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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)

#101

Post by thesnowdog »

legerdemain wrote: post #95
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…

For a while, that was my strategy to cultivate a social life: organizing brunches with 6-10 former teammates and acquaintances. As social occasions, the brunches didn't lead to anything in my life. The guests made extremely generic smalltalk. I don't know if anyone had fun. I didn't get invited to anything else in those people's lives. I was kind of glad that COVID killed the brunches because of how fruitless they we…

That sounds like too many people; three or four usually works best in my experience.

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

#102

Post by no_butterscotch »

I don't have any friends. I'm almost 40 and haven't had any friends since about 13. Each year since then I've averaged "going out" between 3 to 5 times per year for a "social thing".

I think about wanting friends all the time. But then I think I don't really have anything of value to add to a friendship. I guess I have a low opinion of myself. When I think about what I'd hope for a friendship to be, I just don't know. Meet once a week for a beer? I'm not an interesting person and don't have hobbies.

I do dream about getting married. And I have fear that the imagined wife would want a wedding, and I'd have no best man or groomsmen.

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

#103

Post by dclowd9901 »

I’d like one really close friend who I see often and a couple acquaintances who I can hang with from time to time. I had this about 10 years ago and it’s since left my life entirely. It mostly surrounded my work life, but it seems like as soon as I switched jobs, it all started to fall apart.

I think convenience plays a huge role in all of this, honestly. I have kids and a partner now and I work from home. If I want to see anyone recreationally, it has to be planned and that just sucks. It honestly takes all the fun out of it.

If there’s one drawback to the working from home shift, it has to be this. I really miss having any kind of social life.

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

#104

Post by nprateem »

I'll throw this out there since I've got plenty of other ideas and I just want this to exist. What if there was a platform where people met in a bar in real life then chose a group to meet up with weekly for the next say 4 weeks and did different activities from a preset menu or something?

Since friends are made through repeated interactions and bond more around activities than just eg hanging out, I'd hope this would work better than meeting randoms at a meetup. It'd also filter people who had the time to commit to making friends.

Would anyone be interested in this? Please upvote if you like the sound of this.

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

#105

Post by nineteen999 »

the_only_law wrote: post #26
bonestamp2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to meetup.com. Find a weekly meetup in your area that matches one of your interests (or start one). Go to that meetup every week. Within a couple months you'll be friends with the regulars. I've done this in two cities and I'm still long distance friends with the people I met in the first city. It only takes a couple hours per week and for your mental health you should be getting out for social activities anyway.…

Where do you live? I’ve always seen people rave about meetup but most of the time when I’ve downloaded it’s filled mostly with scammy crap (MLM groups and similar business schemes), “entrepreneurs” trying to “network” and hyper specific demographic groups (40+ singles hiking group or whatever)

In my city, well outside the US, there are friendship groups, dating groups, pub crawl groups, single parent groups, hiking and walking groups, Unreal programming, devops etc.

You have to search a bit for what you're looking for rather than just use the default suggestions it makes from your interests.

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

#106

Post by legerdemain »

shalmanese wrote: post #35
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…

One thing I found strange about SF is that I never found a group that would do the weekly hang. The weekly hang is a socially porous experience, it has a fixed location and fixed start time but everything else is improvised. Different people could dip in and out, people felt free to bring new friends, people they just started dating, friends from out of town etc. Some people came once and never again, others become r…

IME, everything in SF that young people might want to go to is packed full of young people who made reservations a couple of weeks in advance. Not a lot of venues for drop-in occasions that accommodate 6-20 people dipping in and out.

Edit: I can sort of imagine this happening at a bar with an unusually big patio, like SF's Zeitgeist. Not that Zeitgeist has a huge patio, it's just huge for the area. And if this gathering was always at a bar, I wouldn't go much, because I have a ton of trouble hearing people in bars.

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

#107

Post by tayo42 »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #89
tayo42 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make good quality friends Maybe your putting to much emphasis on good and quality and filtering them? Like you already know friends come and go. Who cares if they're good and quality(ok to some degree... but the average person isn't immoral) As long as you can hang out and do something you should be good. They're friends, your not having a kid with them. I think when we were younger, well me atleast, there was a hu…

If someone doesn't have any longterm friends, that is a problem. You can rationalize how it's "normal" all you want, but you are missing out on something wonderful. These days too many people don't have a sense of loyalty or know how to be a friend

You can keep not having friends then because they need to be life long partners or what ever then. Or don't meet your standards.

Or just be friends with people, some will stick and some pass by. It's how life goes.

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

#108

Post by legerdemain »

jvm___ wrote: post #94
shalmanese wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I found strange about SF is that I never found a group that would do the weekly hang. The weekly hang is a socially porous experience, it has a fixed location and fixed start time but everything else is improvised. Different people could dip in and out, people felt free to bring new friends, people they just started dating, friends from out of town etc. Some people came once and never again, others become r…

Your local Facebook or meetup.com page probably has a running group that meets regularly. Look for the "Meet at 6:30am Friday morning in the parking lot by Starbucks" group. If you show up to that enough I guarantee you'll have 20-50 friends by the end of this year and attend a fun Christmas party where you know or can chat to multiple people.

I challenge you to find this in Mountain View, California.

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

#109

Post by r_singh »

Is it easier in India?

I have to actively avoid getting invites from people and feel bad when I refuse.

I’m a native and if I travel to a new city I can make friends in a jiffy.

I’m a 28 yo male and still not choosing to commit to marriage and this argument about finding friends later scares me at times. Is it really true? Does the depth of connection vary?

I also was in Germany about half the year in 22 and for sure it’s not as easy there. Being a part of a group is for sure easier for example in one of the hacker spaces. And I got 1 invite to eat dinner at what I can call a friend’s place.

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

#110

Post by legerdemain »

thesnowdog wrote: post #101
legerdemain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, that was my strategy to cultivate a social life: organizing brunches with 6-10 former teammates and acquaintances. As social occasions, the brunches didn't lead to anything in my life. The guests made extremely generic smalltalk. I don't know if anyone had fun. I didn't get invited to anything else in those people's lives. I was kind of glad that COVID killed the brunches because of how fruitless they we…

That sounds like too many people; three or four usually works best in my experience.

That's 1.5 to 2 couples. I haven't had a lot of single coworkers who also do brunch instead of, say, DOTA.
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