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Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

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Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#241

Post by brailsafe »

newfoundglory wrote: post #198
poulsbohemian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I noted later in my comment "unless one makes a concerted effort to seek out their tribe," which agrees with your point. That stated, this being a technical forum, many of us are Myers-Briggs (if you believe in it) INTJ types -- so yes, we do potentially lack the social skills. Moreover, I reflect upon my own adulthood, where for much of it I have risen before dawn to work, skipped lunches, returned home somewhere…

I live in Seattle, and I’d say that your crazy lifestyle is why you didn’t make friends here - and that it’s probably the same cause for most people who complain about the Seattle Freeze. You worked all day and hung out with family all weekend and an amazing friendship didn’t climb down your chimney? How baffling, must be the city culture to blame. (I moved here for work out of college, and made plenty of friends - b…

I agree with your sarcasm, particularly as it pertains to Seattle. However, my vibe of Vancouver is different. Having lived in Vancouver and visited Seattle many times for concerts and so on, I can say that Vancouver maintains a sort of freeze even with a well above average intent to expand socially. I think because such a large percentage of people (out of necessity or not) meat some of the criteria in the parent comment, it's hard to strengthen. Getting anyone (except in certain niches) out to do something is like trying to pass pro-choice laws. When you do get it to happen, they'll bail (colloquially called the BC bail) at the last second.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#242

Post by firstplacelast »

nashashmi wrote: post #77
hx2a wrote: post #26

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 suffer…

Bonding over struggles is huge.

Fraternity hazing was originally and still is intended to do this (though it is sometimes taken out of hand), force bonding in an expedited process through shared misery. A lot of the tools were derived from boot-camp and military training, where I believe there is some of that intention, as well.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#243

Post by Swizec »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #228
Trav5 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are really bad at estimating time. So it may just be consistently bad time estimation born out of optimism. The solution is still to double the amount of time you expect things to take so that you're closer to the mark.

Humans are really, really bad at lots of things, but we usually learn ways to compensate, particularly if it's important. Someone like myself who struggles with being late (due to optimism, exactly as you said) absolutely knows that they have this weakness, because it happens constantly and causes all manner of friction and problems. If you don't make any serious attempts to compensate and be better, you're just demo…

I’m always late to things because of optimism and I compensate by considering anything up to 10 minutes late as on time. My friends have learned to just assume I’ll be late.

Does that count?

What I think is worse than being late are thr monsters that show up on time to a party. Like wtf who does that.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#244

Post by bawana »

The older you get, the clearer you see the end of the tunnel. You've heard the quip 'Life is too short'. Well, the work of making friends , of defining how much committment there is to a relationship, etc...is not worth it. Happiness is something only you can allow yourself to have. And once you realize this, who needs the risk of having an emotional downside through a new relationship when you might not have enough time to right yourself??

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#245

Post by firstplacelast »

warabe wrote: post #192

As a gay man who is almost 30, I think making friends is relatively easy for gay people thanks to dating apps. Perhaps, you cannot same gender friends in Tinder (if I'm wrong, please correct me), but a lot of gay people are using dating apps not only to find relationships but also to find friends. I also think social isolation around gay people makes friendship among gay people special. I don't know much about Wester…

Also gay, I think it is much more to do with our "delayed adolescence" and childless-ness. Or at least in the US that's what I see. The older I get, the more blessed I feel to be gay. I can move to any medium to large sized city tomorrow and probably find tons of guys in my age range that are looking for friends and shared-activity partners.

I have many child-free gay friends in their late 30's-50's and their social lives are often 5x those of their straight counterparts.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#246

Post by itronitron »

newfoundglory wrote: post #198
poulsbohemian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I noted later in my comment "unless one makes a concerted effort to seek out their tribe," which agrees with your point. That stated, this being a technical forum, many of us are Myers-Briggs (if you believe in it) INTJ types -- so yes, we do potentially lack the social skills. Moreover, I reflect upon my own adulthood, where for much of it I have risen before dawn to work, skipped lunches, returned home somewhere…

I live in Seattle, and I’d say that your crazy lifestyle is why you didn’t make friends here - and that it’s probably the same cause for most people who complain about the Seattle Freeze. You worked all day and hung out with family all weekend and an amazing friendship didn’t climb down your chimney? How baffling, must be the city culture to blame. (I moved here for work out of college, and made plenty of friends - b…

I've lived in six different US States (in the South, East, Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Northwest) and Washington State definitely stands out as having the largest proportion of socially inept people. The general pattern seems to be that they don't know how to make polite casual conversation with strangers and are either just rude or completely overshare.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#247

Post by brokenmachine »

newnewpdro wrote: post #191
emodendroket wrote: post #117

> Thayer Prime, a 32-year-old strategy consultant who lives in London, has even developed a playful 100-point scale (100 being “best friend forever”). In her mind, she starts to dock new friend candidates as they begin to display annoying or disloyal behavior. Nine times out of 10, she said, her new friends end up from 30 to 60, or little more than an acquaintance. > “You meet someone really nice, but if they don’t r…

I'm reminded of a song by Cake; Tougher Than It Is. [1] Some people are so high-strung and high-maintenance, I don't know why they do it to themselves. Perhaps their career path rewards this behavior, and they become so obsessed with success as defined by their career, whatever that means, that it becomes their entire identity. Because the way Thayer is approaching life sounds a whole lot like the way people behave i…

I would just think, "this person didn't arrive on time and it pisses me off", then if they did it again, I'd be like, "I don't even want to meet this person that much - I'll just never make another meeting".

Sounds like she's just put a number scale on what most people do intuitively.

I don't think it's too high-strung or high-maintenance to expect people to be reasonably on-time.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. The real good stuff is in the comments. -10 points for not reading the article for me.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#248

Post by drewmol »

hx2a wrote: post #26

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 suffer…

Have made an effort to add new friendships, the effort is a conclusive prerequisite to strong, valuable ones. Emails in profile, if you drop me a line I'm happy to invest 30 mins/week toward shared camaraderie w an internet stranger ;-)

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#249

Post by megaman22 »

Looking at the small town where I grew up, people in the generations before mine had the luxury that the friends they made in kindergarten pretty much lived next door to them their entire lives. They went to school together, they worked together, they saw each other all the time around town, they played softball and pickup basketball together on town teams, they married into large extended families, and their kids went to school together. For my generation, that's broken down, ultimately because that local economy has faltered and died. We had to go out into the world and make our way in a mass of strangers, without that deeply ingrained commonality to fall back on. And that's hard.

Re: Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

#250

Post by _coveredInBees »

wenc wrote: post #95
kilroy123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do to get a few more free views is, add a `.` to the end of .com. www.nytimes.com.

Or open the site in incognito mode. Works every time.

Or just disable scripts from nytimes.com using uMatrix or some similar extension.
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