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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

#181

Post by qaboutthat »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #95
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…

I’ve been cognizant of this for several years now, but almost immediately after I began to act on it, the pandemic hit and threw it all into disarray. Since then I’ve moved which has enabled a massive CoL reduction which is great, but at the same time I’m not sure this is where I want to be for even the next 5-10 years and so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots. Needing to drive to do anything also doesn’t help…

> so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots

Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there?

(I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really the question is even more pointed!)

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#182

Post by nobodyandproud »

Dalewyn wrote: post #177
nobodyandproud wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And “analogous” means “similar”, not identical. So what’s your point?

Being a hikikomori also precludes immediate family members including parents, spouse, etc.; you often don't even leave your room let alone your house/apartment. Hikikomori is a level or two beyond what most westerners would think of when imagining an extremely introverted or reclusive person. The condition is more akin to PTSD stemming from severe mental/social trauma. For further context, the etymology of hikikomori…

Well, no. Hikikomori isn’t an all or nothing state of being.

What makes the news and what makes it to the Western media are the most extreme cases.

The actual development to the extreme (or not) can be quite gradual.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#183

Post by disambiguation »

osamabinladen wrote: post #54

maybe this is a projection, but it always seems like the people struggling to make new friends also tend to never put themselves in the bare minimum situation to be able to make said friends. i personally rarely go outside outside of anything related to work. maybe for others it is the same?

My take is that it's like we're seeing an epidemic of law students failing the bar so many times that they just give up altogether.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#184

Post by bradlys »

It feels like there's nothing of substance in this article.

My own addition to this beyond the "we need third spaces", etc. that gets repeated is that I believe where you live has a huge influence that maybe scales in a way that is not tangible to a person who hasn't experienced it. My life in NYC is wildly different than what it was back on the west coast. I struggled to make friends in Portland, Seattle, and SF. I found that those cities were not just lacking friendliness but somewhat actively hostile towards building friendships. Seattle having the "Seattle Freeze", SF being full of introverted fobs who had a disdain for anything that wasn't their own culture, and Portland being against anything that wasn't anticomformist.

By no means is NYC perfect, it is far from it, but it has allowed me to meet a lot of people who are completely open to meeting new people and making new friends. Will these be friends I have for the rest of my life? Probably not but they sure do make the time pass more easily. I do find it has a "quality" issue when it comes to friendships but I think that is somewhat also due to the sheer volume of people I am thrown. What is alarming to me about NYC is how many people who are native to this region are willing to make new friends. It almost felt that with any place that I lived on the west coast, it was almost a given that you'd never make friends with locals because once they found their little insular group then they'd never branch out of it and never make new friends. It created an overall unwelcoming environment because everyone didn't want to ever try anything new.

Anyway, just my two cents. Different cities even within the same country can yield wildly different results. I will miss the accessibility of friendship when I do inevitably move back to the bay area to start a family - but I am hoping I will be so focused on my immediate family that I will not be too bothered by the loneliness of not having as many easily accessible friendships.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#186

Post by anonzzzies »

Never made friends easier than in my 40s. I am late 40s now and made a really good friend only last year. I guess the 'secret' is just to talk to anyone at any time: I strike up conversations in the supermarket, when having a coffee etc; I always did. Often ends up having lunch or dinner and goes from there, or not.

Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#187

Post by jsnsnd »

ozim wrote: post #118
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 WFH since pandemic. I have it good with current company and my home setup is a blast. But next year resolution is that I will be renting a desk in a coworking space. While I don’t have problem as I have enough fiends and family to hang out with. I believe that I leave business opportunities lying somewhere there on the table and if current contract ends I will be on much worse bargaining position than when I will h…

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Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#189

Post by jsnsnd »

eximius wrote: post #151
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…

My problem is that I don't want to play sports or doing a running club or any thing like that. And it isn't that I'm not willing to put in some work, it's that I want to make friends who want to do _other things_. I'm not sure how to find good public groups for people like me with the intent of finding friends for less public interests like video games, board games, books, etc.

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Re: Why making friends as an adult is harder

#190

Post by jsnsnd »

qaboutthat wrote: post #181
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been cognizant of this for several years now, but almost immediately after I began to act on it, the pandemic hit and threw it all into disarray. Since then I’ve moved which has enabled a massive CoL reduction which is great, but at the same time I’m not sure this is where I want to be for even the next 5-10 years and so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots. Needing to drive to do anything also doesn’t help…

> so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there? (I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really…

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