My biggest challenge making adult friends is that most of them are still children.
Sounds like your problem is rather looking down at other people, I can imagine it would be hard to make friends that way.
QED
Why making friends as an adult is harder
101–110 of 250 posts
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#102I made my first new friend in years simply by… asking. Struck up a conversation with a guy in line for coffee, on my way out of the cafe went up, gave him my number, said I was looking to make new friends. The world is more like the playground than you might think. Just ask if someone wants to be friends. They probably do.
That's wise. I see the playground you're talking about.
This comment will help me. I used to talk to people in line, despite being a bit shy and sometimes socially anxious.
My shyness and anxiety can take a hike. I feel upset enough to block them out.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#103I've made more friends more easily in my 40s than any other time in my life, and I'm a relatively quiet and disagreeable person. Making connections with people you're around frequently is easy. The problem is that adult life doesn't throw you into those situations post-college outside of work. Now it's on you. Find a group. Sports are the easiest. You will absolutely make strong, long lasting friendships if you play…
A lot of people will simply not do this, even if they know they should. For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two. Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance is utterly exhaustin…
If it weren’t for church services and semi-regular in-office work, my in-person contact would be just wife and kids.
I believe the Japanese have a near analogous term for this: Hikikomori.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people will simply not do this, even if they know they should. For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two. Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance is utterly exhaustin…
> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)
It worked this way for me in the neighbourhood.
Maybe it was pandemic, maybe it was all that free time, but suddenly we all noticed each other. I had never even spoken to some of these people before.
Suddenly we were all spending time in the same place instead of waving as we drove by on our way to work and taking kids to activities.
Now I have friends. I don’t go to work then come home and stay inside.
Plus working from home I have time to get involved in some of the kid’s activities and made more friends.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#105I've made more friends more easily in my 40s than any other time in my life, and I'm a relatively quiet and disagreeable person. Making connections with people you're around frequently is easy. The problem is that adult life doesn't throw you into those situations post-college outside of work. Now it's on you. Find a group. Sports are the easiest. You will absolutely make strong, long lasting friendships if you play…
I don’t think it matters that it’s sports specifically, but I agree that the secret ingredient is showing up and putting in the effort consistently and frequently. It’s easier to do that when friendship is a byproduct of something you are interested in or need to do.
Another factor that is important is being open-minded, whether that means being a little more willing to explore things that aren’t your wheelhouse or being tolerant of behaviors or lines of thinking that aren’t natural to you. That doesn’t mean you need to pretend to be someone you loathe or surround yourself with insufferable people, but instead find a way to deal with averse concepts in a constructive way, to be just flexible enough to find an enjoyable common ground. Walk away if there isn’t any, or it isn’t worth the effort you have to put in.
I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same, and it happens magically and effortlessly. Friendship is work, always. Some people are just less work or pay higher dividends than others. You need patience and the ability to know when a friendship costs more than it’s worth. I think we just tend to have less patience, energy, and flexibility as we get older, but some of that is a choice.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#106It is hard, for those that treat life as 'working and slacking'. Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends. It's still that easy. But, you have to give up social media doomscrolling and movie binging. So there's that. A better title might be - why it's hard now to get off your butt and do anything other than work and slacking. Because it is hard. But if you do it - all the same friendship av…
> Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends. This is basically the "1. Do thing, 2. ???, 3. Profit!" South Park meme. If you're normal and like to drink a beer while talking about travel, TV, base politics or sportsball, sure it works. But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.
Skill issue. As long as you aren't an asshole, very few people actually care. And even if they do smell weirdness on you, why do you care? If you do, you're probably not actually weird as you think you are.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#107I came to California, in part, because my family in the Midwest is a bunch of Jesus freaks - not the "love thy neighbor" kind, more like the "God hates fags" kind. So when a girlfriend (in California) invited me to her church for some volunteer work, I went prepared to hate on everyone. However, I was blown away, as they were the nicest people I'd ever met in my life. They all went out of their way to help one anothe…
I am sometimes jealous of religious people. They have a clear vision of the meaning of life and churches give them a social group they can join. Us atheists don’t really have something like that.
I've been further down that rabbit hole that most, so believe me when I say there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#108Most of the things mentioned in the article result in making friends as an adult being different than making friends as a child, but not necessarily harder. I'm in my late 50s and continue to make new friends.
I think the larger problem is that many approach friendship with the wrong expectations. As Zig Ziglar said.
"If you going out trying to find a friend, friends are scarce. If you go out trying to be a friend, friends are everywhere."
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#109I have an idea for an organization for getting building close connections among men:
The organization would connect men together and then those men with “chores” they could do within their neighborhood. Yeah, kind of like a free Task Rabbit.
But the idea is that the men go out on a mission together to help random people in their community, whether that’s helping someone move some furniture around, or hang some pictures, or maybe paint a bedroom, or pick up some food for someone that’s sick. The guys need an excuse to hang out together, but they’re helping people in the process. And maybe they can go grab a drink or lunch when they’re done. They get a sense of purpose and something to feel good about, as well as a companion for the day’s little journey.
I imagine people will read this and think this sounds idiotic, and that’s fine, but if you might want to explore this idea with me a little more, my email is in my profile.
Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder
#110I've made more friends more easily in my 40s than any other time in my life, and I'm a relatively quiet and disagreeable person. Making connections with people you're around frequently is easy. The problem is that adult life doesn't throw you into those situations post-college outside of work. Now it's on you. Find a group. Sports are the easiest. You will absolutely make strong, long lasting friendships if you play…
A lot of people will simply not do this, even if they know they should. For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two. Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance is utterly exhaustin…
> For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two.
Right on all points, I think.