4 ms·

Join a sports league / hiking group, etc. My wife and I are both fairly anti-social by nature, and work in fairly anti-social fields, but we have lots of good

Join a sports league / hiking group, etc. My wife and I are both fairly anti-social by nature, and work in fairly anti-social fields, but we have lots of good friends from frisbee, skiing and climbing. For whatever reason it's easier to form friendships in an athletic / outdoor context.

dominotw 10y ago
i made over 50 acquaintances by going to all meetups in my city ( except: women-specific ones ) but I had hard time making a even a single "friend". As I've grown older I am not even sure what a friend means anymore. I have a theory that once you hit 30 you brain turns off friend definition and turns on family/kids definitions. I just can't stand extended exposure to people anymore; Iam mentally waiting for the event to be over so i can go back home and chill.
- stephencanon 10y ago
  As I mentioned, there's something about athletics specifically. I don't think I've ever made a close friend at a meetup type event, but I have many lifelong friends from sports.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    I play volleyball, touch rugby, underwater hockey, yoga. Now that its summer I've done paddleboard yoga, beach volleyball, biking ect all through meetup.com. curious, how do you find your sports leagues?
- jean_claude 10y ago
  It's definitely harder to make friends when you're older outside of work acquaintances (at least I've found it true, YMMV). I'm an introvert, friendly but in no wise would I be called outgoing, and I'm not much of a joiner. These traits are not conducive to making lots of friends. Finding friends is important, but so is connecting with peers. What I really find depressing is the lack of intellectually stimulating conversation at work. While I'm now in a local job, the department I'm attached to is in a satellite building far enough off campus to make it impossible to just meet up with my peers. My co-workers are nice, but they're not really colleagues or peers in terms of my professional development. I'm a technical person in a functional/business analyst role where I support a group of non-technical users. I almost never have the opportunity to discuss implementation details with the developers and I rarely meet with other analysts face-to-face. Online interactions will have to scratch that itch, for now at least. Though I do fear with the spread of the 'gig' economy, the ease of outsourcing, and increasing availability of remote work, this loneliness is only going to be a growing problem.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  I'm in my mid-30's, and four years ago I started going to as many meetups that seemed remotely interesting to me in a bunch of different groups, met a ton of acquaintances, and eventually quite a few friendships (that are hard to maintain for me, but I do make an effort). I'm fairly introverted but I think the secret to why going to a bunch of meetups worked for me is I just kept showing up and did some small talk that people eventually got to know me and became friendlier and started inviting me to things due to familiarity. In fact my closest friends right now I made by taken a chance at a random invite to a weekly game night by someone I met once at a meetup, and just kept showing up to his weekly events, and over time I became friends with everyone there.

dominotw 10y ago

i made over 50 acquaintances by going to all meetups in my city ( except: women-specific ones ) but I had hard time making a even a single "friend". As I've grown older I am not even sure what a friend means anymore. I have a theory that once you hit 30 you brain turns off friend definition and turns on family/kids definitions. I just can't stand extended exposure to people anymore; Iam mentally waiting for the event to be over so i can go back home and chill.

stephencanon 10y ago
As I mentioned, there's something about athletics specifically. I don't think I've ever made a close friend at a meetup type event, but I have many lifelong friends from sports.
- dominotw 10y ago
  I play volleyball, touch rugby, underwater hockey, yoga. Now that its summer I've done paddleboard yoga, beach volleyball, biking ect all through meetup.com. curious, how do you find your sports leagues?
jean_claude 10y ago
It's definitely harder to make friends when you're older outside of work acquaintances (at least I've found it true, YMMV). I'm an introvert, friendly but in no wise would I be called outgoing, and I'm not much of a joiner. These traits are not conducive to making lots of friends. Finding friends is important, but so is connecting with peers. What I really find depressing is the lack of intellectually stimulating conversation at work. While I'm now in a local job, the department I'm attached to is in a satellite building far enough off campus to make it impossible to just meet up with my peers. My co-workers are nice, but they're not really colleagues or peers in terms of my professional development. I'm a technical person in a functional/business analyst role where I support a group of non-technical users. I almost never have the opportunity to discuss implementation details with the developers and I rarely meet with other analysts face-to-face. Online interactions will have to scratch that itch, for now at least. Though I do fear with the spread of the 'gig' economy, the ease of outsourcing, and increasing availability of remote work, this loneliness is only going to be a growing problem.
cableshaft 10y ago
I'm in my mid-30's, and four years ago I started going to as many meetups that seemed remotely interesting to me in a bunch of different groups, met a ton of acquaintances, and eventually quite a few friendships (that are hard to maintain for me, but I do make an effort). I'm fairly introverted but I think the secret to why going to a bunch of meetups worked for me is I just kept showing up and did some small talk that people eventually got to know me and became friendlier and started inviting me to things due to familiarity. In fact my closest friends right now I made by taken a chance at a random invite to a weekly game night by someone I met once at a meetup, and just kept showing up to his weekly events, and over time I became friends with everyone there.