When was the last time you made a new friend? Not an acquaintance or a buddy at work, but someone really close—the kind of person you would call in an emergency? If you're old like me (over 30 years old), you should realize that it's never been harder to make these kind of friends. Here, we will explain why and also why this is not so bad.
The main suspects: work, family and little time
We all know the obvious reasons why it's so hard to make new friends as we get older. We work 50 hours a week, maybe married with kids, we have more responsibilities and with that we have less time for anything else. A study conducted by the Real Simple and Families Work Institute says that most women between the ages of 25 and 54 claim to have less than 90 minutes of free time a day, and 29% have less than 45 minutes. That's not enough to even watch an episode of Game of Thrones, let alone make new friends.
Last summer, in a popular New York Times article, Alex Williams attacked his midlife friendship crisis, saying:
As people approach middle age, the days of young exploration, when life feels like one big blind date, begin to fade. Schedules get tight, priorities change, and people often become more demanding about what they expect from their friends.
No matter how many friends you make, a fatal feeling creeps in when you think: the period of making your BFFs (best friends forever), like you did in your teens or early 20s, is too long. It's time for you to settle for your situational friends: KOFs (kind of friends) — for now.
Years after graduating from college, I met a lot of people at work, in my neighborhood, and at events like faculty meetings. Many of them, I greeted and took cell numbers in order to plan something for someday. These plans never got off the ground. It feels like there's an invisible barrier preventing you from getting close, because it's hard enough to keep in touch with the friends I already have (people I've known since high school). Let's get rid of that and try to build a close relationship with someone new.
Williams writes:
In doubles studies, Laura L. Carstensen, director professor at the Stanford Longevity Center in California, has observed that people tend to interact with fewer people as they approach middle age, but get closer to the friends they already have.
Basically, she suggests that this is because people have an internal alarm clock that goes off after major events, like turning 30. It reminds them that horizons are shrinking, so at that point they need to stop exploring and focus on the here and now.
Making friends is not a matter of survival.
Another thing that drives us to make friends when we are young, although it is often not easy, is a certain need. From kindergarten to graduating from college, making friends is a very important part of our social life and personal development — and it's not always optional. We need to make friends to find out who we are, what group we identify with, how to live in a social context and which people will help us grow as a person (things like dealing with bullying or messy relationships).
Of course, we never think about it when we're at school. We were confused, making contacts almost arbitrarily (did you sit next to someone special in a boring class? Did they hate a certain teacher or a group of kids? Best friends).
After spending years living as an adult in the real world, however, we no longer think we need new friends to figure out how to get a better look at ourselves, or we just don't have that pressure of belonging to a group anymore. And bonds that depend purely on circumstance don't happen as often anymore. As comedian Louis CK once said on stand-up:
I spend several days with people and I'm like, “I would never date you. I don't choose you. Our children choose each other without any criteria! They are the same size. They don't care who makes me leave or not."
what can we do about it
For people who are looking to make new friends—perhaps after moving to a new city, changing jobs, hanging out with new friends—know that it can be quite challenging. Everyone is busy and we are less likely to have the traits that sociologists say are necessary to make close friends: closeness, repetition, unplanned interactions, and an environment where people let their guard down and feel more likely to trust one another. others (such as in college).
Does that mean that once you're past 30, you should give up hope of making a new friend? Of course.
Tracy Moore, comparing friendship to a conveyor belt, says that maybe we just need to change a few habits about our friendships:
Perhaps you are in a new city with unfamiliar conveyor belts; maybe your old friends are hideous shameless and you have no idea why you've been hanging out with them for the past decade. Anyway, you have to think about making friends in this world, at that age and with a different mindset.
And, yes, really go out and socialize with people who have the same interests as you. Here are some examples from the LifeHackers technical team:
- Use dating services and apps, which have tours for everything from outdoor walks to poetry readings to kids' dance parties. Whitson says he went to a Dungeons & Dragons meet and ended up meeting a group of four guys who he played D&D with for the next three years.
- Use daily promotions like Groupon or Peixe Urbano to have classes or other activities. Alan says he met a lot of nice people at a whiskey tasting. In fact, Thorin also says the same thing. Nothing like food and drink to bring people together!
- Meet people at church. As Joshua jokes, "church activities are full of people contractually obligated to be your friends."
- Participate in a sports championship (and still have the bonus of practicing exercises). My husband attends weekly basketball games that are recruiting new members all the time.
- Take your dog for a walk (or even get a puppy).
- Other obvious but very effective ways to get out include volunteering, starting a new hobby, joining your neighborhood book club, and even traveling.
Once you've found a potential friend, you can put your shyness aside and make him or her your friend by suggesting a common activity or setting up regular meetings (eg, coffee on a Sunday) to build rapport.
- Organize dinners and happy hours at your house where people can feel comfortable and with their guard down.
Yes, building friendships is a lot like dating — and it can take a lot more investment of effort and emotion.
If you're a shy person like me, who doesn't get to people, the potential new friendships are still there (whether you force yourself to be social or not). Because no matter what stage of life you're in, making friends has a lot to do with luck and chemistry too—things you can't control that can happen when you least expect it.
The light at the end of the tunnel
As different and difficult as it may seem to make new friends, I think there are some benefits to doing it when you're older:
- Your new friendships will be based on your common interests—some new ones you didn't have when you were in school.
- You are not limited to making friends just in your age group or, with the power of the internet, even in your surroundings.
- Your friendships will be smoother and less pressured, because everyone knows that everyone is invaded (a kind of friend for every occasion — Moore also writes that “they are the best kind of friend you can have as an adult! they are full of possibilities and practically involve no obligation”).
- You could appreciate the rare times you spend with your friends (more than when you were in college and had nothing to do).
In fact, when you have self-awareness, the quality of friendships you make (or renew) throughout your life can be richer than those of your high school days, even if those friendships take more effort to cultivate. And like the best of relationships, they can also continue to deepen over time.
Text written by Amanda Magliaro Prieto of the Eu Sem Fronteiras Team
