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

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

#311
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always late to things because of optimism and I compensate by considering anything up to 10 minutes late as on time. My friends have learned to just assume I’ll be late. Does that count? What I think is worse than being late are thr monsters that show up on time to a party. Like wtf who does that.

There are worse monsters. As someone who's learned to overcompensate for his optimism... I show up early !

But it’s far more better to time everything just right so that one arrives at said meeting right on time, no later nor sooner.

I think living in Finland has conditioned this type of attitude of not being too early(for fear of wasting time waiting) or too late (fear of being rude). One thing that helps significantly is to know travel times(by bus,car, etc) and allocate rough estimate to them. Luckily most Euro countries have good public transport to make planning ahead less stressful.

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of a song by Cake; Tougher Than It Is. [1] Some people are so high-strung and high-maintenance, I don't know why they do it to themselves. Perhaps their career path rewards this behavior, and they become so obsessed with success as defined by their career, whatever that means, that it becomes their entire identity. Because the way Thayer is approaching life sounds a whole lot like the way people behave i…

I would just think, "this person didn't arrive on time and it pisses me off", then if they did it again, I'd be like, "I don't even want to meet this person that much - I'll just never make another meeting". Sounds like she's just put a number scale on what most people do intuitively. I don't think it's too high-strung or high-maintenance to expect people to be reasonably on-time. Disclaimer: I haven't read the artic…

I can see that, but it greatly depends on the context.

The thing is, my date or friend being late for something like a dinner or cafe meetup is of little consequence. I'm not going to be sitting there twiddling my thumbs stewing in anger bored out of my mind because of it, because I presume we were doing something I genuinely wanted to do wether they were a participant or not. Their presence was just to enhance the experience, we were going to share an experience as a means to enhance it and get to know one another. There is zero urgency for this to have happened precisely that way at that time, and the cost of it not happening exactly as planned is insignificant.

If we were supposed to be pouring a cement foundation and they showed up an hour late and I couldn't get it all poured and finished before it started setting in their absence? Ok, that friend is getting taken down a notch if it were clear they were needed and they had committed.

From what little I know, Thayer Prime strikes me as someone who is not particularly aware of the importance of context with expectations, and is applying the same level of obsessive anal retentiveness she uses professionally uniformly throughout her life.

If my friends are late for social activities, I just pull out a book and hang out wherever we wanted to go - because I wanted to go there. Maybe they'll show up, and that'll be great. If not, well at least we spend time at places I like to be anyways!

Sometimes it seems like some people date just to force others to fulfill their expectations, and their whole world is shattered when those expectations aren't met in the slightest way. Life is so much more than that, it's absurd to me. shrug

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

#313
One of the reasons it is hard to make friends as an adult is because the associate between sincerity and naivety grows stronger over time. The more you get burned or see people get burned, the more closed off you become to real interpersonal connection. This is the default behavior. Once you realize this though you can do something about it. Ultimately you have to be willing to be vulnerable, to stick your neck out in order to cross that barrier from 'associate' to friend

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

#314
post #276

I'd advise people to join a Crossfit gym. Besides (in my opinion) being a physically and by extension mentally healthy endeavor, you easily meet and spend time with a group of adults of various ages going through the same challenge of the group workouts along side you on a daily basis. Often times you partner up on workouts, or at the very least talk over what the day's workout is. Many gyms organize both competitive…

I've always thought it'd be a great thing to have an app or service that acts as a "lobby" of sorts to pair you with like-skilled folks for workouts, pickup sports, runs, etc. For instance, if I run an 11 minute 30 second mile, I'd love to be paired with someone who also runs that time, so I can enjoy the activity with someone without them getting mad that I can't run a 7 minute mile. It's a feature of online gaming matchmaking that I think could work well in the real world.

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I noted later in my comment "unless one makes a concerted effort to seek out their tribe," which agrees with your point. That stated, this being a technical forum, many of us are Myers-Briggs (if you believe in it) INTJ types -- so yes, we do potentially lack the social skills. Moreover, I reflect upon my own adulthood, where for much of it I have risen before dawn to work, skipped lunches, returned home somewhere…

I live in Seattle, and I’d say that your crazy lifestyle is why you didn’t make friends here - and that it’s probably the same cause for most people who complain about the Seattle Freeze. You worked all day and hung out with family all weekend and an amazing friendship didn’t climb down your chimney? How baffling, must be the city culture to blame. (I moved here for work out of college, and made plenty of friends - b…

^This! Seattle is overflowing with welcoming spirits like newfoundglory. It's your friendless, self-deserving, crazy lifestyle that's the problem. Got your own opinion? You can GTFO! /s

Disclaimer: My two Seattle visits were both welcoming and pleasant, and I've never met newfoundglory. Had I, I likely would have found them to be quite friendly.

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

#316
post #113
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forge friendship through common struggle. You need to offer one another something or you just introduce yourselves and let one another drift off in opposite directions without any bond forged. You form your first friendships really early on with an extremely strong commonality - the hugeness of the world and your lack of information about it. Literally everything is in common with your peers circa age 2-4 because…

There's a beautiful passage in All The King's Men that makes, to me, a similar point: "The friend of your youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you...and perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening…

Thanks for sharing!

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

#318
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are worse monsters. As someone who's learned to overcompensate for his optimism... I show up early !

But it’s far more better to time everything just right so that one arrives at said meeting right on time, no later nor sooner. I think living in Finland has conditioned this type of attitude of not being too early(for fear of wasting time waiting) or too late (fear of being rude). One thing that helps significantly is to know travel times(by bus,car, etc) and allocate rough estimate to them. Luckily most Euro countri…

Traffic means I'll arrive to my bimonthly boardgames night somewhere between 15 minutes early and 30 minutes late. And that's before my forgetfulness and insufficiently alarming alarm practices kick in!

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

#319

I have tried to make guy friends and the main problem seems to be that they're boring. We just run out of stuff to talk about unless we have some business related stuff to talk about. I prefer lady friends ( AS IN FRIENDS WHO ARE FEMALE WHO I DO NOT HAVE A SEXUAL OR WORK RELATION WITH AND WHO I AM NOT TRYING TO DATE ) as there's always the flirty subtext to play around with and they are just pleasant to be around and…

Would it be fair to say you need to be titillated to give a shit?

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

#320
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the obvious craziness of keeping track of these things... It's worth noting that some people are just completely shit at timeliness, no matter how important the thing is. I am and so are my a lot of my friends "I'm running 30 minutes late!" often meets a "No worries, I might be an hour". A punctuality obsessed person would hate me.

Lateness in my case is a consequence of trying to get as much out of my time as possible. I generally find that most of the people I interact with are equally afflicted by this, so also have a tendency to be late and are fairly understanding (within reasonable limits). On the flip side, I find that people that are always there on the dot tend not to have very much going on in their lives. Their timelines defines thei…

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