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 sports. It doesn't matter if you're athletic or talented.
You just gotta show up and see the same people every week over and over. If you're a reasonably well adjusted person (and even that sometimes doesn't matter) you will make friends.
Again, making connections and friends is easy. Being around the same people regularly is difficult. Solve that problem and the friendships will come with little effort.
I have found that people generally understand the value of friendship and are welcoming to newcomers. It's been a very refreshing surprise as I've gotten older.
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 exhausting and incredibly anxiety inducing to me. If I didn't already have friends I could do spontaneous things with, I'm not sure how I'd be able to have any sort of social life at all. I certainly am not alone in this, even if I'm a minority.
> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance
I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)
Maybe it was pandemic, maybe it was all that free time, but suddenly we all noticed each other. I had never even spoken to some of these people before.
Suddenly we were all spending time in the same place instead of waving as we drove by on our way to work and taking kids to activities.
Now I have friends. I don’t go to work then come home and stay inside.
Plus working from home I have time to get involved in some of the kid’s activities and made more friends.
That overwhelming majority of people I know that have been doing WFH on and off for a decade work regular hours and spend the remainder (time otherwise commuting) socialising (outside the house), sports, gardening, building projects, etc.
IRL AFK at least - the 24/7 gamers and shutin's likely have a different world view, but they appear to be in a minoity albeit one perhaps growing.
I don’t think they are in the majority, but it doesn’t have to be typical social activities like sports. I spend time WFH dropping and picking up my 3yo from pre school. In doing so I meet a number of parents from the community.
I do WFH for about 9 months now and i’m not a big fan of it in general (for myself). I can’t go back in the office because i moved too far away, and would have to find a new job to work in an office (quite ironic, isn’t it?).
There are some pros, like i eat a lot healthier, sleep a lot better, save a lot of money on gas. But two days without leaving the house is not uncommon, because I don’t have to and since i don’t know anybody around here and don’t do any team sports I haven’t made any friendships or contacts in any way.
I really liked being in the office and have the ability to talk to people which share your interests (which is just my work currently)
> share your interests (which is just my work currently)
That’s the part I’d work on fixing. Friendships generally start based on shared interests, and you definitely need something in your life other than work.
> 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.
I wonder if this would vary by country and culture?
I wonder if there is a statistically noticeable difference in experience between places like the US and Northern Europe that seem to be more more work-focused compared to Southern European countries like Spain and Italy which have a reputation for having a better work/life balance.
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 your relationship can be about other things (sports, games, music, pottery, going out)
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.
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 having more business connections hopefully created by sharing co work space.
> 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.
>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").
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 is to "hiku" (literally "pull", contextually in this case to "pull back" from daily life) and "komoru" (to "shelter up", in this case most likely sheltering in your bedroom or mancave or similar safe space).
Isn’t factory and office work the social experiment? Just a couple centuries ago most work was done at home, or out on the farm, with only the owner/tenant and his family around. WFH is somewhat of a reversion to the historical mean.
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.
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.
When you’re married with a working spouse, it becomes much harder.
Then when you have kids you need to think about where they go to school and you might want to live close enough to grandparents that they can help out. These constraints make living close to work impossible for a huge chunk of people.
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.
If we are going all “risky social experiment”, one could argue that almost all of humanity worked from home/neighborhood until passenger rail showed up in the mid 19th Century, and thus the actual anomalous human situation/experiment has been the last 150 years of commuting to work from home. A time of two World Wars and many major bloody military conflicts, breakdown of the family, weakening of community, growth and spread of colonialism, etc.. Perhaps Africa could have been spared the blessing of European colonialism if Nigel, Jacque, Fritz etc. had stayed at home making shoes. (Or maybe not.)
Humans and associated social institutions evolved out of a WFH culture for hundreds of years, and perhaps those time-proven institutions would work better in 2024 if we returned to a WFH culture. Commuting culture may have been the “massive risky social experiment” of the last Century.
I work as a remote software dev. Joining a volleyball league + run club definitely helped massively for me.
> Again, making connections and friends is easy. Being around the same people regularly is difficult.
Agreed, 90% of the difficulty making new friends is showing at the same place/event regularly. Remaining 10% is actually being someone people want to be friends with.
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.
For games stuff, you can go to game stores and competitions. There are book clubs too. The trouble with a lot of these things is that most people don't actually want to make friends who are all about either of those things. They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. If you're single and want to date out of your friend group, you might have to broaden your horizons to include stuff that the opposite sex tends to like. You won't be welcome in many of those contexts either.
Depends on the sport. I used to play pickup basketball. Whereas I recognized the players week to week, I never knew any of them. I only accidentally ran into one of them outside the game once. BTW, I loved the game and remember the players well. They just weren't friends.
Then I sailed, crewed raceboats. I got to know many people quite well. There's a lot of social coordination and communication in sailing. Just sitting on the rail on an upwind beat is a conversation, the same conversation every time but like chicken soup for the soul. Also a good crew is lot like a startup. Not easy to break into but worth it.
I agree, sailing is a particularly good sport for making friends… however it tends to be mostly older people. I just decided to make friends with people my parents age, and I’ve made a lot of good friends that way regardless.
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, as I find driving on anything but practically empty roads unpleasant.
There may be a pedestrian/cyclist-friendly city with great public transportation in my future, and so if I make a point to go out and do things consistently it’ll probably be there.
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!)
> I have found that people generally understand the value of friendship and are welcoming to newcomers
I feel like there's a curve where in college people are super open to making friends until mid-late 20s where friend groups are well established/people are focused on their careers and then people are more open to making friends again in mid 30s where people lose touch with old friends and are looking to make new ones (either through kids or other shared activities).
Agreed. I built a big friend group in a short time in my city just by going to the same club every weekend.
There’s a second part to this though. You have to put in some effort to break people out of “club friend” into “real life friend.” Make plans and invite them.
I don’t think it matters that it’s sports specifically, but I agree that the secret ingredient is showing up and putting in the effort consistently and frequently. It’s easier to do that when friendship is a byproduct of something you are interested in or need to do.
Another factor that is important is being open-minded, whether that means being a little more willing to explore things that aren’t your wheelhouse or being tolerant of behaviors or lines of thinking that aren’t natural to you. That doesn’t mean you need to pretend to be someone you loathe or surround yourself with insufferable people, but instead find a way to deal with averse concepts in a constructive way, to be just flexible enough to find an enjoyable common ground. Walk away if there isn’t any, or it isn’t worth the effort you have to put in.
I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same, and it happens magically and effortlessly. Friendship is work, always. Some people are just less work or pay higher dividends than others. You need patience and the ability to know when a friendship costs more than it’s worth. I think we just tend to have less patience, energy, and flexibility as we get older, but some of that is a choice.
> I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same
This is so true. Just think, why is it that as children we often become friends with the kid who lives next door or across the street? Is it that we magically have the same tastes? Or is it just that we see them all the time?
You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?
That the processes we are part of have one purpose and one purpose only when it comes to social life, to force everyone to invest there whole social life into a company ? That half the apps written here, are to divide and conquer society and use the created misery and loneliness for additional upsales of the withheld happiness? That companies are actively antagonistic to anybody having friends and friendships?
That's a very big generalisation. While people here will tend to be in tech we all come from different places, have different experiences and work in vastly different things
> You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?
As Pat Paulsen might have said, "Picky, picky, picky." Threads about social disconnection come up pretty often on the front page for all that. I don't think the people being ground into dust (and I agree with you that there are an increasing number of them) are on HN. People posting here seem to have the financial wherewithal to break the bonds of work at least occasionally and often more than that.
Yes, modern capitalist society is really great at making human needs scarce (friends, relationships) and human wants abundant (junk food, video games).
But I don't think there's really a point in stewing too much about the society we live in, it's easier to accept that this is our reality, and that we have to work extra hard for the things in life that matter. Giving up only creates a much worse situation for yourself.
People back in the day had to do extremely difficult manual labor all day long, think of it as though the "extremely difficult labor" has changed into social labor - from making friends to dating to maintaining relationships.
And you know you don't have to be a workaholic, right? I work 9-5, I have time for other things in life. I have a few friends at the office but I'm not thinking "work is life" ever.
This is obviously great advice, but most groups don't organically sprout around interests. Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying. And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups? Your local library?
I’ve found most of my new friends in my 50’s by going to little local museums that interest me, such as a small clock museum and a military history museum, and inserting myself into them by volunteering to help out.
I volunteered at a museum when I moved to a new city, thinking that I would meet people. I determined that exactly two types of people volunteer at museums: students/recent graduates that want to build a career in that field, or retired folk.
I wasn’t in a phase where I desired meeting either of those groups, so while volunteering was a positive experience, the social aspect of it was not.
I actually felt a little guilty volunteering-- the selection process was a little competitive and I didn't want somebody who wanted to get a start in their career turned away.
Not really my thing--but maybe at some point--but there are a ton of volunteer docent tasks at museums, ushering/other tasks at local theater groups, etc. Should probably do more along those lines.
> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying
There is a wide range of sports :) My mom always tried to force me into team sports like football, hockey and alike, which never really was my thing. But as an adult, I enjoy things like skiing, water-sports, table-tennis and a bunch of other sports, that I see less like "sports" but more like "enjoyable activities", but also really makes it easy to meet people with similar interests :)
> but most groups don't organically sprout around interests.
If you are only looking for people with the same niche interest, it will probably be more difficult to find local groups. But if you're open to meeting new people that are interested in social connectivity, local sports teams are the way to go. I've meet friends through co-ed sports that work in fields I would rather not come into much direct contact with: police officers, tsa, tax auditor, etc. People I never would have met otherwise (turns out they are just like other humans; who knew!) Seriously though, they don't all become best friends, but mostly social acquaintances and that works for me. I did get a couple best friends out of it some time ago.
> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying.
Kickball. There are no high school/college/main pro leagues, so you avoid that one competitive team that all played on a school sports team. And get a bunch of people looking to socialize while playing a rather silly game no one is expected to excel at. To shore up that reality, join co-ed sports teams. I have witnessed games in both Mens and Womens leagues and they are much more about the competition.
Local library. Recreation centers. Local board game shops. Events and activities in the community. Volunteering. Religious groups. College campuses often host groups and events from the community. Art classes. Dance classes.
Check the local newspaper as they often list events and activities.
If you don't have "interests" that is in its way a separate question, and it is one that is worth addressing on its own.
It is shockingly common, in the modern world, to have only a job and watching-TV-while-doomscrolling-exhausted.
But it is worth thinking about. Beyond planned activities, beyond hobbies: what appeals to you at all?
Another way to look at it is outwards: what things do I know how to do that could be socially valuable and need an outlet? Like, do you know how to use a 3D printer, do you still vaguely remember how to play a musical instrument from childhood, do you find gardening easy?
Go mentor a high school robotics team, or volunteer to help run events. It's 100% sports, minus the athletic dimension. I see tons of lifetime friendships being made.
With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “<x thing you’re interested in> club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!
Specially having same sports interests, does not help in finding people with more or less same values/ world view. I cannot really make good friends with people on the opposite side of my thinking.
There's lots of clubs that are politically aligned. Board games and Dungeons and Dragons and maker spaces tend to be progressive, certain types of volunteering lean conservative.
Most of the things mentioned in the article result in making friends as an adult being different than making friends as a child, but not necessarily harder. I'm in my late 50s and continue to make new friends.
I think the larger problem is that many approach friendship with the wrong expectations. As Zig Ziglar said.
"If you going out trying to find a friend, friends are scarce. If you go out trying to be a friend, friends are everywhere."
>"If you going out trying to find a friend, friends are scarce. If you go out trying to be a friend, friends are everywhere."
My brain solidified late, in my late 30s, but it did eventually solidify and when it did something like a switch or circuit breaker flipped and I came to this conclusion
I'm going to pretend that I came to it independently.
I have more, closer, friends in my 40s than I did at any time in my life previously.
I don't even know how it happened, I think that I just stopped caring about any potential for embarrassment and I learned that a good conversation is equal parts statements and questions.
Some of the friends I have now, in my 50's, are due to them proactively reaching out to me to get together. Had it not been for them making the effort, our friendship, likely, would've never materialized. When meeting new people with whom I think there might be potential for friendship, I now try to be the one who reaches out and suggest meeting up.
I made my first new friend in years simply by… asking. Struck up a conversation with a guy in line for coffee, on my way out of the cafe went up, gave him my number, said I was looking to make new friends.
The world is more like the playground than you might think. Just ask if someone wants to be friends. They probably do.
I'm 37. Any time I strike up a conversation with someone new who seems like an interesting person, I end the conversation by asking to exchange contacts. In the context I live in, that usually means scanning a WhatsApp QR code, or asking for an Instagram or Telegram ID. Then I invite them to the next suitable thing I want to do. I make 3-5 new friends a week this way. Of course, not all of them become close, reliable friends, but I'm never alone, and the ones I click most with become closer friends over time.
I really committed myself to solving this for myself a few years back. It does take commitment.
A few things I’ve done that work:
1. Start a “Dad’s night” with people in my neighborhood. We picked Wednesday night from 9 - 10pm. Started out just as BYOB in my back yard. Eventually we periodically went to a local pub that was near the neighborhood.
When you have kids of a certain age, it’s inconsiderate to bail on your wife while the kids are still awake. The hard time limit keeps it easy for anybody during the work week. Doing it mid week keeps weekend plans from getting in the way.
Lots of dads were thrilled to have this. The trick is consistent scheduling even if you have some weeks with no shows. That’s why starting it in my back yard was easiest until we regularly had about 8 people showing up. Doesn’t put you out if nobody can make it. Don’t get your feelings hurt because things like this start slow.
Covid killed it, but most of those guys became a Friday lunch group instead.
2. If you can, a cheap poker night. Like $10 buy in so the point is more to hang out than to loot your neighbors coffers and it keeps it accessible for people who have never played. This probably works for most games, but poker is such a broadly played game that it’s not that intimidating. Works in all weather conditions and works well with a sporting event on TV in the background.
Again, the key is consistent scheduling.
For either of these options, make sure people know they can bring a friend if they think they’ll get along with the group.
3. Take up golf. I haven’t done this but I know enough people who have. It works. Join a country club and play regularly. They’ll pair you up with people and groups. It’s not for everybody, but works well for lots of people.
4. Join a church with adult Sunday school. Free and easy way to meet people in your community. Usually comes with family friendly activities around community service too.
5. Get involved with local tech communities and meetup groups.
TBH, I thought this was a pretty empty article. It seemed to rehash things that I believe most people are aware of regarding the difficulty of making friends once you hit adulthood. Thus, I'll add one piece of advice that I didn't see mentioned in the article or the comments.
Beyond just having unstructured time together, I think I made some of my best friends when I was in a group that had a common goal, and we had to work together to achieve that goal. While the common goal actually isn't the most important factor in making friends, I think it provides the framework that makes the "unstructured" time so much more natural, easy, and regular. E.g. joining a sports team provides the framework of regular practice, but then you can make great friends getting something to eat after. Or in a community theater group, the rehearsals provides the structure, but it's all the downtime where you really get to build friendships.
I mention this because I so often here the advice of "join a group of other people with shared interests", and while that's true, I've found that is it's too "laissez faire", then the normal pressures of adult life can often get in the way, and it's harder to connect. E.g. a book club is nice, but when you get really busy it's easy to just bail and not feel as connected to the folks in the club.
I confess I largely stopped paying attention after the "as a kid, it was easy" comment.
As a kid, having playmates was easyish but having friends was tricky. As an ND intellectual multilingual round peg in a town of unilingual anti-everything square holes, I had acquaintances but no good friends until high school, one or two then, none in uni, though there were sufficient like-minded people that it mattered less, and, from then until 10 years ago, at most one or two.
In late 2014 I bought a Jeep and joined a hardcore offroad group (rocks, not mud). They are the most diverse group I've ever hung with, and I have half a dozen people I would consider close friends and rather more who would drop everything and drive 50km in a snow storm if I needed help.
I lucked out. But to say it was ever easy is misaligned with my experience.
I made lots of friends (and eventually my wife and best man at my wedding) in my early 30s by first joining a meetup group and eventually becoming the organizer for it. It was disbanded a few years ago (before Covid), but I still hang out with the 13 or so people I met in the group. The group lasted almost 8 years.
I had work friends in my 20s, but it was always difficult for me to make new friends after college. Joining a common-interest meetup group made it so much easier. I find the key is to meet weekly and in-person. If you don't do this, you just won't be able to put the time in to actually have a real friend.
It would be nice if it was as easy for adults as it is for kids. My daughter will go up to another kid and say "Do you want to be my friend?" and they will play all day together.
With the caveat that you need to be in a setting where the other “kids” are doing it full time too. If that were the case, I do think it would be easy. Interesting insight.
Children have it easy because they are made to go to school. It's simple forced proximity. Adults often had it easier in the past because people needed each other more, and that placed them together.
But advancing technology takes that away. People need each other less and less with each passing day because we are too self-sufficient with technology. AI is the final step that will make friendships very hard to form indeed.
For me it went something like: I'm lonely > try to make friends > it's hard, but wait I already have friends > try to reconnect with old friends > for various reasons old friends don't want to/can't be friends > try to make new friends > wait I want my old friends > not going to happen > volunteering
I used to be like this! then I figured out the reason what makes making new friends hard, I became more relaxed hanging out and reaching out to new friends, now I can enjoy both new and old friends' accompany, tho I'm still working on making myself more comfortable making friends.
I barely have any friends. Being a single father is incredibly isolating.
Doing group activities is the key, but finding a group that can include me and my son is very rare. Also, our neighbors are incredibly impolite. We're hoping to move homes soon, and I am hoping the change in perspective will have a good impact. So I would add neighborhood community also has an impact on socializing.
Just suggesting because I don't see it here: foreign language group classes. I would say groups are pretty good for beginner level. But you are trading a bit of learning efficiency for the social aspect, arguably
I came to California, in part, because my family in the Midwest is a bunch of Jesus freaks - not the "love thy neighbor" kind, more like the "God hates fags" kind. So when a girlfriend (in California) invited me to her church for some volunteer work, I went prepared to hate on everyone. However, I was blown away, as they were the nicest people I'd ever met in my life. They all went out of their way to help one another, just to be helpful, not to destroy the "gay agenda" or "save the unborn" or whatever. No one preached to me, no warnings about burning in hell.
My point is that, love it or hate it, church can be a great way to meet good people. I'm still anti-religion, anti-church, although a bit less. But I can't deny the social support church can provide.
I’ve been thinking about this lately. I started going to social events at a friend’s church in around 8th grade, and regularly went to church and church events through high school. My mom came with me through much of it (dad isn’t big on religion or social events, which I get). I don’t think either of us was particularly invested in the religious part, but we both made a number of long term friends, and I had a strong sense of community and belonging that I didn’t get at school.
The church took a hard right turn, and I gave up any semblance of belief when I went to college. But as an adult with kids of my own, I do wish that I had a “third place” to take my family for community and kinship. I don’t really want to raise the kids in a religion, but I’ve occasionally considered trying to find a “light” church or something so they get the same sense of community that I had.
I’d be quite interested in comparing notes with you on this, I have also been very deep down this rabbit hole. Some dark, dark things happen under the guise of religion.
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".
I think that kind of misses the point. Sure, of course plenty of atheists find meaning in life and social groups to join.
Point being, in a religious environment you don't have to have skill - the meaning in life and social groups are automatic and baked in. That's not the case for atheists so it's easier to get "left behind" if you happen to be "unskilled", as you put it.
I had a similar bad experience with religion growing up that left me very anti-organized religion. It wasn't until adulthood that I met people for whom religion appeared to be a positive developmental force on their personality. I am much more respectful of religious views in general now, even if I don't believe it myself.
Most religions really do center themselves on very useful concepts like mindfulness, gratitude, and helping others. But like anything, religions can be coopted by those with personality disorders to exercise their need for control, tribalistic exclusion, etc.
Whatever fosters a good healthy community is good, and church does play a role but as you state it’s not always positive and healthy. It’s good to know they’re not a uniform monolith and if you don’t find one you like you should keep on looking.
That depends, as the comment you replied to shows, on how they respond to that. I'm an atheist, but one of my wife's best friends is a dyed-in-the wool catholic, and we get on really well despite that fundamental difference. He has a great line in self-deprecating humour, where he talked about "going Taliban" during lent, of which he is very observant. Not all religious people - and, I would suggest, probably very few in fact - are nutters. They're just the loudest ones.
I thought so too, until I realized that if atheists see God as a deep aspect of the human mind, that evolved that way for reasons, then we don't miss much of the Judeo-Christian story. I stopped by a local church for Bible study just in order to challenge my assumptions and found that they had no problem with that formulation at all. I expected way more awkwardness and even pushed the issue, to no avail. The result was a delightful experience of people sitting around interrogating ancient texts and being attentive to each other's life challenges.
I found that the structure of the Christian congregation is equivalent to the anarchist affinity group. I realized that, unlike us, Christians build infrastructure to support their organizing, and we should probably adopt that.
I'm still the same atheist, just a churchgoing one. I don't go to mass often or ever recite the Nicene Creed, but otherwise it's been a fantastic social outlet, great intellectual company, and the organ festival is off the hook.
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 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.
So I guess my suggestion is: don't artificially limit your pool of potential friends by looking for the perfect match. No need to find your soul-copy. Someone with whom concersation flows is just fine.
> 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!”
You just need a shared interest or objective in as close to 'real life' as you can get it, and you need to dedicate time to it that you would otherwise give to TV and doom-scrolling.
Gamers make real friends. Open source enthusiasts can make real friends. Music fans can make real friends (though your local scene is considerably better for this).
It does take management and maintenance, and if you're a single person then covid lockdowns will have broken many ties; I am definitely a more insular person than I was before.
But stop wasting your time watching TV, make a plan to make your social media more focussed on local activities and less focussed on personal drama, and try to be part of something a bit bigger than yourself. Get a dog, maybe.
I have a few board game groups I belong to. We occasionally also do things outside of board games. So, for me it was finding a common interest.
Another factor, for me, is being married. My wife has a lot of friends. They go on walks together, have regular Ladies Lunches were they try different restaurants in the area. I've become friends with some of the other husbands when we do things together as couples. Everything from movies, to holiday parties, to escape rooms, to board game nights (party games), to murder mystery dinners, etc.
> My wife has a lot of friends. They go on walks together, have regular Ladies Lunches were they try different restaurants in the area. I've become friends with some of the other husbands when we do things together as couples. Everything from movies, to holiday parties, to escape rooms, to board game nights (party games), to murder mystery dinners, etc.
The problem with latching to your wife's social network is that they might end remaining your wife's friends as opposed to your friends. Especially if you only see each other in the context of "my wife's friend". It is a very common pattern. And then if you ever break up with your wife, she is gone and so are her friends.
Learning to make friends on your own is a valuable skill.
Great advice if you're a dog lover. You will quickly meet dog-loving people. One stereotype is the dog owners that have dogs as a fashion item. Another stereotype is dog owners that desire a dependent.
Recently I've noticed lots of people I thin judge to be good have house plants. So there's definitely something about being able to care for dogs or plants or people. I'd love to hear other thoughts about house plant owners!
The author of the article? Doesn't sound like she is trying to make friends. Comes off as an assignment where she polled a bunch of people and added some text around their replies.
If you make a little effort it gets easier once you hit 50s or 60s. People in their 30s and 40s are very busy with family and work. This changes once kids are gone and people near or have reached retirement.
> I honestly think the majority of the difficulty is that we live so far from one another.
This sound correct for some people, but I'm not sure if it's the majority.
Right now I live in a town with ~20,000 people, feels like I cannot go outside without people around me and there are constant regular events being done.
I grew up on a island with ~700 people, and even there you were not really alone unless you were out in the forest. Even that place regularly had events organized by people.
Besides, I'm guessing most people in the world live in or close to metropolitan areas, and there certainly there isn't any problem of "live so far from one another", but maybe the opposite problem.
Yes and you aren't necessarily going to be friends with all of those people around you. The challenge is not being near just anyone but rather being near a group of people with significant overlap in values and interests. I live in one of the highest density cities in the US but I still have very few friends who live within a twenty minute walk and I frequently have to commute an hour each way to social gatherings.
> The challenge is not being near just anyone but rather being near a group of people with significant overlap in values and interests
Maybe I'm exceptionally flexible, but I don't see those as being a requirement for finding friends. Growing up on the island with an interest for programming there was like two other people on the island who even knew what programming was, and were into computers.
So most of my friends of that time I didn't really have anything in common with except we lived on this island with our parents, and we liked the same types of jokes. But generally our world-view was very different even back then, didn't seem to have stopped us.
>In school, or college, it was easier to be in proximity to other people which is just not possible as an adult.
I think it is more that you made friends with people that already lived near you (ie the kids going to your school). As adults, the only people that match a similar profile are your work colleagues but adults tend be more closed off to making friends. In some cultures, it is still easy but north european cultures seem to make it so that when you reach some age you close off to new people.
It is hard, for those that treat life as 'working and slacking'.
Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends.
It's still that easy. But, you have to give up social media doomscrolling and movie binging. So there's that.
A better title might be - why it's hard now to get off your butt and do anything other than work and slacking. Because it is hard. But if you do it - all the same friendship avenues are still there.
There are obviously some adults who have severe limitations on their ability to socialise and nobody is implying they are lazy.
But a wider social scene I have been part of has people with evident learning difficulties, people with obvious neurodivergence, people with physical disabilities.
If you show up and show interest in sharing a common goal with a large enough circle of people, then those people will find you a way to participate at your own speed.
If you have a way to show up for social activities, or assistance to show up, you could show up, you have a desire to show up, and you don't show up... some of that really is laziness at worst and avoidance at best.
I don't think that's exactly what they were saying. I read it more like "people who divide life into work-that-you-should-pour-your-energy-into and recovery-where-you-try-not-to-spend-energy", and that maybe we should pour less of our energy into work and use that energy for socialising (which can result in an overall net energy gain).
You have more generous eyes than my best, but saying things like, get off your butt, stop binging, and its that easy, is pretty analogous to common discourse where the blame is placed on motivation alone.
> Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends.
This is basically the "1. Do thing, 2. ???, 3. Profit!" South Park meme. If you're normal and like to drink a beer while talking about travel, TV, base politics or sportsball, sure it works.
But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.
That is my thinking too. Joining a group of 10 people, maybe with luck I make 1 friend out of it.
I’ve done it in the past, with mixed results. My father would roam through different groups, rotary, lions club, church, fathers of my friends… that resulted in a say 1% friendships, which would last from 1 to 3 years. And boy there are dangers there too! Nobody is talking about them! Was I the only one who got a manic hanging every day at my door? I had many experiences where people I didn’t want to be around would stick to me in a stalker way…
And those "manics" are excluded as well, while just showing up, trying to make friends. The solutionism exhibited in discussions like this flies in the face of reality. They devolve into self-help for the masses. Human relationships are complex, and there is no easy path to true friendship.
> The solutionism exhibited in discussions like this flies in the face of reality.
The solution I identify in my comments does not fly in the face of reality, because it is how I went from being crushingly lonely and weird in my early 30s to having the kind of friends who (just today) said "are you really doing Christmas by yourself? Fly out to <another country> and come to us, you'd be very welcome", and they absolutely mean it.
I'm still someone who lives solo and the covid lockdowns were a difficult, lonely time. But I have friends because I found myself introduced to an event on the fringes of a much bigger social scene, and I decided to turn up more and take an active part in it.
You find a thing that is bigger than yourself, whatever it is, you show interest, and you keep turning up. It's not solutionism: it's how friendship starts, for most people. You offer or accept help. You share a task that needs doing. You share an activity that is fun. You expand your personal circle to a dog, and they expand your circle to the owners of other dogs. Whatever.
Of course humans are all different, but essentially all the adults at a grown up social group, community project, activism event, regular club, dog park, have something in common: they are adults who want friendship. That may well be the only thing they have in common apart from their interest in some shared endeavour.
> But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.
I am a long way from normal and it worked for me. People genuinely thought I was confident and outgoing simply for turning up and chatting, and eventually it began to be a lot more true. Even if I had to leave earlier than most to find some quiet.
Any shared activity that has enough participants has a role for people like us -- helping set up/tear down, organising, making coffees and snacks (the kitchen is an easy place to be), taking photographs, shuttling messages between organisers. Any shared activity has little bubbles of social grouping, fun and friendship around these functional parts. At a music thing: sound engineers, merch tents, collecting donations on the door -- lots of little bubbles of odd people finding their own speed.
As long as you take time to relax and enjoy it as well -- I find this part difficult -- then there is a life for you. For me, I was a photographer, I helped with the web and email side, I helped with AV, whatever. I became indispensable. And then I found my people around the edges of it. I struggle again now, post-lockdown-fragmentation and a bout of depression, so I stepped back from active involvement in the same way, but I know my people are out there and they still value me just for turning up.
Try not to assume there are "normal people" who want to lock you out. It's cynical, a little rude frankly. It is also a form of fundamental attribution error. Any large social functioning/gathering of adults is a gathering of people who have the same need for adult friendship and connection as you; many of them are lonely at other times. Why else would it even be happening?
Side note: as true as the "sportsball" clichés might be, stop thinking that. Never, ever, ever say it out loud.
If it's not for you (it isn't for me), so what? Never murder an enthusiasm. It's rude.
Skill issue. As long as you aren't an asshole, very few people actually care. And even if they do smell weirdness on you, why do you care? If you do, you're probably not actually weird as you think you are.
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 pictures, or maybe paint a bedroom, or pick up some food for someone that’s sick. The guys need an excuse to hang out together, but they’re helping people in the process. And maybe they can go grab a drink or lunch when they’re done. They get a sense of purpose and something to feel good about, as well as a companion for the day’s little journey.
I imagine people will read this and think this sounds idiotic, and that’s fine, but if you might want to explore this idea with me a little more, my email is in my profile.
I think for a lot of people it’s hard precisely for that reason - it’s a very social time of year for most which increases the feeling of loneliness for those who maybe don’t know a lot of people or don’t have family or friends they can visit for whatever reason.
I couldn't understand why you were talking about this, I actually thought your account was hacked, but I see now all the photos in the article are provided by them. Clicked through and spent some time there, an interesting community, it seems like people's random "decent enough" photos, kinda a good idea imo. If I want random stock these days I typically use AI, but this would save me having to think up a prompt and then do 15 minutes of prompt engineering. I like it!
I notice that as we grow older patience in growing a friendship is less, usually at at adult change we look for a perfect person or someone with way less difference in tastes.
I would say maybe not patience, but openness maybe? I have a hard time being around with people, that say, show some trait of antisemitism, or discrimination. I grew intolerant to that (and many other things) that 20 years ago I would just ignore.
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?
It's not a projection. I think it's a core truth you've discovered.
You need to find a thing that is bigger than yourself to be a part of. And then show up and be willing to pitch in.
Other adults who know that adult friendship is important will be there.
The rest sorts itself out pretty fast, because almost everyone enjoys the company of someone who is willing to put themselves out there, even a shy, awkward person.
There are of course people who can't "show up" so easily -- people with limited mobility, people who are physically severely isolated. But the internet does offer some spaces where those people can have a lot of what face-to-face friendship offers. Again you just have to find a shared activity and show up.
“I have a hard time making friends” may be eventually interpreted as “I have a hard time putting me in situations to be able to make friends” just 2 sides of the same coin, isn’t it?
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 sports. It doesn't matter if you're athletic or talented.
You just gotta show up and see the same people every week over and over. If you're a reasonably well adjusted person (and even that sometimes doesn't matter) you will make friends.
Again, making connections and friends is easy. Being around the same people regularly is difficult. Solve that problem and the friendships will come with little effort.
I have found that people generally understand the value of friendship and are welcoming to newcomers. It's been a very refreshing surprise as I've gotten older.
Get out there!
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 exhausting and incredibly anxiety inducing to me. If I didn't already have friends I could do spontaneous things with, I'm not sure how I'd be able to have any sort of social life at all. I certainly am not alone in this, even if I'm a minority.
> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance
I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)
It worked this way for me in the neighbourhood.
Maybe it was pandemic, maybe it was all that free time, but suddenly we all noticed each other. I had never even spoken to some of these people before.
Suddenly we were all spending time in the same place instead of waving as we drove by on our way to work and taking kids to activities.
Now I have friends. I don’t go to work then come home and stay inside.
Plus working from home I have time to get involved in some of the kid’s activities and made more friends.
If you are or know someone who uses the time savings from not commuting to persue anything outside the house, you are in the vast minority.
That seems like a local from your PoV thing.
That overwhelming majority of people I know that have been doing WFH on and off for a decade work regular hours and spend the remainder (time otherwise commuting) socialising (outside the house), sports, gardening, building projects, etc.
IRL AFK at least - the 24/7 gamers and shutin's likely have a different world view, but they appear to be in a minoity albeit one perhaps growing.
I don’t think they are in the majority, but it doesn’t have to be typical social activities like sports. I spend time WFH dropping and picking up my 3yo from pre school. In doing so I meet a number of parents from the community.
If you don't waste that time scrolling Instagram, Reddit, etc.
It can be both.
For some WFH will be a big win. But for others a big loss.
How big the big losse are will depend on the individual and their willingness to take action(s) to mitigate the loss.
I do WFH for about 9 months now and i’m not a big fan of it in general (for myself). I can’t go back in the office because i moved too far away, and would have to find a new job to work in an office (quite ironic, isn’t it?). There are some pros, like i eat a lot healthier, sleep a lot better, save a lot of money on gas. But two days without leaving the house is not uncommon, because I don’t have to and since i don’t know anybody around here and don’t do any team sports I haven’t made any friendships or contacts in any way.
I really liked being in the office and have the ability to talk to people which share your interests (which is just my work currently)
> share your interests (which is just my work currently)
That’s the part I’d work on fixing. Friendships generally start based on shared interests, and you definitely need something in your life other than work.
> 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.
I wonder if this would vary by country and culture?
I wonder if there is a statistically noticeable difference in experience between places like the US and Northern Europe that seem to be more more work-focused compared to Southern European countries like Spain and Italy which have a reputation for having a better work/life balance.
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 your relationship can be about other things (sports, games, music, pottery, going out)
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.
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 having more business connections hopefully created by sharing co work space.
> 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.
Right on all points, I think.
>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").
It's based on the faulty theory that you can make friends at work.
Which isn't to say you can't but...it's work. It is first and foremost the lifeline holding up your entire financial existence. It is non-optional.
I don’t think I’d have agreed to volunteer at church as much as I do without WFH.
If it weren’t for church services and semi-regular in-office work, my in-person contact would be just wife and kids.
I believe the Japanese have a near analogous term for this: Hikikomori.
That is not what Hikikomori means. Hikikomori is a complete removal of oneself from society often including family and work.
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 is to "hiku" (literally "pull", contextually in this case to "pull back" from daily life) and "komoru" (to "shelter up", in this case most likely sheltering in your bedroom or mancave or similar safe space).
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.
Having regular contact with a wife and kids makes you far from being a Hikikomori.
Regular but minimal. It’s not entirely by choice, but my social skills—never great—have degraded considerably over the last 4 years.
Not if the wife is a dakimakura and the kids are anime figurines
Isn’t factory and office work the social experiment? Just a couple centuries ago most work was done at home, or out on the farm, with only the owner/tenant and his family around. WFH is somewhat of a reversion to the historical mean.
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.
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.
When you’re married with a working spouse, it becomes much harder.
Then when you have kids you need to think about where they go to school and you might want to live close enough to grandparents that they can help out. These constraints make living close to work impossible for a huge chunk of people.
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.
If we are going all “risky social experiment”, one could argue that almost all of humanity worked from home/neighborhood until passenger rail showed up in the mid 19th Century, and thus the actual anomalous human situation/experiment has been the last 150 years of commuting to work from home. A time of two World Wars and many major bloody military conflicts, breakdown of the family, weakening of community, growth and spread of colonialism, etc.. Perhaps Africa could have been spared the blessing of European colonialism if Nigel, Jacque, Fritz etc. had stayed at home making shoes. (Or maybe not.)
Humans and associated social institutions evolved out of a WFH culture for hundreds of years, and perhaps those time-proven institutions would work better in 2024 if we returned to a WFH culture. Commuting culture may have been the “massive risky social experiment” of the last Century.
I work as a remote software dev. Joining a volleyball league + run club definitely helped massively for me.
> Again, making connections and friends is easy. Being around the same people regularly is difficult.
Agreed, 90% of the difficulty making new friends is showing at the same place/event regularly. Remaining 10% is actually being someone people want to be friends with.
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.
For games stuff, you can go to game stores and competitions. There are book clubs too. The trouble with a lot of these things is that most people don't actually want to make friends who are all about either of those things. They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. If you're single and want to date out of your friend group, you might have to broaden your horizons to include stuff that the opposite sex tends to like. You won't be welcome in many of those contexts either.
Depends on the sport. I used to play pickup basketball. Whereas I recognized the players week to week, I never knew any of them. I only accidentally ran into one of them outside the game once. BTW, I loved the game and remember the players well. They just weren't friends.
Then I sailed, crewed raceboats. I got to know many people quite well. There's a lot of social coordination and communication in sailing. Just sitting on the rail on an upwind beat is a conversation, the same conversation every time but like chicken soup for the soul. Also a good crew is lot like a startup. Not easy to break into but worth it.
I agree, sailing is a particularly good sport for making friends… however it tends to be mostly older people. I just decided to make friends with people my parents age, and I’ve made a lot of good friends that way regardless.
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, as I find driving on anything but practically empty roads unpleasant.
There may be a pedestrian/cyclist-friendly city with great public transportation in my future, and so if I make a point to go out and do things consistently it’ll probably be there.
> 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!)
> I have found that people generally understand the value of friendship and are welcoming to newcomers
I feel like there's a curve where in college people are super open to making friends until mid-late 20s where friend groups are well established/people are focused on their careers and then people are more open to making friends again in mid 30s where people lose touch with old friends and are looking to make new ones (either through kids or other shared activities).
Are you a parent?
I ask because your friend group will radically be shaped by who you’d kids friends are.
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.
Agreed. I built a big friend group in a short time in my city just by going to the same club every weekend.
There’s a second part to this though. You have to put in some effort to break people out of “club friend” into “real life friend.” Make plans and invite them.
I don’t think it matters that it’s sports specifically, but I agree that the secret ingredient is showing up and putting in the effort consistently and frequently. It’s easier to do that when friendship is a byproduct of something you are interested in or need to do.
Another factor that is important is being open-minded, whether that means being a little more willing to explore things that aren’t your wheelhouse or being tolerant of behaviors or lines of thinking that aren’t natural to you. That doesn’t mean you need to pretend to be someone you loathe or surround yourself with insufferable people, but instead find a way to deal with averse concepts in a constructive way, to be just flexible enough to find an enjoyable common ground. Walk away if there isn’t any, or it isn’t worth the effort you have to put in.
I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same, and it happens magically and effortlessly. Friendship is work, always. Some people are just less work or pay higher dividends than others. You need patience and the ability to know when a friendship costs more than it’s worth. I think we just tend to have less patience, energy, and flexibility as we get older, but some of that is a choice.
> I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same
This is so true. Just think, why is it that as children we often become friends with the kid who lives next door or across the street? Is it that we magically have the same tastes? Or is it just that we see them all the time?
You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?
That the processes we are part of have one purpose and one purpose only when it comes to social life, to force everyone to invest there whole social life into a company ? That half the apps written here, are to divide and conquer society and use the created misery and loneliness for additional upsales of the withheld happiness? That companies are actively antagonistic to anybody having friends and friendships?
That's a very big generalisation. While people here will tend to be in tech we all come from different places, have different experiences and work in vastly different things
> You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?
As Pat Paulsen might have said, "Picky, picky, picky." Threads about social disconnection come up pretty often on the front page for all that. I don't think the people being ground into dust (and I agree with you that there are an increasing number of them) are on HN. People posting here seem to have the financial wherewithal to break the bonds of work at least occasionally and often more than that.
Sheesh. A little nihilist much?
Yes, modern capitalist society is really great at making human needs scarce (friends, relationships) and human wants abundant (junk food, video games).
But I don't think there's really a point in stewing too much about the society we live in, it's easier to accept that this is our reality, and that we have to work extra hard for the things in life that matter. Giving up only creates a much worse situation for yourself.
People back in the day had to do extremely difficult manual labor all day long, think of it as though the "extremely difficult labor" has changed into social labor - from making friends to dating to maintaining relationships.
And you know you don't have to be a workaholic, right? I work 9-5, I have time for other things in life. I have a few friends at the office but I'm not thinking "work is life" ever.
> Find a group.
This is obviously great advice, but most groups don't organically sprout around interests. Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying. And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups? Your local library?
I’ve found most of my new friends in my 50’s by going to little local museums that interest me, such as a small clock museum and a military history museum, and inserting myself into them by volunteering to help out.
I volunteered at a museum when I moved to a new city, thinking that I would meet people. I determined that exactly two types of people volunteer at museums: students/recent graduates that want to build a career in that field, or retired folk.
I wasn’t in a phase where I desired meeting either of those groups, so while volunteering was a positive experience, the social aspect of it was not.
I actually felt a little guilty volunteering-- the selection process was a little competitive and I didn't want somebody who wanted to get a start in their career turned away.
Not really my thing--but maybe at some point--but there are a ton of volunteer docent tasks at museums, ushering/other tasks at local theater groups, etc. Should probably do more along those lines.
Make your own meetup. Honest advice, everybody sort of sees you as the guy to become friends with if you're the leader.
This also works for hosting things in general, not just meetups. If you host something then everyone there will want to make friends with you.
> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying
There is a wide range of sports :) My mom always tried to force me into team sports like football, hockey and alike, which never really was my thing. But as an adult, I enjoy things like skiing, water-sports, table-tennis and a bunch of other sports, that I see less like "sports" but more like "enjoyable activities", but also really makes it easy to meet people with similar interests :)
> but most groups don't organically sprout around interests.
If you are only looking for people with the same niche interest, it will probably be more difficult to find local groups. But if you're open to meeting new people that are interested in social connectivity, local sports teams are the way to go. I've meet friends through co-ed sports that work in fields I would rather not come into much direct contact with: police officers, tsa, tax auditor, etc. People I never would have met otherwise (turns out they are just like other humans; who knew!) Seriously though, they don't all become best friends, but mostly social acquaintances and that works for me. I did get a couple best friends out of it some time ago.
> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying.
Kickball. There are no high school/college/main pro leagues, so you avoid that one competitive team that all played on a school sports team. And get a bunch of people looking to socialize while playing a rather silly game no one is expected to excel at. To shore up that reality, join co-ed sports teams. I have witnessed games in both Mens and Womens leagues and they are much more about the competition.
Local library. Recreation centers. Local board game shops. Events and activities in the community. Volunteering. Religious groups. College campuses often host groups and events from the community. Art classes. Dance classes.
Check the local newspaper as they often list events and activities.
I emphatically agree with this. I suppose I'm just frustrated it's so hard to figure out what your interests are without trying and failing.
That's just life, I guess.
If you don't have "interests" that is in its way a separate question, and it is one that is worth addressing on its own.
It is shockingly common, in the modern world, to have only a job and watching-TV-while-doomscrolling-exhausted.
But it is worth thinking about. Beyond planned activities, beyond hobbies: what appeals to you at all?
Another way to look at it is outwards: what things do I know how to do that could be socially valuable and need an outlet? Like, do you know how to use a 3D printer, do you still vaguely remember how to play a musical instrument from childhood, do you find gardening easy?
Go mentor a high school robotics team, or volunteer to help run events. It's 100% sports, minus the athletic dimension. I see tons of lifetime friendships being made.
With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “<x thing you’re interested in> club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!
Book clubs, art clubs, movie club... Lot of options
Specially having same sports interests, does not help in finding people with more or less same values/ world view. I cannot really make good friends with people on the opposite side of my thinking.
There's lots of clubs that are politically aligned. Board games and Dungeons and Dragons and maker spaces tend to be progressive, certain types of volunteering lean conservative.
Have you tried DnD? My father has a biweekly DnD session where he’s met a ton of people.
> imagining enjoying
Try it and find out if you really don’t like it. Maybe you’ll hear about something else you will like more.
Yup, this is great advice. Thank you.
Climbing gyms
Rarely have I met someone at a climbing gym who was a jerk. This is solid advice.
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Most of the things mentioned in the article result in making friends as an adult being different than making friends as a child, but not necessarily harder. I'm in my late 50s and continue to make new friends.
I think the larger problem is that many approach friendship with the wrong expectations. As Zig Ziglar said.
"If you going out trying to find a friend, friends are scarce. If you go out trying to be a friend, friends are everywhere."
>"If you going out trying to find a friend, friends are scarce. If you go out trying to be a friend, friends are everywhere."
My brain solidified late, in my late 30s, but it did eventually solidify and when it did something like a switch or circuit breaker flipped and I came to this conclusion
I'm going to pretend that I came to it independently.
I have more, closer, friends in my 40s than I did at any time in my life previously.
I don't even know how it happened, I think that I just stopped caring about any potential for embarrassment and I learned that a good conversation is equal parts statements and questions.
Some of the friends I have now, in my 50's, are due to them proactively reaching out to me to get together. Had it not been for them making the effort, our friendship, likely, would've never materialized. When meeting new people with whom I think there might be potential for friendship, I now try to be the one who reaches out and suggest meeting up.
I made my first new friend in years simply by… asking. Struck up a conversation with a guy in line for coffee, on my way out of the cafe went up, gave him my number, said I was looking to make new friends.
The world is more like the playground than you might think. Just ask if someone wants to be friends. They probably do.
I'm 37. Any time I strike up a conversation with someone new who seems like an interesting person, I end the conversation by asking to exchange contacts. In the context I live in, that usually means scanning a WhatsApp QR code, or asking for an Instagram or Telegram ID. Then I invite them to the next suitable thing I want to do. I make 3-5 new friends a week this way. Of course, not all of them become close, reliable friends, but I'm never alone, and the ones I click most with become closer friends over time.
I’m 36 and my new daughter (8 months) has helped me come out of my shell. It’s given me something to connect with other people about.
That's wise. I see the playground you're talking about.
This comment will help me. I used to talk to people in line, despite being a bit shy and sometimes socially anxious.
My shyness and anxiety can take a hike. I feel upset enough to block them out.
I really committed myself to solving this for myself a few years back. It does take commitment.
A few things I’ve done that work:
1. Start a “Dad’s night” with people in my neighborhood. We picked Wednesday night from 9 - 10pm. Started out just as BYOB in my back yard. Eventually we periodically went to a local pub that was near the neighborhood.
When you have kids of a certain age, it’s inconsiderate to bail on your wife while the kids are still awake. The hard time limit keeps it easy for anybody during the work week. Doing it mid week keeps weekend plans from getting in the way.
Lots of dads were thrilled to have this. The trick is consistent scheduling even if you have some weeks with no shows. That’s why starting it in my back yard was easiest until we regularly had about 8 people showing up. Doesn’t put you out if nobody can make it. Don’t get your feelings hurt because things like this start slow.
Covid killed it, but most of those guys became a Friday lunch group instead.
2. If you can, a cheap poker night. Like $10 buy in so the point is more to hang out than to loot your neighbors coffers and it keeps it accessible for people who have never played. This probably works for most games, but poker is such a broadly played game that it’s not that intimidating. Works in all weather conditions and works well with a sporting event on TV in the background.
Again, the key is consistent scheduling.
For either of these options, make sure people know they can bring a friend if they think they’ll get along with the group.
3. Take up golf. I haven’t done this but I know enough people who have. It works. Join a country club and play regularly. They’ll pair you up with people and groups. It’s not for everybody, but works well for lots of people.
4. Join a church with adult Sunday school. Free and easy way to meet people in your community. Usually comes with family friendly activities around community service too.
5. Get involved with local tech communities and meetup groups.
TBH, I thought this was a pretty empty article. It seemed to rehash things that I believe most people are aware of regarding the difficulty of making friends once you hit adulthood. Thus, I'll add one piece of advice that I didn't see mentioned in the article or the comments.
Beyond just having unstructured time together, I think I made some of my best friends when I was in a group that had a common goal, and we had to work together to achieve that goal. While the common goal actually isn't the most important factor in making friends, I think it provides the framework that makes the "unstructured" time so much more natural, easy, and regular. E.g. joining a sports team provides the framework of regular practice, but then you can make great friends getting something to eat after. Or in a community theater group, the rehearsals provides the structure, but it's all the downtime where you really get to build friendships.
I mention this because I so often here the advice of "join a group of other people with shared interests", and while that's true, I've found that is it's too "laissez faire", then the normal pressures of adult life can often get in the way, and it's harder to connect. E.g. a book club is nice, but when you get really busy it's easy to just bail and not feel as connected to the folks in the club.
I confess I largely stopped paying attention after the "as a kid, it was easy" comment.
As a kid, having playmates was easyish but having friends was tricky. As an ND intellectual multilingual round peg in a town of unilingual anti-everything square holes, I had acquaintances but no good friends until high school, one or two then, none in uni, though there were sufficient like-minded people that it mattered less, and, from then until 10 years ago, at most one or two.
In late 2014 I bought a Jeep and joined a hardcore offroad group (rocks, not mud). They are the most diverse group I've ever hung with, and I have half a dozen people I would consider close friends and rather more who would drop everything and drive 50km in a snow storm if I needed help.
I lucked out. But to say it was ever easy is misaligned with my experience.
I made lots of friends (and eventually my wife and best man at my wedding) in my early 30s by first joining a meetup group and eventually becoming the organizer for it. It was disbanded a few years ago (before Covid), but I still hang out with the 13 or so people I met in the group. The group lasted almost 8 years.
I had work friends in my 20s, but it was always difficult for me to make new friends after college. Joining a common-interest meetup group made it so much easier. I find the key is to meet weekly and in-person. If you don't do this, you just won't be able to put the time in to actually have a real friend.
It would be nice if it was as easy for adults as it is for kids. My daughter will go up to another kid and say "Do you want to be my friend?" and they will play all day together.
> It would be nice if it was as easy for adults as it is for kids.
It is easy. Only need to make it your full-time job, like it is for kids.
With the caveat that you need to be in a setting where the other “kids” are doing it full time too. If that were the case, I do think it would be easy. Interesting insight.
Children have it easy because they are made to go to school. It's simple forced proximity. Adults often had it easier in the past because people needed each other more, and that placed them together.
But advancing technology takes that away. People need each other less and less with each passing day because we are too self-sufficient with technology. AI is the final step that will make friendships very hard to form indeed.
For me it went something like: I'm lonely > try to make friends > it's hard, but wait I already have friends > try to reconnect with old friends > for various reasons old friends don't want to/can't be friends > try to make new friends > wait I want my old friends > not going to happen > volunteering
I used to be like this! then I figured out the reason what makes making new friends hard, I became more relaxed hanging out and reaching out to new friends, now I can enjoy both new and old friends' accompany, tho I'm still working on making myself more comfortable making friends.
I barely have any friends. Being a single father is incredibly isolating.
Doing group activities is the key, but finding a group that can include me and my son is very rare. Also, our neighbors are incredibly impolite. We're hoping to move homes soon, and I am hoping the change in perspective will have a good impact. So I would add neighborhood community also has an impact on socializing.
Where in the world do you live? Why is it like that?
Just suggesting because I don't see it here: foreign language group classes. I would say groups are pretty good for beginner level. But you are trading a bit of learning efficiency for the social aspect, arguably
I came to California, in part, because my family in the Midwest is a bunch of Jesus freaks - not the "love thy neighbor" kind, more like the "God hates fags" kind. So when a girlfriend (in California) invited me to her church for some volunteer work, I went prepared to hate on everyone. However, I was blown away, as they were the nicest people I'd ever met in my life. They all went out of their way to help one another, just to be helpful, not to destroy the "gay agenda" or "save the unborn" or whatever. No one preached to me, no warnings about burning in hell.
My point is that, love it or hate it, church can be a great way to meet good people. I'm still anti-religion, anti-church, although a bit less. But I can't deny the social support church can provide.
I’ve been thinking about this lately. I started going to social events at a friend’s church in around 8th grade, and regularly went to church and church events through high school. My mom came with me through much of it (dad isn’t big on religion or social events, which I get). I don’t think either of us was particularly invested in the religious part, but we both made a number of long term friends, and I had a strong sense of community and belonging that I didn’t get at school.
The church took a hard right turn, and I gave up any semblance of belief when I went to college. But as an adult with kids of my own, I do wish that I had a “third place” to take my family for community and kinship. I don’t really want to raise the kids in a religion, but I’ve occasionally considered trying to find a “light” church or something so they get the same sense of community that I had.
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.
I've been further down that rabbit hole that most, so believe me when I say there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I’d be quite interested in comparing notes with you on this, I have also been very deep down this rabbit hole. Some dark, dark things happen under the guise of religion.
> They have a clear vision of the meaning of life
What you describe is probably a minority amongst folks who claim to believe in a religion.
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".
Skill issue.
Plenty of atheists are capable of finding both meaning in life and social groups to join.
I think that kind of misses the point. Sure, of course plenty of atheists find meaning in life and social groups to join.
Point being, in a religious environment you don't have to have skill - the meaning in life and social groups are automatic and baked in. That's not the case for atheists so it's easier to get "left behind" if you happen to be "unskilled", as you put it.
I agree about skill. It’s just easier with religious groups.
Because they have a common goal. The challenge for atheists is to find group of people with the same goal as theirs.
I had a similar bad experience with religion growing up that left me very anti-organized religion. It wasn't until adulthood that I met people for whom religion appeared to be a positive developmental force on their personality. I am much more respectful of religious views in general now, even if I don't believe it myself.
Most religions really do center themselves on very useful concepts like mindfulness, gratitude, and helping others. But like anything, religions can be coopted by those with personality disorders to exercise their need for control, tribalistic exclusion, etc.
Whatever fosters a good healthy community is good, and church does play a role but as you state it’s not always positive and healthy. It’s good to know they’re not a uniform monolith and if you don’t find one you like you should keep on looking.
That's nice and all, but when you don't believe in their god, it becomes rather awkward.
That depends, as the comment you replied to shows, on how they respond to that. I'm an atheist, but one of my wife's best friends is a dyed-in-the wool catholic, and we get on really well despite that fundamental difference. He has a great line in self-deprecating humour, where he talked about "going Taliban" during lent, of which he is very observant. Not all religious people - and, I would suggest, probably very few in fact - are nutters. They're just the loudest ones.
Yes and no, if you join a group that is not overzealous you can just skip the religion talk altogether and involve with community projects instead.
I thought so too, until I realized that if atheists see God as a deep aspect of the human mind, that evolved that way for reasons, then we don't miss much of the Judeo-Christian story. I stopped by a local church for Bible study just in order to challenge my assumptions and found that they had no problem with that formulation at all. I expected way more awkwardness and even pushed the issue, to no avail. The result was a delightful experience of people sitting around interrogating ancient texts and being attentive to each other's life challenges.
I found that the structure of the Christian congregation is equivalent to the anarchist affinity group. I realized that, unlike us, Christians build infrastructure to support their organizing, and we should probably adopt that.
I'm still the same atheist, just a churchgoing one. I don't go to mass often or ever recite the Nicene Creed, but otherwise it's been a fantastic social outlet, great intellectual company, and the organ festival is off the hook.
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 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.
So I guess my suggestion is: don't artificially limit your pool of potential friends by looking for the perfect match. No need to find your soul-copy. Someone with whom concersation flows is just fine.
> 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!”
I've slowly become more reclusive, and have been working from home since COVID. I think it's killing me.
Do you have any plans to change anything in your life for 2025?
It's not!
You just need a shared interest or objective in as close to 'real life' as you can get it, and you need to dedicate time to it that you would otherwise give to TV and doom-scrolling.
Gamers make real friends. Open source enthusiasts can make real friends. Music fans can make real friends (though your local scene is considerably better for this).
It does take management and maintenance, and if you're a single person then covid lockdowns will have broken many ties; I am definitely a more insular person than I was before.
But stop wasting your time watching TV, make a plan to make your social media more focussed on local activities and less focussed on personal drama, and try to be part of something a bit bigger than yourself. Get a dog, maybe.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friendship
As a kid, maybe your parent/guardian did the legwork to get you into the playgroup/neighbourhood/school/sport/etc. where you made friends.
As an adult, you have to do that bit yourself. (Thanks mom!)
I have a few board game groups I belong to. We occasionally also do things outside of board games. So, for me it was finding a common interest.
Another factor, for me, is being married. My wife has a lot of friends. They go on walks together, have regular Ladies Lunches were they try different restaurants in the area. I've become friends with some of the other husbands when we do things together as couples. Everything from movies, to holiday parties, to escape rooms, to board game nights (party games), to murder mystery dinners, etc.
> My wife has a lot of friends. They go on walks together, have regular Ladies Lunches were they try different restaurants in the area. I've become friends with some of the other husbands when we do things together as couples. Everything from movies, to holiday parties, to escape rooms, to board game nights (party games), to murder mystery dinners, etc.
The problem with latching to your wife's social network is that they might end remaining your wife's friends as opposed to your friends. Especially if you only see each other in the context of "my wife's friend". It is a very common pattern. And then if you ever break up with your wife, she is gone and so are her friends.
Learning to make friends on your own is a valuable skill.
Eh, some of my good friends were boyfriend-of-my-girlfriend's-girlfriend and while both girlfriends are long gone, we stay in touch.
great news but that is not always the case. And betting your social network on it seems ill-advised
It is even harder among expat communities, as those hard won friends keep going away, searching for other adventures.
Get a dog, show up regularly to the local dog park. You will quickly meet people.
Great advice if you're a dog lover. You will quickly meet dog-loving people. One stereotype is the dog owners that have dogs as a fashion item. Another stereotype is dog owners that desire a dependent.
Recently I've noticed lots of people I thin judge to be good have house plants. So there's definitely something about being able to care for dogs or plants or people. I'd love to hear other thoughts about house plant owners!
I have a sneaking suspicion if you walked your house plants you'd meet many new people.
If I didn't already have a dog, I might build a robotic platform so that I could wander to the park with a dwarf fruit tree in tow.
Begging the author to volunteer in their community at the very least
The author of the article? Doesn't sound like she is trying to make friends. Comes off as an assignment where she polled a bunch of people and added some text around their replies.
If you make a little effort it gets easier once you hit 50s or 60s. People in their 30s and 40s are very busy with family and work. This changes once kids are gone and people near or have reached retirement.
Even if younger, keep your mind open to finding friends that are more than middle-aged.
I honestly think the majority of the difficulty is that we live so far from one another.
In school, or college, it was easier to be in proximity to other people which is just not possible as an adult.
> I honestly think the majority of the difficulty is that we live so far from one another.
This sound correct for some people, but I'm not sure if it's the majority.
Right now I live in a town with ~20,000 people, feels like I cannot go outside without people around me and there are constant regular events being done.
I grew up on a island with ~700 people, and even there you were not really alone unless you were out in the forest. Even that place regularly had events organized by people.
Besides, I'm guessing most people in the world live in or close to metropolitan areas, and there certainly there isn't any problem of "live so far from one another", but maybe the opposite problem.
Yes and you aren't necessarily going to be friends with all of those people around you. The challenge is not being near just anyone but rather being near a group of people with significant overlap in values and interests. I live in one of the highest density cities in the US but I still have very few friends who live within a twenty minute walk and I frequently have to commute an hour each way to social gatherings.
> The challenge is not being near just anyone but rather being near a group of people with significant overlap in values and interests
Maybe I'm exceptionally flexible, but I don't see those as being a requirement for finding friends. Growing up on the island with an interest for programming there was like two other people on the island who even knew what programming was, and were into computers.
So most of my friends of that time I didn't really have anything in common with except we lived on this island with our parents, and we liked the same types of jokes. But generally our world-view was very different even back then, didn't seem to have stopped us.
You’re fortunate. At least in a lot of the US people live insular lives and only rarely run into people at the grocery store.
>In school, or college, it was easier to be in proximity to other people which is just not possible as an adult.
I think it is more that you made friends with people that already lived near you (ie the kids going to your school). As adults, the only people that match a similar profile are your work colleagues but adults tend be more closed off to making friends. In some cultures, it is still easy but north european cultures seem to make it so that when you reach some age you close off to new people.
It is hard, for those that treat life as 'working and slacking'.
Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends.
It's still that easy. But, you have to give up social media doomscrolling and movie binging. So there's that.
A better title might be - why it's hard now to get off your butt and do anything other than work and slacking. Because it is hard. But if you do it - all the same friendship avenues are still there.
For me, over time, it's been primarily common outdoor interests. Though it doesn't have to be outdoor interests specifically.
Generalizing all humans experiencing difficulty socializing as adults as lazy is an oversimplification at best.
There are obviously some adults who have severe limitations on their ability to socialise and nobody is implying they are lazy.
But a wider social scene I have been part of has people with evident learning difficulties, people with obvious neurodivergence, people with physical disabilities.
If you show up and show interest in sharing a common goal with a large enough circle of people, then those people will find you a way to participate at your own speed.
If you have a way to show up for social activities, or assistance to show up, you could show up, you have a desire to show up, and you don't show up... some of that really is laziness at worst and avoidance at best.
Their comment is on a specific kind of person ("those that treat life as 'working and slacking'"), not all people.
I don't think that's exactly what they were saying. I read it more like "people who divide life into work-that-you-should-pour-your-energy-into and recovery-where-you-try-not-to-spend-energy", and that maybe we should pour less of our energy into work and use that energy for socialising (which can result in an overall net energy gain).
You have more generous eyes than my best, but saying things like, get off your butt, stop binging, and its that easy, is pretty analogous to common discourse where the blame is placed on motivation alone.
> Join a group - any group. Attend meetings. Contribute. Make friends.
This is basically the "1. Do thing, 2. ???, 3. Profit!" South Park meme. If you're normal and like to drink a beer while talking about travel, TV, base politics or sportsball, sure it works.
But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.
That is my thinking too. Joining a group of 10 people, maybe with luck I make 1 friend out of it.
I’ve done it in the past, with mixed results. My father would roam through different groups, rotary, lions club, church, fathers of my friends… that resulted in a say 1% friendships, which would last from 1 to 3 years. And boy there are dangers there too! Nobody is talking about them! Was I the only one who got a manic hanging every day at my door? I had many experiences where people I didn’t want to be around would stick to me in a stalker way…
And those "manics" are excluded as well, while just showing up, trying to make friends. The solutionism exhibited in discussions like this flies in the face of reality. They devolve into self-help for the masses. Human relationships are complex, and there is no easy path to true friendship.
> The solutionism exhibited in discussions like this flies in the face of reality.
The solution I identify in my comments does not fly in the face of reality, because it is how I went from being crushingly lonely and weird in my early 30s to having the kind of friends who (just today) said "are you really doing Christmas by yourself? Fly out to <another country> and come to us, you'd be very welcome", and they absolutely mean it.
I'm still someone who lives solo and the covid lockdowns were a difficult, lonely time. But I have friends because I found myself introduced to an event on the fringes of a much bigger social scene, and I decided to turn up more and take an active part in it.
You find a thing that is bigger than yourself, whatever it is, you show interest, and you keep turning up. It's not solutionism: it's how friendship starts, for most people. You offer or accept help. You share a task that needs doing. You share an activity that is fun. You expand your personal circle to a dog, and they expand your circle to the owners of other dogs. Whatever.
Of course humans are all different, but essentially all the adults at a grown up social group, community project, activism event, regular club, dog park, have something in common: they are adults who want friendship. That may well be the only thing they have in common apart from their interest in some shared endeavour.
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Do you have any curiosity at all about the world around you?
> But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.
I am a long way from normal and it worked for me. People genuinely thought I was confident and outgoing simply for turning up and chatting, and eventually it began to be a lot more true. Even if I had to leave earlier than most to find some quiet.
Any shared activity that has enough participants has a role for people like us -- helping set up/tear down, organising, making coffees and snacks (the kitchen is an easy place to be), taking photographs, shuttling messages between organisers. Any shared activity has little bubbles of social grouping, fun and friendship around these functional parts. At a music thing: sound engineers, merch tents, collecting donations on the door -- lots of little bubbles of odd people finding their own speed.
As long as you take time to relax and enjoy it as well -- I find this part difficult -- then there is a life for you. For me, I was a photographer, I helped with the web and email side, I helped with AV, whatever. I became indispensable. And then I found my people around the edges of it. I struggle again now, post-lockdown-fragmentation and a bout of depression, so I stepped back from active involvement in the same way, but I know my people are out there and they still value me just for turning up.
Try not to assume there are "normal people" who want to lock you out. It's cynical, a little rude frankly. It is also a form of fundamental attribution error. Any large social functioning/gathering of adults is a gathering of people who have the same need for adult friendship and connection as you; many of them are lonely at other times. Why else would it even be happening?
Side note: as true as the "sportsball" clichés might be, stop thinking that. Never, ever, ever say it out loud.
If it's not for you (it isn't for me), so what? Never murder an enthusiasm. It's rude.
Skill issue. As long as you aren't an asshole, very few people actually care. And even if they do smell weirdness on you, why do you care? If you do, you're probably not actually weird as you think you are.
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 pictures, or maybe paint a bedroom, or pick up some food for someone that’s sick. The guys need an excuse to hang out together, but they’re helping people in the process. And maybe they can go grab a drink or lunch when they’re done. They get a sense of purpose and something to feel good about, as well as a companion for the day’s little journey.
I imagine people will read this and think this sounds idiotic, and that’s fine, but if you might want to explore this idea with me a little more, my email is in my profile.
There's mens shed in Australia, sounds a bit like what you're saying https://mensshed.org
I think the core idea is fine though. Kind of like random acts of kindness but as a team. I guess it's a respin on Habits for Humanity right?
I don't think it's idiotic. I think you're selling yourself short using that word. Try "silly".
I like the idea but see no need to limit it to men.
I wouldn’t want it to fall victim to the same phenomenon as running clubs—people just use it for dating. Men need a space of their own.
I don't think it's idiotic at all. Volunteering is a great activity to meet people.
Must be something in the air: From yesterday, 275 comments.
"One way to fight loneliness: Germans call it a Stammtisch"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42488263
Christmas
If so, it seems odd that it would happen at a social time of year for many if not most.
I think for a lot of people it’s hard precisely for that reason - it’s a very social time of year for most which increases the feeling of loneliness for those who maybe don’t know a lot of people or don’t have family or friends they can visit for whatever reason.
This is the first time I heard of Dupe photos: https://dupephotos.com/ , they look more amateur but feel more human.
I couldn't understand why you were talking about this, I actually thought your account was hacked, but I see now all the photos in the article are provided by them. Clicked through and spent some time there, an interesting community, it seems like people's random "decent enough" photos, kinda a good idea imo. If I want random stock these days I typically use AI, but this would save me having to think up a prompt and then do 15 minutes of prompt engineering. I like it!
Yeah, I was quite happy it wasn't AI. Glad I wasn't alone. Merry Christmas. :)
I notice that as we grow older patience in growing a friendship is less, usually at at adult change we look for a perfect person or someone with way less difference in tastes.
I would say maybe not patience, but openness maybe? I have a hard time being around with people, that say, show some trait of antisemitism, or discrimination. I grew intolerant to that (and many other things) that 20 years ago I would just ignore.
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?
It's not a projection. I think it's a core truth you've discovered.
You need to find a thing that is bigger than yourself to be a part of. And then show up and be willing to pitch in.
Other adults who know that adult friendship is important will be there.
The rest sorts itself out pretty fast, because almost everyone enjoys the company of someone who is willing to put themselves out there, even a shy, awkward person.
There are of course people who can't "show up" so easily -- people with limited mobility, people who are physically severely isolated. But the internet does offer some spaces where those people can have a lot of what face-to-face friendship offers. Again you just have to find a shared activity and show up.
Is that not the problem?
“I have a hard time making friends” may be eventually interpreted as “I have a hard time putting me in situations to be able to make friends” just 2 sides of the same coin, isn’t it?
I think there is value in following the causality and moving closer to the root cause. It can help people take meaningful action.
Play sports, and it becomes much easier.
> Seeking and maintaining meaningful equations becomes difficult as we grow older.
Meaningful equations, huh? Sounds like the kind of plagiarism where someone replaces words with things found in a thesaurus.
perhaps it's not harder, but there's more comfort in solace?
My biggest challenge making adult friends is that most of them are still children.
Sounds like your problem is rather looking down at other people, I can imagine it would be hard to make friends that way.
QED
Wow not sure who I hate more from this exchange
oh no
yeah i guess you develop preferences. but it's still possible. all about putting in the time around common interests
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