Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012)

I'm 22, and I think I have one or two capital-t true friends. I do have so-called friends, but they are at their respective colleges and are doing their own thing, and we do hang out when they are back in town, but then again, I don't consider them capital-t true friends (though I would in earlier years). After graduating high school in 2014 till now, I have spent a great deal of time alone (I argue it is partly because I attended a community college, I still do). While I don't want to be 42 and think I wish "I would have put more into making friends then", I don't think I will (or maybe I will). The aloneness I have had all these years has been so important to my inner self, where all things stem from, that I can't say I would have had it otherwise.

I suppose that's why I tend to gift Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet to friends, i.e. "But your solitude will be a hold and home for you even amid very unfamiliar conditions and from there you will find all your ways." Or maybe that's why I admire Tarkovsky, i.e. "I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view."

Though sometimes I think about what side is greener, I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

INTP/J here. I’ve found most strong friendships created over over past decade we’re with very, very similar Myers-Briggs types.

Wanna be friends?

> So I'm wondering "Outside of work and family, where would other hackers have excuses to meet people in daily life?"

Play! Or, well, hobbies in general.

I've met people online through games and technical social forums, some of whom I later grabbed drinks with after we found out we were in the same area, and later still ended up working with several.

Nowadays I'm into boardgames - if you plopped me in a random city with no other contacts and a need to socialize, I'd maybe check online for boardgame bars. Maybe try to strike up a conversation about a boardgame another group's playing that looks interesting, or invite someone who's just grabbing food to join in. Or look up shops that might host the occasional MTG tournament - I don't generally play MTG, but it's a common enough game there's been a circle that plays it at every job I've had, and a tournament settings by it's very nature is going to force at least a minimal amount of interaction between complete strangers.

One of my friends is into drones - building them, racing them, the works. So there's racing events he goes to and meets people at, socializing during the downtime. More interactions of "oh, I recognized XYZ that you did online!" (common forums, videos, etc.) Also hosts a monthly movie night - a relatively easy excuse to get to know people better that he might only kind-of barely know at work.

Paintball seems like another option I should try picking up sometime. I bet paintball fields have some kind of open-to-all events to try and drum up business.

> But I stay quiet because it damages social relationships to express myself in odd ways. It's better to be on a cordial first-name basis than have an arms-length-but-personal experience with them.

Does it, and even if it does, is it really better? Extensive online socializing has made me very comfortable with being frenemies or worse with trolls etc. - worst case scenario, me and whomever I'm conversing with both find out we have better things to do than talk to the other party - and best case scenario, you've found something to bind over for a lifetime. Win/win.

(I realize this can be much easier to say than to internalize, but I wanted to plant this idea.)

> Even now, the smart thing is to stay quiet and not post this.

Then intelligence is overrated.

> You're told to stay quiet in a thousand ways by the society around you.

Then those parts of society are also overrated. Fuck 'em. Keep talking - how else are the other weirdos who also don't know when to shut up going to find you? :P

Well, I wouldn't invite a woman I barely knew to meet with me one-on-one unless I was trying to signal sexual interest to her. So I guess my brain is somehow trying to be consistent?

I think life just gets more complicated. Folks spread out. Work responsibilities grow. You have to prioritize time with your spouse. You have kids and their schedules to work around.

My friends aren't the only thing I don't have time for. There are seemingly a million things I once was enthusiastic about that don't make the cut.

One thing I noticed in the alumni base of a club I was involved in university is that participation drops to near-zero for the folks who are in their mid-30s through early-50s. Then it starts to pick up again. It's that time of having pre-adolescent kids where life seems to really detach people from their old social circles, but some reemerge once their last kid becomes a teenager.

I just had my first kid and moved to the suburbs, and I can already tell my physical connections with folks have dropped considerably.