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Making friends as an adult is hard (2021)

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Re: Making friends as an adult is hard (2021)

#4

Post by csallen »

> "Researchers also find that when we develop groups, our friendships are more sustainable than they are with individuals. Because there's multiple touch points now, right? Someone else in the group could reach out to all of us, and then we all keep in touch."

This is the most important tip in the article, in my experience.

When I lived in SF, most of my friend hangs were 1-on-1 catchups over coffee or lunch. Scheduling and comparing calendars would sometimes feel like an impersonal chore. Meeting so many people individually was time consuming, repetitive, hard to schedule, and yet somehow infrequent -- it felt like the main reason to hang was to catch up on what's new, so you needed to wait a month or two to let new things pile up.

Then I moved to Seattle. I decided to switch to only really attending (or inviting people to) hangouts that included multiple people. Basically, my new policy was to try to hang out with multiple simultaneously whenever possible. And it worked wonders! My friends met all my other friends, and things played out exactly as described by the article -- some of them hit it off, became friends with each other, and started initiating invites and events without me.

In addition, hangouts are just more fun with more people. There's more to talk about, more excitement, more fun. And it's easier to schedule, too, since you can see more people in a smaller number of hangs. The value of the hangs goes up, too. There's more reason for people to say "yes" because they're getting to catch up with multiple people, not just one person.

Re: Making friends as an adult is hard (2021)

#6

Post by genocidicbunny »

csallen wrote: post #4

> "Researchers also find that when we develop groups, our friendships are more sustainable than they are with individuals. Because there's multiple touch points now, right? Someone else in the group could reach out to all of us, and then we all keep in touch." This is the most important tip in the article, in my experience. When I lived in SF, most of my friend hangs were 1-on-1 catchups over coffee or lunch. Schedul…

I'm glad that worked for you. My experience has become that as my friends groups have gotten older, getting larger groups together has become very difficult. You have to plan it far enough in advance that everyone has sufficient notice, you need a venue large enough to host everyone, people have kids that need to be accommodated somehow, and everyone also lives further apart. All of these mean that we've gone from getting together once or twice a month to maybe once every 3 months or so. So while everyone still keeps in touch online, in-person meetups have reduced a lot in frequency.
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