How To Make Friends As An Adult.

The reality is that many of us do find it harder to make new friends in our later twenties and thirties, but, since this isn't really discussed all that often, we can sometimes be left wondering if it's just us who's having a hard time with it.

I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, I think for a lot of us, making friends as an adult can feel hard.

So in today's post, I want to share with you why I think this is, maybe help you feel a bit less lonely with this particular struggle, and offer up some practical, actionable guidance and therapeutic inquiries if making friends as an adult is something you're personally struggling with.

 

Obviously, having friends is a good thing.

I doubt that I need to tell you that having friends is a good thing.

It's what half the sitcoms and movies of the world center on and, as Cicero anciently opined, "Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

But did you also know that friendship may make us live longer?

Or that, according to a study published in the Journal for Developmental Psychology, best friends buffer the physiological stress effects in our bodies and the psychological impact on our "global self-worth."

And, as the mother of all longitudinal happiness studies – Harvard's Grant Study – as analyzed by The Atlantic pointed out, "The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward five-word conclusion: 'Happiness is love. Full stop.'"

And, in my professional opinion, for those of us who identify as un- or under-parented, or who live far away from families of origin and aren't super connected to a local community, friends become your veritable family. Your urban family. Your family of choice. Sometimes the person or people you need or want to list as your emergency contact. Your go-to. Your person.

For these and so many thousands of other reasons, friendship is obviously critical to overall life fulfillment.

But what's also true is that, for many of us as we age up through our late twenties and thirties, it can often feel harder to maintain old friendships and more challenging still to form new friendships at quite the same intensity and depth as our prior ones.

So why is this?

 

Why is hard to make friends as an adult?

While there's no one single reason as to why it may feel harder to form friendships as an adult (we all have our unique situations that contribute to this), generally speaking, there are, I think, three primary reasons why it might feel harder:

1.        Reduction of built-in cohorts.

2.       Reduction of intensity of shared experiences.

3.       Schedule overwhelm.

Reduction of built-in cohorts.

What do I mean by reduction of built in cohorts?

Think about it: From roughly ages 5-22 we journey with a built-in cohort of companions from kindergarten to college that basically bakes in daily socializing to our lives.

We don't have to work quite so hard at curating friendships (or even acquaintances) because year after year we meet new folks in our classes, our extra curriculars, even the summer camps or summer jobs woven in throughout.

We're thrown together with people based on proximity and interests during some of the most intensely formative times of our lives.

But when you hit your twenties — unless perhaps you head off to grad school or enroll in the Peace Corps — your built-in cohorts likely reduce to those you work with or live near.

And while this definitely still exposes you to new people all of the time (think about all the job changes and moves you will or have made in your twenties and thirties!) the intensity of the connection may shift and change from days past.

 

Reduction of intensity of connection.

Please don't mistake me: I don't think life gets less intense in your late twenties and thirties. (Arguably it gets more so!)

But the shared experience of how you go through these times as you age shifts.

In your teens and twenties, your intense life experiences happen side by side on your varsity soccer team, in your dorm, in your sorority, etc., etc., Later on, though, post-college and grad school, you're still having intense moments but perhaps only sharing them with housemates or a favorite coworker or friends you may see less often.

As we age, most of us become a bit more isolated in who and how we experience intense life moments with unless we proactively work to shift that.

And given how overwhelming schedules can become in your late twenties and thirties, this takes work.

 

Schedule overwhelm.

In our late twenties and early thirties, there's usually a tightening and compacting of schedules that life demands of us.

Exploration – career and hobby wise – may fade, priorities may shift, schedules demand more from us at work or in commutes, and simply juggling the logistics to get two people together on opposite sides of a city (let alone four if you're trying to hang as a couple) can feel increasingly hard.

So all of this to say: maintaining old friendships and forming new ones may feel much more logistically challenging.

And whether or not it's reduction of built-in cohorts, reduction of intensity of shared experiences, and schedule overwhelm, or some combination of these elements or none of them at all, if you're struggling with making new friends as an adult, please realize you're not alone in this.

I think it feels hard for many people for these and many other real, practical reasons.