I always feel like I'm outside looking in when people talk about making and keeping friends. I was make fun of a lot as a kid, moved around a lot, and then as a young adult I didn't prioritize making friends, thinking I'd have my whole life to make some. I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work).
I have a family and that's super nice, but I still never really experienced this. Reading about it just hurts. Sure, I had "friends"in college, but we don't keep in touch.
> I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work)
Nah. This is just a self-made bubble. Even without any activity outside work, you can still meet friends' friend and family's friend. There's always new people to talk to.
I've made a lot of friends outside work since adulthood, from various sources. Just last week, I made a new friend at a mutual friend's party, and played a duet together. We've scheduled to play another next month.
Another friend of mine just made 11 new friends outside of work last month, as he joined a baseball amateur league.
Just go do what you enjoy, and talk to people. If you share a common interest, and have no big clash in personality, that's probably a budding friendship.
I’m not sure you can adopt such a dismissive tone here. I mean, your whole premise is that you met a friend at a mutual friend’s dinner party. You seem to have something of an “engine” of friends available that allow a preponderance of socialization. I think many of us in our 30s don’t even have that.
Except almost anything you do can be the beginning of that engine. Joining sports team, hobbyist group for anything will lead you to meet people, through whom you either meet or hear about other events. Strong network effects once you get going but you do need to have time to show up consistently and in a good spot
This is a very cynical take and I would recommend some self reflection. I know for a fact you can make lifelong friends from shared interests. I’ve done it, I have friends who have done it. Maybe it’s harder for some but it is absolutely common.
I mean, I was member of sports teams. Sometimes lifelong friendship evolves, but it is not nearly automatic nor super frequent.
Way more likely is that when people stop going for whatever reason, the relationship ends. Getting injured or sick or having new kid and less time or whatever all means you disappear.
What part of that observation is about a skill or desire? I mean, I am describing what I observed to happen to people around me. If too many of them are "not skilled enough", then maybe it is not just about individual failures.
That’s not my whole premise; just the latest example.
If there’s currently nobody at all (outside work and family), go out with coworkers. Invite their friends. Go hiking or skiing or something. There are tons of activities out there.
I have to admit that I’ve never myself been in such a position. Even with work-from-home, I’m still within driving distance to most my coworkers. And I can see how living so sparsely from each other makes socialization difficult.
A friend of mine moved to a different country last year, and is in a similar situation: living and working far away from her team; no coworkers in her vicinity. So, now she mainly hang out with her new neighbors, and friends made from dancing class.
Find a meetup on meetup.com. It doesn't have to be something you care too much about, it can be a singles meetup, some sport you know how to play, book club, etc. A lot of people are there mostly to do social stuff. Think of it as a way to meet people, but you have to work on deepening the friendships by asking them to do other stuff outside of the meetup after talking to them a few times.
I'm a member of 102 groups on Meetup. Not sports, because I have never played any sport, but many tech groups, reading groups, and hiking groups. No singles groups, because I'm not looking to date and I'm not in my 20s anymore (and don't feel like paying membership fees).
I have been methodically taking turns trying all of their in-person events.
Hiking groups are dominated by retirees who have trouble relating to me socially. I have not found a reading club that meets IRL. The "philosophy meetup" is a bunch of 25-year-old crypto bro edgelords. I keep going to tech meetups, some for over a year, but everyone at them either goes with coworkers or is really apathetic and alienated.
This doesn't help if you're trying to bootstrap from nothing.
> just join a sports league
I spent solid chunks of childhood being forced into sports programs when I at best had below-average physical abilities. I even tried one summer as an adult to play in a league and I discovered that the physical gap had just widened and widened and it just helped isolate me until I quit going.
It's really great that people find things like sports leagues or meetups useful for this, but none of it overlaps with my mostly solo activities.
Unfortunately, that's how it is if you don't share interest with the extroverted crowds: you're just stuck looking for scraps.
If you bootstrap from nothing, go from coworkers. Some of your coworkers will have some groups of doing something (skiing, hiking, music playing, etc.). Show you interest and get invited. There will be new people there.
There are also other events where you naturally meet people. I’m just throwing out some ideas, if case they are helpful.
For instance, taking group classes. My girlfriend made quite a few friends in her Muay Thai class.
Dog walking. My college friend recently adopted a dog, and has since known a lot of other dog keepers.
You can meet other computer people at conferences, too.
I myself is quite introverted, too. But being introverted doesn’t mean you are left with scraps. There are still occasions where interacting with other people is both necessary and natural. If you put yourself in those situations from time to time, you’ll find a few who fit your rhythm.
Another thing is to offer a helping hand to people. Owing each other favors is the most effective bonding agent in my experience. I have a personal rule of “always be helpful”, and I think that has earned me quite a few very earnest friendships, despite my being not very chatty at all.
I've often heard the "offer a helping hand" advice and made a habit of trying it with coworkers and acquaintances. I've learned, over the years, that many people are uncomfortable accepting casual favors from people they're not close to. And I mean pretty small favors, like offering car rides for people who don't drive or helping haul heavy stuff from Craigslist. I have now started to fight my tendency to offer help until I'm extra sure it's welcome.
It can be hard to make friends from interest based activities. If you only see someone while hiking or whatever they aren’t really your friend. You have to see them in more than one different context. Often for many of us it’s that jump from “activity acquaintance” to “friend” that proves very hard.
I wonder how many others would answer "probably not".
To me, this isn't about liking me, who wouldn't!
It's more about being identical. Even if a friend shares the same likes, interests, hobbies, they have a different view on it. Their brain thinks via a different process.
50 here, making (and losing) friends every year. We moved to another country, again, and we don’t find it very hard to forge lasting friendships with people so far anywhere.
Most people are just really bad at it; some people here who I try involve in activities always cancel or have ‘better stuff todo’ and then cry, later, that no one invites them anymore or they have no one to play with.
It’s not that hard…
> Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?
Some people just have more of a natural talent, as with anything else. It’s not very helpful to just tell people they are bad at it. I don’t go around telling people that are bad at things that I’m good at that it’s not that hard and they should just try…
I’m 40 and in the same boat but also moved overseas and travel a lot. I think that kind of forces you into not losing the ability to make new friends through your life.
I do have to say that making friends with people you do not see every day for weeks on end feels different. I’ve spent more time with my friends from highschool than I will ever spend with any other individual whom I might eventually consider a friend.
>Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?
Yeah but finding the other ones like you is incredibly difficult. People in their 30's and 40's with zero friends looking to make new ones are basically non existent where I live.
Depends. For instance, I like; nature, rainforest, mountains, forests, programming, building startups (and then selling them), beer, cooking and some other stuff. So when I went to Scotland for instance for the first time (I was 43 I think), I sat in a pub drinking beer and programming an app, got talking with a guy who asked what I was doing. We talked briefly, he is a coder too and into elixer and haskell. Then my wife and me went hiking to the Lochs; it was winter and heavy snow, but I hike in any weather. We ran into this guy, hiking on his own. So we became friends and made a startup; it failed but we will do things in the future; he visits me and I visit him. Had almost exactly the same experience in Thailand a year later with a dutch guy (I am dutch) living there.
Interests connect and these guys hardly ever meet or met someone that intersects as much, so they clear their schedules (as do I) to foster a friendship.
I met most of my friends, business partners and clients this way. Overlapping interests and chance encounters.
I meet plenty people on internet in subreddits with the same interests and sometimes we meet up and then it clicks or it doesn’t.
Because in my experience, where I live, once people past 30 have at least one reliable friend in their life the can rely on, they don't open themselves to making new ones, so they invest their time and energy elsewhere.
One person was really blunt with me: "you're a pretty cool guy, but I don't have time/space in my life for new people". Other people are less blunt but the same principle applies.
Obviously I can't say for sure, but to me "you're a pretty cool guy, but I don't have time/space in my life for new people" sounds much more like a polite excuse to avoid saying "you're not somebody I want to be friends with" than an accurate statement about the reason they can't be friends with you despite honestly feeling you and they are compatible friends.
edit: But maybe that's my British instincts wrongly diagnosing a statement that I have no real context to judge better.
Quite possibly not. If you have job, family, friends you hang out with and one hobby, then there is often zero time for new friendship. Cause that would require additional time.
Maybe, maybe not. Someone I know who seemingly leads a normal social life turns down all my invitations to hang out with groups because he "doesn't need to meet new people." And he's not the only person I've known who has that attitude.
Sure, that's why I said that I can't know for sure - because it's a sentence that can be used truthfully or it can be used as a polite lie.
I just feel that if it were possible to track every time that sentence is said it would probably be significantly more often used as a polite excuse rather than as a truthful statement. (And even then, that's my gut feeling / assumption, I may even be wrong about which use is more common).
I find I've managed to find friends incidentally just by doing things. Taking up tennis, I've made friends, rollerskating, friends, and one potential close friend, kids sports, friends.
I've actually been somewhat surprised by how much random people desire connection upon the most tenuous of common interests.
Get involved in something, anything, that you like and slowly reach out to others with the same interests and you'll find friendships. Something I've found though, build them slowly lest they burn out quickly upon a pyre of previously unaware incompatibilities of opinion.
I seem to be an approachable person; being at least a superficially nice person, easy with a smile, seems to make a difference.
My few 'best' friends I see ever so rarely, but when we get together it's like no time has passed. I think that's a true test of deep friendship compatibility.
This. Find some group activity that's not work. Don't be shy to change said activity until you find one that you like. Then you'll have a group of people that are interested in at least one thing you're interested in and don't need to do office politics with you. Some kind of friendship with at least some of them will just follow.
I was going to write my own comment but I saw what you wrote and it reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago.
Basically I'm the guy who keeps in touch with everyone. I have a chat group with guys I met at age 4. Everyone who went to school with me asks me "where is X now" and I'll tell them I last spoke to them not long ago. I talk to my old teachers, across the spectrum from 1st grade to high school. People from various jobs I did 20 years ago, I still know.
So I'm rounding up people for a high school signal group, and even those guys who never say anything to anyone will join it because it's memes and news articles we can comment on. Kinda nice to have all your old buddies there, even with lurkers bring a thing on private groups.
But this one guy, I know him pretty well, been to his house many times growing up, visited his parents, went to each others weddings, etc... Doesn't want to join.
It's just too painful. He feels tormented by some of the other guys in the group. Apparently they tried this some time ago and the chat descended into bullying him like we were in school, except now we're grown up everyone thinks it doesn't hurt anymore.
I really wish there was a solution, but I think it won't happen. Sometimes relationships go off the rails and never come back. I'll still go see my buddy next time I'm near him, but he's cut off everyone else.
You sound both like a wonderful human being and a very annoying one at the same time. But I like it. I salute you for keeping your people connected. Wish I had someone like you in my life.
'It's just too painful. He feels tormented by some of the other guys in the group. Apparently they tried this some time ago and the chat descended into bullying him like we were in school, except now we're grown up everyone thinks it doesn't hurt anymore.'
This sounds like a similar situation with some of my family. Individually they are OK but as a group they revert to to their childhood personas and can be quite unpleasant and hurtful to be around.
Your story reminds me of how different we all are. I left my home town when I left school and essentially cut off everyone from that school and that town. I was friends with everyone in school, very friendly with the teachers, but that town was just not going to be where I excelled in any form. I am not even sure what I would do if an old school friend reached out to me!
A lot of people from tiny country/rural towns I think end up in this situation, because we often end up fighting the "Crabs in a Bucket" phenomenon when trying to be better humans, and leaving can be easier. Whilst I do think about people from my childhood and that town, it feels like an entirely different life to me.
Even adults have a hard time stopping that kind of thing. Especially when it's non violent.
Also it wasn't like he was just bullied and shunned, he hung out with those guys too. I even did a road trip with that group. So it was a complicated thing that probably also evolved after school ended.
I don't think I ever thought about quantity of friends as a thing. It's not like it's binary whether someone is your friend.
> I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work).
I'm not sure where you got that impression. At 51 I'm still making new friends, mostly by seeking people out who share hobbies that I'm interested in. It gives me a base level of conversation to start out with. I recently started up a great relationship with the curator at a clock museum simply by going to his museum and talking clock with him. I go visit him at least once a month now, and he's begun to introduce me to other museum curators in the area. I also made a new set of friends recently by answering a Craigslist ad for a classic car in the area, then going to look at the car and talking to the guy for a couple hours. He invited me to a Sunday drive with a group of local classic car folks, and now I'm part of the group.
In general he's right though, people are getting loneliner and make less (and less deep) friendships as they get old. As far as I know this is all pretty much common knowledge and verified in surveys and research.
That's a pretty big exclusion. It is like excluding friends you make at school when you are a kid.
Obviously, to make friends you have to meet them first and preferably spend some time with them. And during adulthood, work is usually where it happens, during childhood, it is school.
I think the reason it happens less often in adulthood is that many people already have an established group of friends, but if life changes break the group people will make friends again.
Oddly, I was quite awkward as a teenager and really struggled to make friends then.
I had friends in college, but I don’t really keep in touch with any of them these days.
My closest friends are a few I’ve had since childhood, but mostly those I’ve made since adulthood through work and just striking up conversations outside of it.
Try a few new things and put yourself out there. We’re none of us that different and we’re all social creatures.
I don’t know what happened but after Covid no one talks to me anymore.
Prior to Covid I could go out to a bar, strike up a convo with someone (or vice versa) and just chat about stuff, sometimes awkward sometimes not. Now though, no one seems to want to talk, bot sure if something about my demeanor has changed or something. I hate going out now because it usually just involves me slamming down drinks to kill time.
If you're in the bay area, I am always up to have coffee with new, interesting people. I don't have a lot of time, but I actually automate this, and allocate a few hours a week just to casual meetings people. I rotate around who I get together with to make it manageable, so an hour or so doesn't disrupt my schedule at all.
Pre-pandemic, I liked "meetup" or other similar groups. You can make a lot of friends fast at a Haskell meetup, or at a retrocomputing users group. I suppose they're starting to come back....
Can you? I've been going to a monthly language meetup for a year now. It's the only one in real life I've been able to find in SF. Basically no one comes twice, and the ones I reach out to after the monthly meeting are lukewarm about hanging out.
I have a family and that's super nice, but I still never really experienced this. Reading about it just hurts. Sure, I had "friends"in college, but we don't keep in touch.