable at this point besides the death of friends along the way to our own death.
Tier 2 friends are more like "friends of convenience". These types will drop in and out of your life for a variety of reasons. They're the kinds of people that are your wife's mom friends' husbands, work friends, neighbors, etc. You socialize on your better behavior and although you enjoy each others company, you're usually just meeting because of some convenience, like a BBQ or child's/their birthday, community event or w/e.
Because the truth is this - most guys, by the time they either have created a family or are looking to create one, aren't looking for new friends. I'm not interested in trying to build new, deep relationships with other guys at this point. I have the family I've built, my core friends that I have real bonds with, and my acquaintances that we enjoy each other's company and would attend each others's funeral, but wouldn't speak at it.
I think joining an organization is your best bet. Getting involved in something and becoming an active member in it. You need something that forms a common bond with other people looking for that sort of thing.
The best friends you will make are through shared pain and adversity. This is generally why lifelong friendships develop in college, the military, and startups. Seek something to endure and you'll have friends that you'll invite to your kid's wedding 25 years later.
Having a friend does it mean that you have access to that friend all of the time or even most of the time. Adult friendships are usually held by people who have very busy lives with their family and other friends.
There are a lot of popular tropes and memes about adult friendship being a series of “we should catch up soon” back and forth until one of you dies.
It doesn’t mean the friendships aren’t real. But having children and a job can pretty much suck the oxygen completely out of the ability to have and maintain frequent contact with friends.
I’m in my 50s and have several friends that I would consider very very good friends. We all have very different schedules and family obligations. If I’m very lucky, I might see them once a month. This isn’t like college when you might see your friend every day for several hours.
So if you’re a single person and your friends have families, it’s real possible to be lonely in the spaces between when you get to spend time with your friends.
The issue with being friends is that it mostly works if it's actually present continuous, not present perfect.
That is, to be friends means to be able to find time and interesting stuff for each other with some regularity, on a scale of weeks, not years. Adult life often leaves little time for that, especially now that various forms of easy-to-reach entertainment compete with friendships. Another obvious bottleneck is having (young) kids. To open up is actually a non-zero effort and a noticeable time expenditure; plus you have to allocate time to listen to your friend, too :) Without regular nurture a friendship withers. (Ask me how I know.)
Kids just have so much more time in their hands. (Unless they are also overloaded like tiny adults, then they also have trouble finding friends and, importantly, hanging out with them.)
I think this phenomenon is part of the reason it's difficult to form friendships as adults. The shared context that the article mentions requires a lot of time around your circle of people, just "hanging out". It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc.
This may be why college friendships can be so strong – often a lot of time is spent living and working around friends by default, without needing to schedule it.
The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children.
This acts as a shared experience just by proximity. If people aren't in the same life stage that friendship tends to be trasnactional or unstable. By "transactional" I mean you might be friends with people in your softball league or who play basketball with on the weekend but mostly those friendships will tend to revolve around that common interest or activity. maybe that'll develop into a deeper friendship but the odds are against it.
Likewise, you will develop "work friends" by virtue of spending so much of your time at work. For the most part however these aren't friends at all. If you leave that job, that shared shared experience ends and you will likely never see them again. Maybe you'll promise to catch up. Maybe it'll happen once or twice but again it's now in an unstable state and won't tend to last.
As time goes on your friends will be replaced by family.
The only way friendships in adulthood tend to survive (IME) is by scheduled activities. You set the expectation that that's what you'll be doing at a particular day and time. That's why you'll see sports so often here because a softball game needs to be played at a particular place and time. Pick-up basketball however is less the case for this so you'll likely see the same people less.
It's also why parenthood tends to spell the end for many such friendships. If you have 2 young children at home it makes it harder to maintain a scheduled activity long-term. There'll be times your children will be sick, you'll need to go to school or whatever.
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