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Why making friends as an adult is harder

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Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#131

Post by dgfitz »

bleakenthusiasm wrote: post #58

For me a huge challenge is that I grew older (college years) in an environment where people were strongly convinced that opinions and tastes can only be right or wrong. If someone liked something else than the group, they just didn't see the truth. It was exhausting and also meant that "finding friends" basically meant trying to find someone who likes and values exactly the same things as you. I learned pretty late t…

> I learned pretty late that you can get along very well with people who have vastly different taste and as long as your ideals are not directly contradicting, it still works.

Depending on how extreme the ideals are you mention, I get along swimmingly with people who are diametrically inverted to my personal beliefs. Idgaf what they think, and idgaf what they think about what I think.

Common ground doesn’t need to be qualified by “well we agree that chess is awesome, but you’re a (political party) affiliate, so fuck you!”

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#132

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

pacman128 wrote: post #94
rqtwteye wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look into the Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. I'm a recently retired atheist and moved to a new city. My wife was brought up UU and they welcome all beliefs. We started attending services at a local fellowship a month ago and have been welcomed and are starting to make some friends there.

As someone who has looked into it, it's unfortunately far from actually being a universal option in practice. I understand that my situation isn't typical, but the commute to an actually-inclusive UU congregation (there are "conservative" ones) would be a significant burden for me, whereas I could easily walk to the closest church that routinely funds "missions" to Africa to spread the "Good News".

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#133

Post by mixmastamyk »

baron816 wrote: post #109

I 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 pictur…

I like the idea but see no need to limit it to men.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#134

Post by underlipton »

phil21 wrote: post #88
prhn wrote: post #10

I'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.

I think it's the opposite. The standard where people commute to the office, spend all day in the workplace, and commute home with barely enough time to tend to their needs is the failed social experiment, creating unprecedented levels of isolation and entire generations of people who can't form relations outside of work.

I also don't think it's all that healthy for people's primary avenue for building friendships being in a venue where layoffs and transfers could disrupt that process suddenly and without any real recourse.

One thing the marketing of industrialization (I want to say propaganda, but I know how people are...) was quite successful at was in erasing memory of the period just before, when piece-work at home (and farming, lots of farming) was the primary form productive labor took. There is quite a lot of documentation of industrial bosses complaining about such set-ups because they allowed workers to set their own hours and modulate their output to their needs (excuse me, "be lazy").

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#135

Post by paulcole »

lentil_soup wrote: post #126
phil21 wrote: post #88

Earlier 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…

I solved that joining a coworking space. It changed my life, made a lot of friends since we see each other everyday. We have coffee/lunch chats which lead to friendships. The great thing about it is you get to choose the space so it can fit what you're looking for (quiet, programmer heavy, artsy, walking distance, with a cafeteria, next to the gym, etc), you also don't have the pressure of them being colleagues so yo…

The WeWork I go to does a run club every week and while there are only 3 or so people (other than myself) who are consistent, it’s been good to have a new group of people in my life.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#136

Post by jvm___ »

prhn wrote: post #10

I'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 regular running group probably exists in your area, either on meetup or Facebook.

"Meet Saturday morning 6:30am" is the group you want. Show up, run, be friendly. 6 months from now you'll have 10-50 friends.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#137

Post by JackMorgan »

phil21 wrote: post #88
prhn wrote: post #10

I'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…

I completely disagree, and think work from home (which most of our ancestors did until the industrial revolution) is infinitely better for making and sustaining healthy friendships. There's not 90-120 minutes of commute time sitting alone in a car. There's not the very common occurrences of layoffs and promotions making you directly competing with each other. Instead you've got all that extra time to just spend time with your neighbors and make friendships.

You can choose to work from a co-working space, coffeeshops, libraries, or just stay at home. But instead of getting home exhausted at 6-7pm needing to cook, clean, chores, etc, you can get that stuff done during your lunch break and then pop around to a friend's house by 5:05pm.

It's so much better I can't imagine going back to an office where I'm sitting alone and sad in a cube all day trying to focus while people yammer on the phone right next to me.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#138

Post by ajkjk »

JackMorgan wrote: post #137
phil21 wrote: post #88

Earlier 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…

I completely disagree, and think work from home (which most of our ancestors did until the industrial revolution) is infinitely better for making and sustaining healthy friendships. There's not 90-120 minutes of commute time sitting alone in a car. There's not the very common occurrences of layoffs and promotions making you directly competing with each other. Instead you've got all that extra time to just spend time…

Aware that this is not how everyone feels but, IMO: you'd really have to mis-design your life to have a 90-120 minute commute. It's almost always possible to live near where you work, and it's a lot more important than most other comforts.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#139

Post by pjmlp »

ajkjk wrote: post #138
JackMorgan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree, and think work from home (which most of our ancestors did until the industrial revolution) is infinitely better for making and sustaining healthy friendships. There's not 90-120 minutes of commute time sitting alone in a car. There's not the very common occurrences of layoffs and promotions making you directly competing with each other. Instead you've got all that extra time to just spend time…

Aware that this is not how everyone feels but, IMO: you'd really have to mis-design your life to have a 90-120 minute commute. It's almost always possible to live near where you work, and it's a lot more important than most other comforts.

On the German city I live on, 1h is the bare minimum comute time, to cross across three districts with public transports, and better not lose those connections.

Closer to work, would be great, if I could afford the shinny prices of the rentals on the district the office is located on.

Which would be the complete opposite from districts where other family members work on.

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