Overcoming the friendship recession

Really good post! My own thoughts:

- making new friends does take a massive amount of time, not just in finding friends but also in spending time with them until you can call them long-time friends

- so you need to invest time in hanging out with people! Even when you don’t know what to say to them or when it’s awkward or when you’re not sure if you like them much. We weren’t picky when we were kids making friends, we just hung out a lot with whoever wanted to hang out

- this also means make yourself available. Romantic partners, new jobs, as well as kids basically destroy your free time, but lots of it is self inflicted. Make sure you don’t seclude yourself and prioritize hanging out with people

- also, it’s a number game, you should meet a lot of people if you want to eventually have a strong group of friends

- one trick is to organize a house party or some gathering once a week, on the same day, and invite everyone you know, and ask them to invite more people as well

- make sure you also spend time doing nothing with friends. Like watching tv and sitting on the couch. That’s how you used to create friendships as a kid, you just “hang”, you didn’t “go to the restaurant and went home afterwards”

You're about one step away from sending an email to ask if you can send a text to ask if you can make a phone call.

It's not "more considerate" - you can ignore a phone call the same you can ignore a text. It's merely asking other people to optimize for you convenience only. That's perfectly fine to ask for, but it doesn't help with making friendships easy.

I live in Barcelona, and during last year’s blackout I wandered through the city. As I passed by the Baix Guinardó gardens, I came across something that felt like a "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" brought to life: the park was full of families socialising the old way, children running everywhere, the whole place buzzing with chatter and energy.

Later that day, walking home through darkened streets, I noticed small groups, maybe a dozen people at a time, gathered around certain spots. For some reason, a few closed shops still seemed to have working free Wi-Fi (backup generators, maybe), and people clustered there, drawn in like mosquitoes to light. Their faces glowed in the dark, lit only by their screens, and they stood in near-total silence. It’s hard to describe the feeling, it was surreal. You had to be there.

I’m no Luddite, but I went to sleep that night wondering how on earth we get ourselves out of this.

Depends? Are those more narrow one’s better and people have a better idea of what ideal looks like?

I’m kind of horrified at people saying they had/have to work at their best friendships as with my best friends, everything is seamless.

There are no misunderstandings. We never have to forgive each other. We never even need to clarify things for each other much, as we are that well aligned.

Granted it may not be possible, but ideally go find a better match in a friend.

It may be terrifying, but it's also terribly important. If the friendship can't survive differences, you're going to silently censor any points of differences (real or imagined) and soon you're just pretending to be the people you think the other expects you to be. No depth of connection, no growth.

You want someone to be friends with you, as you actually are. And that means you need to be friends with them, as they actually are, even if you worship different brands or vote for different movies.