Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 745 posts

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

#531

Post by cornholio »

emodendroket wrote: post #512
cornholio wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always possible, but much harder for some people. It's in many ways like alcoholism or other addictions: it's not useful to pontificate to alcoholics and blame them for a lack of of will power when dealing with a serious mental impairment. Yet, willpower remains the single best cure against addiction, encouraging people to leave themselves at the hands of impulse is not healthy advice. People do lose weight and…

The other guy is right though. Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. Given numbers like that, I don't see it as useful to cast it as a problem of willpower. The existence of large national trends also, to my mind, points away from individual failings. I find it hard to believe that the willpower of the average person has simply dropped off steeply over a…

> Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term.

That's not at all correct. Success rates of weight loss by dieting are around 20%. That's still low, but you have to ask yourself: is it because people really can't control their diet long term, or is it because the majority of the population prefers the self serving narative of obesity genes and viruses, addiction engineered by the food industry, "the calorie myth", the intractable failure of willpower over body impulse, and so on? Because that sounds a lot like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Mind you, I'm grossly overweight (peak BMI 34, current 30), and I know full well the power of my body for mind control. A skinny person can't even imagine the fight every chubby faces on a daily basis. Yet, due to wining most battles, I've managed to lose some and not turn into the 500 Kg monster by body "demands" - I could easily eat 4-5000 calories on a daily basis, to great satisfaction.

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

#532

Post by dep_b »

Boardgames are an excellent gateway drug into friendships. Some people you already know or meet love to play them once you get your initial party together, get enthusiastic about them, invite other people they know and before you know it you have a thriving community of people around you.

All that for not more than US$200 in games annually which is way less I spend in beer and much more effective. And boardgamers tend to be (but not exclusively are) on the geekier side of life so I have an easier connection to most people, shared interests or people do things that I think are really cool but never did etcetera.

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

#533

Post by cheschire »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #501
cheschire wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an extrovert, social interaction still drains my mental energy. If anything I find myself even more obligated than you do to hold up my end of the conversation because that's the social expectation. This can be horribly exhausting when I'm simply not in the mood.

The extroverts I’ve known all thrive and get energy in social situations. I use this now as my deciding factor for introversion and extroversion. Are you sure you aren’t an introvert with extrovert skills. That’s what I am. I can talk to anyone easily but it drains me.

Yeah, I had some leadership training last year that involved multiple personality tests. I'm absolutely an extrovert. It wasn't even an "on the fence" kind of result.

I'm not an expert on psychological motivations, so I can't speak to the feelings or motivations of others, just myself.

Most of the time these results are things I find during introspection after social events are over. I can spend 4 hours in a social situation and be one of the drivers that keeps things going. It's later, when I'm alone and meditating, that I discover just how exhausted I was.

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

#534

Post by cheschire »

trowway21 wrote: post #499
cheschire wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an extrovert, social interaction still drains my mental energy. If anything I find myself even more obligated than you do to hold up my end of the conversation because that's the social expectation. This can be horribly exhausting when I'm simply not in the mood.

Textbook introvert. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversio...

The extent of your personality test for me was reading my post on mobile.

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

#535

Post by chimprich »

el_cid wrote: post #431
b0rsuk wrote: post #369

Get a hobby. Start going to a place where people practice it. I'm over 30 and board games work well for me. Most people I play with are younger. The oldest of us, resembling the one from French Connection, is a former programmer(?) and regularly mops the floor with other players, often at games he's playing for the first time. I heard he attends dancing lessons too. I think it's a matter of getting your priorities ri…

It seems you might be rationalizing your lower-income a bit. Let me try to explain why. I agree about the work-life balance, but at 30 you're in the best shape you'll ever be: physically & mentally. In my opinion there is some sense in sacrificing a bit of the present in order to make the future more palatable. Especially at the age of 30. A bit of extra effort at this age can save a lot of trouble down the road. Gra…

> But I've seen so many miserable people in their 50s at my workplace, living paycheck to paycheck, buy all kinds of useless trinkets and always talking about their next 'adventure' - a holiday to some expensive resort on the other side of the globe or something.

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. I disagree with this viewpoint on life, but it's an interesting perspective.

There's some evidence that spending money on experiences over things leads to greater happiness in the long term (think building memories rather than wealth):

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2014.898...

It's possible that the people you think are miserable are not, or maybe are just miserable at work and actually have a happy life overall.

The other problem with sacrificing too much of the present for the future is that you can't predict the future very easily. For example, my father died about two weeks after retiring.

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

#536

Post by thecrazyone »

dmichulke wrote: post #516
scardine wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 47 it is a bit of the explore/exploit paradox for me - an optimal stopping problem. As an introvert social interaction drains my mental energy so at some point you start investing more energy into enjoying your best friends than into making new friends.

1. I only ever heard of this as a dilemma and not a paradox 2. There is this recruiting problem where you have to decide which secretary to hire before having seen all of them. The optimal solution is to see the first 37% ( 1/e ) and then hire the first that is better than the previously seen best. Putting that into lifespan of ~75 ys and assuming we don't really start sampling until we are 15, we end up with an opti…

Oh! I used a similar mathematical model while finding a spouse.

I figured, that for me, 37% (1/e) worked out to 13 people.

This (finding people) is a space I've spent a lot of time doing, planning, understanding, and thinking about :)

Also, there are a lot of scientific papers on how to model these in scholar.google.com (sorry that I don't have links that I can give right now)

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

#537

Post by nottorp »

Kluny wrote: post #16
ggg9990 wrote: post #3

One anecdatum: I simply lost most interest in having friends by 25. I lost the rest when I had a kid. Now my friends are my daughter’s friends parents. I don’t really like them, I just end up chit chatting with them while our daughters play.

Are you male? I don't want to assume. But as a woman this is something that really concerns me about the guys I and my friends date. I see my father doing the same thing. Once they get into a stable relationship they seem to think that there's no need for a social life beyond their girlfriend, coworkers, and maybe one or two very close old friends... but those old friends tend to drift away. The reason it bothers me…

Funny enough, I'm male and I could say the same things about my wife. I'm the one with friends and she's lost contact with everyone...

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

#538

Post by fastball »

Kiro wrote: post #509
fastball wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a straight man, I did that with Tinder and made a number of friends, but they were always women. I never had any luck with guys I met on Tinder, not really sure why.

May I ask how you meet guys on Tinder if you're straight? Is there a friends feature?

There isn't actually a friends feature, but there are enough like-minded men (or it seems like there are) that are straight but want to meet other guys, so you can just have "looking for men or women" enabled.

I do have a friend that swears by couchsurfing.com[1] for finding new friends, but I personally haven't tried it.

1: https://www.couchsurfing.com/

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

#539

Post by Aissen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #475
patorjk wrote: post #9

This was something that was discussed recently in one of the Pokemon Go FB Messenger groups I'm in. The group is mostly people in their 30's and 40's, and some of the people don't have any friends outside of the group. The game has basically brought them a network of friends that they didn't have before. And because "raids" (in-game battles of giant Pokemon) require multiple people and for you to physically go somewh…

I'm not surprised at all... because the same thing happened with Ingress - the previous game from people behind Pokémon Go! I was only part of the local community of players (green team in my city) briefly, but it was enough to learn that people in it talk to each other all the time (via Hangouts at that time), they see each other every evening, play together and then hang out together. That's one of the strongest fr…

Unfortunately, once you stop playing, there's a big chance that all of this goes away.

Side note: I'm surprised how in both Ingress & Pokemon GO, friendships cross team boundaries; you can be adversaries and friends, like in any respectable sport.

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

#540

Post by rqs »

fastball wrote: post #484
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…

As a straight man, I did that with Tinder and made a number of friends, but they were always women. I never had any luck with guys I met on Tinder, not really sure why.

Ahhh ... Just want to ask, does that feel awkward trying to meet a new buddy on app such like Tinder ...?

I mean, if I have a Tinder profile, I will expecting people who tapped me are all womans. So when I found out it's actually a guy, I will be surprised and feel wired.

Post reply on HN