It’s definitely harder after a certain age. Friends come ready made when you’re in school or college and to an extent when you’re young and in your first jobs.
The idea of safe spaces implies that the existence of unsafe spaces. If you’ll excuse me pontificating for a moment, it might be useful to try to reframe this outlook; if you wait to feel safe before taking chances with people you’ll miss out on many potential interactions and relationships.
A somewhat modern feeling I have is also that it’s hard to make close friends as an adult. There’s less willingness to interact with strangers or even the possible idea of having a good interaction with someone that’s a stranger.
I think that would also help alleviate the problem significantly is if we were able to meet people in safe spaces somewhat randomly without people feeling like it’s an affront or something
Here's an interesting article: "Why is it hard to make friends over 30?" [1]
"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists 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."
I am 41 and it's certainly more difficult at this age because people my age are busy with family and work. Friendships ebb and flow based on external factors. Having realistic expectations is important.
I work for myself and generally with my work I am not interacting with people on a daily basis. I also got divorced two years ago and since then, I've made a concerted effort to be more social and do a better job keeping up with friends. I've made quite a few new friends since then, and several that I see at least a few times a month.
My take-away from this article mainly was that making yourself vulnerable makes someone else willing to share too. It's valuable to get to know someone better. I don't think it has to be done in a scripted fashion. For me, the opportunities tend to present themselves organically.
I've had some deep conversations taking a ski lift up a mountain, walking around on the street knocking on doors during a campaign, waiting around to launch at a flying site and on a long drive in a car. You'll probably learn that you have a few shared interests with that person. When you do, it makes finding opportunities to get together and do stuff easy.
I'm 42, and I wish someone told me in my 20's it would be harder to make new friends as I got older. I would have done things differently. I would have put more effort into making friends then.
I am able to make new friends, but they end up being more like acquaintances most of the time. Currently I am in grad school, and that's working out well for me. There's something about the shared camaraderie and shared suffering from the workload that builds real friendships.
Difficulty in making friends as one gets older isn’t actually a result of age, in my experience. I think as people get older they tend to be in fewer situations where friends are easily made. If you put an older person in, say, college, they’ll make friends just as easily as they would have when they were younger.
As a 20-something year old, trying to make friends with people that you don't know is an incredibly frustrating experience because there's a good chance that the group you're trying to join were friends since childhood. No matter who you meet at this age, it seems that there is always a group they're a part of that you need to get acceptance with before you can call it a "friendship".
This isn't to say it's straight up impossible to make individual friends or join a friend group, but attempting to make friends but being treated in a lukewarm way by their clique goes a LONG way to reinforce avoidant behavior, even without an explicit rejection. Sitting in my room and learning math is far more enjoyable than that, so that's what I'll end up doing.
Once I move away from the place all of my childhood friends are, I have no idea what's going to happen.
I don’t know how old you are, but once you get to around 25-30, it becomes infinitely harder to build close friendships. Around that age there are a few things working against you.
1. Families and priorities erode the time available to cultivate new friendships.
2. You lack history with people you meet and time is not on your side to effect that. Attempts to create history feel forced and unnatural.
3. You develop an intolerability to slights, real or perceived, because your understanding of human nature is more convincing to you than when you were an innocent child.
I once read that the best way to make new friends is through spontaneous positive experiences over a long stretch of time.
For example, my wife is 41, and she has a new friend she’s known for about 2 years now. They met while picking up our respective kids at school who used to play with each other (spontaneity). Over time, they found out they had a mutual friend and many things in common, same sense of humor, etc. it’s taken a long time, but I’ve seen their friendship grow into what I’d consider close.
> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster)
This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years. Back then, you are constantly meeting new people, and seeing them regularly in class and on campus. People that age don't have a "max occupancy" number when it comes to making friends. As an adult in the working world, the opposite is true.
Outside of that uni environment, a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again. Most people cannot make a first impression that good.
Outside of school/uni, people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers. Friendship groups begin to quickly narrow around this time as well, as people get married, go to professional schooling of some kind, and start hanging out mostly with people that are very similar to them.
I'm going to throw out a controversial statement: It's hard because adults don't (and rightfully shouldn't) make friends a priority.
When you're young (<20), you don't have many responsibilities or long term goals. But as soon as you get out of college, you have several multi-decade goals to work towards:
1) asset accumulation
2) lifestyle development
3) family raising
From a pure risk management point of view, assets, lifstyle, and family are much more stable in terms of extracting value from.
Friends, from a value added point of view, are a risky investment for a couple of reasons. They require time and commitment to make and get value out of, but have a high chance of no return. If you invest too much in friends, you're pretty much guaranteed that something out of your control breaks the friendship by 5-10 years, either moving away, diverging interests, or the most likely, the friend decides to invest time in the assets, lifestyle, and family instead of your friendship.
There's a vicious circle (opposite of virtuous cycle) in this. As a society, if more people focus on family, assets, and lifestyle because they are less risky, there's less people willing to commit to being a friend available for those that want to focus on friendships, and eventually friendship by the age of 30 become extinct except in rare cases where special environments sustain them.
To summarize, it's a systemic issue where even if you wanted to make friends, it's not worth it as an adult to do so.
Making friends is indeed getting more and more difficult the older you get. I feel extremely lucky that I found a great group of friends during high school and somehow we were able to nourish this group and even grow it over time.
I find myself feeling vaguely offended by this response.
These are needs that all previous generations fulfilled through their community, or by meeting strangers. But I have the feeling that (some subset of) current generations find that proposition unacceptably risky. And I guess the offense comes from the idea that we should all be inconvenienced for their sake, and also from how the idea "I can only make friends in a safe space" is presented here and just expected to be believed.
It's much easier to make friends at the start of a school year. Or the start of anything really where a new group of people come together and bonds tend to form in that time. Outside of that regular participation in groups tends to lead to friendships but I find them of a shallower quality than the first variety.
From my observations and what I read it seems that most people when they are adults actually have very few friends and there aren't many opportunities to make friends as an adult.
> a simple fact of life that after graduating, it gets harder to make friends as you get older
This is not really a simple fact of life, in my opinion. It only gets harder because people make less of an effort. If you put as much time and energy into being social later in life as you do in college, then it isn't any harder to make new friends.
The main difference is that in school, you're automatically surrounded by a lot of varied people. Out of school, that's not automatic -- you have to intentionally put yourself in such situation. Often this is done by joining and participating in clubs and organization that cover things you're interested in (dancing, crafting, whatever).
>If you can make it easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days*
That's definitely not true, or at least not my experience. Everyone I ask out to join me for various activities, has an excuse, usually busy or other plans with someone else, and they never follow up for a rain check.
People over 30, even single/child-free, seem to be very busy with their established routines, hobbies, and narrow circle of long term friends, that they just aren't open to new people anymore or at least making time for them, no matter how cool or sociable you are.
Seems like time is the main cuprit, or lack thereof. If you already have things to do and enough friends that occupy all your free time, or barley have enough time to meet the friends you already have, then when are you gonna meet new people?
Making friends is a two way street. You could be the coolest, funniest, most sociable guy ever, but if everyone you meet already had enough friends or feels they don't need you in their life then ....
The only shot to make this easy for you is meeting other loners.
The idea of safe spaces implies that the existence of unsafe spaces. If you’ll excuse me pontificating for a moment, it might be useful to try to reframe this outlook; if you wait to feel safe before taking chances with people you’ll miss out on many potential interactions and relationships.
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