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

nytimes.com

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

#291

Post by acjohnson55 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #220
JimboOmega wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the obvious craziness of keeping track of these things... It's worth noting that some people are just completely shit at timeliness, no matter how important the thing is. I am and so are my a lot of my friends "I'm running 30 minutes late!" often meets a "No worries, I might be an hour". A punctuality obsessed person would hate me.

There may be some people who genuinely have trouble keeping track of time or planning ahead, but 99% of people who are habitually late (myself included at times) are just rude and inconsiderate. Come on, in your own example you provide a white lie to the person and tell them it'll be 30 mins, when you know that it could likely be longer. Why not just say you're running an hour late instead? I suffer from this myself,…

I don't think "rude and inconsiderate" are the problem for most people. My wife, for example, is often late to social things. But she's also one of the most thoughtful people I know. In a lot of cases, her thoughtfulness is what makes her late, because we can't show up without a gift or something like that.

That's just her situation, but I think there's generally something larger at play. Something more like people feeling the need to squeeze the most time out of whatever they're doing right now, even knowing in the back of their mind that they're stealing from the next thing. I think it takes a certain amount of unnatural discipline to think of the current thing and the next thing as time-equal.

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

#292

Post by brokenmachine »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #133
pmoriarty wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's just hard to meet people in the first place" If it's hard, it's usually a psychological difficulty rather than a lack of opportunity. Unless you live somewhere exceptionally remote, you're usually surrounded by people and opportunities for meeting them are quite frequent. You could strike up conversations most anywhere: from streets to bus stops to parks to bars to dance and social clubs to special interest gro…

So I go up to the pharmacist. He's an older gent about my dad's age. We know each other since I pick up my script for sleep issues every month. "How you doing today?" "Oh, you know how it is." He gives me a weak smile. I can tell he feels worn down from the daily grind. I pick up my script, then think of a way to keep chatting. "Hey, this is going to sound weird, but I also have medical condition. Do you have any adv…

Great post. So many things you wrote are so correct about human interaction in a city.

The point is that you are actually meeting the pharmacist. You're there every week. That's an opportunity.

Say you wanted to talk to him more, I would not be trying to act like more of a customer by talking about medical conditions, I would be talking about things he might be interested in, or mention something else that I'm interested in, or something that anybody might be interested in (weather/current news/sporting event), or something related to the current situation. Or even just throw something out there - "you look like you might know about , my mom has one and was just asking me about it". Even if you're wrong they'll be interested in why you might think that about them which can move onto other subjects. "You remind me of ". "Hey, you remind me of my dad, what's a good present to get someone like you?". Use your imagination and you can come up with a million of these.

You could even just volunteer something about your life. "Nice day today, I'm in a good mood because I'm going on a trip away soon". If he's interested in talking he'll continue. Most people who are working boring jobs will want to chat with a customer that isn't annoying.

I think it depends on what you want to happen in the end. Do you want to meet this pharmacist out as a friend or more, or do you just want more small talk?

Small talk is, by definition, impersonal. If you want the relationship to be personal, you need to transition from small talk. Either find a common interest or show interest in his interests.

TBH I find small talk pretty irritating and mostly enjoy being impersonal in the city. There's too many people to be friends with everyone, and I don't have time for many friends as it is. "How are you?" - "I'm good thanks"!

Mostly when I do make the effort to chat, people are receptive.

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

#293

Post by gowld »

aianus wrote: post #217
davesque wrote: post #72

American here: I've had the problem at a few different times in my life that, whenever I actually suggested to guy friends that we hang out, they interpreted it as a pass and thought I was gay. I'm not making this up at all. I think part of the problem is not just the way that priorities change as we get older but the fact that the US seems to have an extremely closed-off and anxiety-ridden culture to begin with. May…

I didn't want to be the first to say it, but it does feel very inappropriate and gay to ask another straight man that I barely know to hang out one-on-one. Which means that you need to meet potential friends through and with a group which makes it a lot more difficult.

That's a common form of homo-phobia (phobia as in fear, not as in hate). It's the attitude I see in people insecure about their own sexuality, who see a problem where there is none.

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

#294

Post by gowld »

pwaai wrote: post #206
davesque wrote: post #72

American here: I've had the problem at a few different times in my life that, whenever I actually suggested to guy friends that we hang out, they interpreted it as a pass and thought I was gay. I'm not making this up at all. I think part of the problem is not just the way that priorities change as we get older but the fact that the US seems to have an extremely closed-off and anxiety-ridden culture to begin with. May…

I think this is a uniquely Anglo cultural thing, in the backdrop of a stricter gender norms formed out of industrialization. Everybody is so afraid of being seen as gay while maintaining a front of being politically correct about it (I suppose there is genuine fear of being publicly labelled a homophobe or a racist). In almost all parts of the world, there's nothing wrong with grown men hanging out or grabbing drinks…

Perversely, in some very homophobic cultures, men hold hands with men because they are so homophobic that there is not even an insinuation that they might be willing to publicly show homosexual inclinations, so handholding is assumed platonic.

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

#295

Post by city41 »

CryoLogic wrote: post #274
tjalfi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle and everyone else on my daily commute is immersed in their smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

This is my experience as well. People in Seattle even when not on devices are very anti-social. When I was in the midwest, random people invited me to BBQ's and social events all the time.

This is known as the Seattle Freeze: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze

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

#296

Post by slothtrop »

leetcrew wrote: post #187
DenisM wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Sports: lifting, yoga, martial arts, rock climbing, hiking. * Adult classes: dancing, cooking, painting. * Hobbies: guns, diving, photography, fishing, boating. * Lifestyle: all kinds of travel, alcohol and other substances. * Professional: startups... eh... scratch that. * Charity: pet shelters, soup kitchens, organizing. * Politics: volunteering, door-to-door. The trouble begins when you realize you don't actuall…

> The trouble begins when you realize you don't actually care about any of these things. yeah, this is me. how do you meet the people who just want to sit around, drink a few beers, chat a little, and maybe watch a movie?

Meetup.com often covers this as an activity, though your results may vary. Best to find someone likeminded over a niche meetup, befriend them then have drinks after that.

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

#297

Post by gowld »

DenisM wrote: post #59
irrational wrote: post #50

When you were younger you probably made friends because you were all in school/college/university together. Some people make friends at work for the same reason (I've never really understood this though. After seeing them for 8 hours or so the last thing I want to do is spend time with them outside of work.) Where else can you go where people are gathered where friendships are likely to be created? Church/mosque/syna…

* Sports: lifting, yoga, martial arts, rock climbing, hiking. * Adult classes: dancing, cooking, painting. * Hobbies: guns, diving, photography, fishing, boating. * Lifestyle: all kinds of travel, alcohol and other substances. * Professional: startups... eh... scratch that. * Charity: pet shelters, soup kitchens, organizing. * Politics: volunteering, door-to-door. The trouble begins when you realize you don't actuall…

That's just the ennui of growing up and realizing that there's no such thing as the real world. Some people never recover from that disillusionment.

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

#298

Post by slothtrop »

DenisM wrote: post #59
irrational wrote: post #50

When you were younger you probably made friends because you were all in school/college/university together. Some people make friends at work for the same reason (I've never really understood this though. After seeing them for 8 hours or so the last thing I want to do is spend time with them outside of work.) Where else can you go where people are gathered where friendships are likely to be created? Church/mosque/syna…

* Sports: lifting, yoga, martial arts, rock climbing, hiking. * Adult classes: dancing, cooking, painting. * Hobbies: guns, diving, photography, fishing, boating. * Lifestyle: all kinds of travel, alcohol and other substances. * Professional: startups... eh... scratch that. * Charity: pet shelters, soup kitchens, organizing. * Politics: volunteering, door-to-door. The trouble begins when you realize you don't actuall…

I care about a few of those, though none have granted me friends as of late. Did make a couple with non-fiction book discussion and dating though.

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

#299

Post by acjohnson55 »

structural wrote: post #265
brokenmachine wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 artic…

I'd argue that obsessing about timeliness is of itself evidence of being high-strung or high-maintenance. On-time is... sometime that day. Or perhaps tomorrow. Later than that is significantly late, but why worry about an hour or two? It really is a very, very particular western culture thing to be time-obsessed: it's not specifically something that all humans do intuitively.

A friend of mine moved from the East Coast to teach college in Idaho, and he made the comment that punctuality just wasn't a thing out that way. He's a historian, and he surmised that it was because Idaho never had its society fundamentally altered by industrialization and the time-keeping it required.

But yeah, I try not to get hung up on other folks' timeliness, unless there's going to be a knock-on effect. I know shit happens. I bring a book so I can put my time to good use if I have to wait. An obsession with punctuality in and of itself might be a sign that a person is optimizing what's measured rather than what's actually important.

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

#300

Post by groby_b »

emodendroket wrote: post #256
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be some people who genuinely have trouble keeping track of time or planning ahead, but 99% of people who are habitually late (myself included at times) are just rude and inconsiderate. Come on, in your own example you provide a white lie to the person and tell them it'll be 30 mins, when you know that it could likely be longer. Why not just say you're running an hour late instead? I suffer from this myself,…

I think it depends on the context. It's a bigger deal to be late to a lunch invitation with one other person than to show up late to a party.

Sigh. I'm truly old. That's what etiquette is for, so you have a framework to know that context.
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