38 ms·

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

• tinyhouse 9y ago
  I think you can make good friends at any age, but you need the right environment for that. When you're young you spend a lot of time with the same people, like in school, which is the environment you need to build a close friendship. When you're older you tend to meet a lot of new people, but you don't have many opportunities to spend a lot of time together. Except at work, which is why many people make close friends at work, but it's not the best environment since people don't like to mix their private and professional life together.
  • psyc 9y ago
    I’ve had the most success with active groups that are organized around sports, hobbies, or volunteering. It’s much easier than looking for a bestie who has everything in common with you, or a group that just hangs about chatting. Having a topic that everyone in the group is focused on is easier for introverted me.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    Regular, serindipitous interactions with people with whom you share an interest is a great facilitator. Basically, "a place of congregation" for your activity
  • randomdata 9y ago
    I agree entirely. Friendship requires repetition. When you are older, your time gets spread across more activities, leaving less opportunity for repetitive time spent together. I'll add that the workplace can be problematic for friendship as there is extra room for undue hostility. If someone makes a mistake, for instance, that mistake may fall directly on your shoulders and friendships predicated on that type of situation usually do not end well. People do not want to feel like they are being taken advantage of in friendship. Compare that with a scholastic environment and mistakes generally only affect the one who made it (or perhaps faculty, who students usually do not befriend), thereby not affecting friendships. If your own grades were dependent entirely on your friends' performance in school, you just might not be able to maintain those friendships quite so well.
    • ianai 9y ago
      Add to that heterogeneity that not everyone will have the same openness to friendship at the same time as another. Maybe you pulled an all nighter the night before going to your weekly Saturday spin class. You probably won’t feel social, but the people around you might.
    • galfarragem 9y ago
      I know that most people agree with you but strangely I consider the workplace a good place to make friends and get to know people. You are testing them all the time and you are able to see how they react in stressful situations. If someone is not compatible you'll know it within a short time.
    • gaius 9y ago
      Some of my oldest, closest friends today are people I worked with at a startup in the ‘90’s. But I always keep my current workplace and social life distinct.
  • mmcnl 9y ago
    The base ingredients for making friends seem to be the same as for committing crime: motive and opportunity. Both motive and opportunity decrease as you get older.
• sametmax 9y ago
  Hint: it's not. It's just that it's not your priority and that your are picky.
• ggg9990 9y ago
  One anecdatum: I simply lost most interest in having friends by 25. I lost the rest when I had a kid. Now my friends are my daughter’s friends parents. I don’t really like them, I just end up chit chatting with them while our daughters play.
  • fusiongyro 9y ago
    Same. I had friends, but I don't have time for them and frankly my quality of life isn't suffering yet. I suppose this is something I might regret when I'm 60, but for now I can't be bothered.
    • tluyben2 9y ago
      You probably will regret it much earlier than that but from the sound of it you made up your mind for now. Many friends fell into such a deep pit when their kids moved out or something else disturbed their life. Old friends aint coming back and new real friends are hard to make for most after 30. Then again, everyone is different so maybe you will not have that issue.
      • fusiongyro 9y ago
        I have never had a particularly hard time making friends. Then again most of my close friends are in their 60s or 70s now, so they won't be there for me in my 60s no matter how much energy I devote to maintaining the friendship.
  • taneq 9y ago
    Yeah, by 30 you probably have a partner, kids, and a high pressure job that you started after you got the kids (so you've never spent much time socializing with your current peers). You have no energy left for socialising and building/maintaining friendships.
    • Double_a_92 9y ago
      That kinda pressures me... I'm almost 26 and all I have is a Bachelor degree and a Job. Partners and Kids are nowhere near... I don't even have a drivers license ffs (mainly because public transport is quite good here). Should I start with that?
• colmvp 9y ago
  I can’t seem to read this right now since I’m over my limit of free articles but I’ll say that Meetup.com has been really helpful to find interesting people in the same boat. My recommendation to people is to find a meetup (doesn’t have to be from Meetup, could be a sports league, religious group, volunteering...) that meets frequently so that you have a chance to slowly get to know the same group of people over a course of time. I find meeting up once per month is a little too infrequent for growing bonds and prefer weekly/biweekly meetups but sometimes you end up meeting someone who you gel with and it’s easy to meetup many times over beyond the meetup interval.
  • nightski 9y ago
    Open in incognito. Read as many articles as you'd like.
    • lr4444lr 9y ago
      Incognito holds onto cookies too (in a separate instance of course). Did you find a way to conveniently overcome that without causing the NYTimes not to work?
      • danvayn 9y ago
        http://euri.ca/2011/get-around-new-york-times-20-article-limit/index.html http://euri.ca/2011/get-around-new-york-times-20-article-lim... This doesnt work anymore?
      • JimmyAustin 9y ago
        Incognito clears the cookies once all incognito windows are closed.
  • zapt02 9y ago
    +1 - for anyone in the tech field (or even if you're not) that likes to meet some new people, join a few Meetup.com groups in your area and talk to random people inbetween the meetup sessions. 9/10 people will be a dud but I've ended up finding som really good friends via Meetup.
• hungerstrike 9y ago
  Who wants friends over 30? I like to make friends with young people. In all seriousness, at 42 I really do prefer to hang out with 20-somethings because they’re fun.
  • derekp7 9y ago
    In a similar, but opposite direction, I've found (in my mid, now late 40's) that I really enjoy the company of my Dad's friends. They have interesting life stories, are brilliant, and I've got a wide enough range of interests that it is easy to find common ground.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    As a ~30 year old, I truly enjoy the company of my 45--75 year old friends.
    • psyc 9y ago
      I’m the same. I find older middle aged people easier to talk to, more interesting, and smaller-egoed as a group.
      • yowlingcat 9y ago
        Another +1. You just can't beat that collected wisdom. I've complained about something that seemed so menial, only for my friend to make a really insightful quip about a pattern he's seen in my work life that, although didn't map 100%, reflected more deeply paid attention than almost all of my friends in my 20-something age group.
      • ryandrake 9y ago
        My conversations with folks of that “era” always seem to be more diverse, interesting and surprising. You never know what direction the conversation will go when you meet someone new. I have a few hobbies where the practitioners tend toward older and through these activities met exceptional people. I love hearing about the the war, Woodstock, actual political change, the drug fueled 70s, etc. Interesting careers that you never knew even existed. I met a ferry pilot who flew private airplanes people just bought internationally to their new owners! I could listen to that guy’s stories for hours. Contrast that with my interactions with people my own age and younger: Topics inevitably fall to vapid TV shows and sports, celebrity gossip, This Gadget I Bought, where I partied last week, my office co-workers suck, etc. Wake me up when it’s over!
• usful 9y ago
  Anecdotal but, I'm 36 and I made the most friends I have ever made in my life in the last two years. From doing the conference/retreat circuit to, surprisingly, the festival circuit (Burning Man, Gratitude Migration, etc.) I've made a lot of close, real, amazing friends
  • InclinedPlane 9y ago
    Yeah, I don't think this is exactly rocket science. I'm a pretty introverted and socially anxious person normally (so I don't like hanging out at random parties or talking to complete strangers or whatever) but I've made quite a lot of new friends consistently year over year. All it takes is putting in a bit of effort to do it. Engage in a few activities now and then, keep in touch with people, organize a thing once in a while. It turns out you can make lots of friends via friends of friends, coworkers, people you meet through various activities, etc. If you put no effort into it of course nobody is just going to randomly insert themselves into your life. And as you get older you don't have those common experiences of intermingling with lots of other people of similar ages or demographic backgrounds due to school, growing up, and so on. So put a little effort into it.
  • JimboOmega 9y ago
    Similar reality (most of my friends since 30, I'm 35 now), very different origins. I changed a lot as a person after 30 - I moved to the bay area for one thing. I also transitioned... which let me meet other women in more feminine contexts (IE, fans of a clothing brand). I also met a lot of people who became friends through dating. Almost all of my friends that I see regularly I met in the last 5 years or so.
    • usful 9y ago
      Wow thats amazing! Congrats on being more of your self.
  • pteredactyl 9y ago
    Congrats ( not sarc! )
• patorjk 9y ago
  This was something that was discussed recently in one of the Pokemon Go FB Messenger groups I'm in. The group is mostly people in their 30's and 40's, and some of the people don't have any friends outside of the group. The game has basically brought them a network of friends that they didn't have before. And because "raids" (in-game battles of giant Pokemon) require multiple people and for you to physically go somewhere, you end up seeing your Pokemon friends a lot. You may even spend an afternoon driving around town, chasing raid battles. Sometimes it's just saying hello and battling, but other times you strike up a convo, laugh, etc. Lots of people feel the game is dead, or think I'm weird when they find out I still play it, but there's still an active player base, and it's methods of trying to get people (usually anti-social people) out and being social, have definitely hit upon something.
  • erikb 9y ago
    do you have a resource (blog, youtube video, etc) where one can get a quick overview of Pokemon Go? When I played it there was not much you could do, so I dropped it completely. I may still have the app installed though.
    • patorjk 9y ago
      I'll list some sites below. Though the new main focus of the game is "raids". When you open the game you'll encounter gyms at various locations. 2-3 times a day a gym will have a Raid Boss (you'll know a Raid Boss when you see it, because you have to use a raid pass to fight it - you get 1 pass a day, though you can get more by using coins, which you get by taking and staying in gyms, or by paying for them). The boss will be rated from 1 to 5 stars (1 being easy - a single player can take it down; 5 being the hardest, requiring several players, though defeating a level 5 Raid will earn you the possibility of catching a legendary Pokemon). The hardest part of the game is getting enough players to take down a high level boss, which is why people have taken to joining chats to coordinate raids. Though this may be different for highly populated areas, and it's still possible to just randomly show up at a raid and find people waiting for it to start. * https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ * https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ * https://thesilphroad.com/ https://thesilphroad.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/vid... - Best youtube channel I've encountered, though it's done in vlog style, so it's probably quicker to get information from the sites above.
• ravenstine 9y ago
  The article makes it pretty clear that relationships and marriage take the place of friends, especially for men. 30 is also that sort of point where women who haven't had kids already think "uh oh, better soon than never". I can see the downvotes coming already for speaking on behalf of women, but I have more female friends than male ones and the number 30 is universally dreaded for the reason I describe. Well, then there's the looks factor which, take it how you will, but society generally views that age as "the wall". So by that point, you'd better have found your partner in life. If that's one's goal, and it is for most people, are you going to expend your energy finding more friends or are you going to expend it towards finding a "life-long" mate? I'm nearing 30, and I'd say over 90% of my friends have significant others. Long-term relationships significantly changes a person's behavior; the concept of friendship gradually shifts towards "How can I include my SO in this?" If we go to the movies, it's gotta be a film that he/she is going to like, and they don't like scary movies so that's out of the question now. Maybe your existing friends you've still got around will tolerate this, but new friends aren't going to do everything that your SO wants to do. With my guy friends especially, everything now revolves around what their SO wants to do even when their SO actually permits us to go off and do guy things. I think this happens to most people, though, and I would be no exception if I was in a relationship. As the article states, good luck if you are trying to make friends with another couple. Chances are at least one person in that party isn't really interested in the friendship. Putting aside that constraint, however, I haven't had that much difficulty making friends at my age. I think a lot of people figure out that most people aren't worth their time, thus friends really don't provide all that much. As long as you've got a couple good friends who have your back even if you haven't talked in months, you're golden. If you're in a relationship with someone, the even less you need the company of others. People also get dull by the time they're in their 30s. They spent so much time working and relationshipping that they lost a lot of imagination and didn't really expand their horizons as much as their Instagrams would suggest. I'm not saying this is a permanent state, but a doldrum that happens after a person has spent so much time ticking off the boxes of things they're supposed to accomplish. That's what tunnelvision can do to a person. It's definitely possible to get out of it, which is probably why my few real friends are either in their early-to-mid 20s or past 40.
  • incompatible 9y ago
• southphillyman 9y ago
  I've "lost" double digit friends in the last 5 years alone (they are still my friends technically, just don't talk or hang out nearly as often anymore). Looking back I notice that my parents also had a dramatic decline in friends after a certain age so it may be a common thing. A theory of mine is that big families were once a thing because it was a way to have built in friends well after 30. When you have 5 adult kids and many grand kids I imagine you never feel like you don't have a lot of friends as the large family serves as a proxy for that kind of companionship. That being said I wonder how social media will impact this. The majority of my ex friends still follow me, and I talk to many of them multiple times a week via group text.
• SubuSS 9y ago
  It is a relationship and like any relationships, it takes a ton of time and energy to nurture and grow. It won't be fair to the other person if I don't have one or other. I have a family, a heavy cycling habit and a demanding job: I don't really have time to make and maintain serious friendships outside these activities. What friendships I have right now are from my single days - they hangout with us during various vacations/dinners etc. But new friendships are pretty much impossible because of a lack of time. If these old friends move away etc., then it is pretty much going to be hermit style after that :)
• nikanj 9y ago
  "Your application is super interesting, but we don't have any openings right now" seems to be one factor. People have only so much "slots" for friends, and most people fill those slots in their teens and 20s.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• malvosenior 9y ago
  I wonder how much the current concept of a "friend" is the by product of 20th century media. Much like adolescence was not what we know it as before mid-20th century, I can't help but feel that the role of friend (especially adult friend) was largely shaped by sitcoms. I think the expectation that you would have adult friends ala Friends (the show) is largely manufactured and giving people false expectations.
• hx2a 9y ago
  I'm 42, and I wish someone told me in my 20's it would be harder to make new friends as I got older. I would have done things differently. I would have put more effort into making friends then. I am able to make new friends, but they end up being more like acquaintances most of the time. Currently I am in grad school, and that's working out well for me. There's something about the shared camaraderie and shared suffering from the workload that builds real friendships.
  • nashashmi 9y ago
    Bonding over struggles is huge.
    • hx2a 9y ago
      There's definitely something to this. What other struggles are there that we can take on to facilitate bonding? It occurs to me that raising children is a struggle and can help someone bond with their spouse. That doesn't help single people (like me) though. Work can be a struggle, but not always a positive one, and switching jobs can end it. I imagine firefighters and EMT workers face a deeper struggle than corporate jobs and form deeper friendships.
      • peoplewindow 9y ago
        Don't read too much into the struggle thing. I made tons of friends in my 20s and early 30s. Many of them moved away to other cities with time, so I have fewer friends now, but that's also partly due to being in a long term relationship, so I have less time, and I'm still friends with some of the people I became friends with in my 20s, and between work, relationship, life and those other friends there isn't much time left for anything else. That's without kids in the mix! However none of the friends I made in my 20s were friends borne of a shared struggle. Most of them were people I met through going to social events specifically organised for people to meet each other. The city I moved to had a lot of transient worker types moving through them so there were lots of events organised by and for expats (perhaps I should call us migrants, as that's what we were). People would turn up to a bar and know nothing about anyone except that we all wanted to make friends, and maybe even hook up. Everyone arrived alone and was trying to make new friends all the time, so if you got a few friends that way, they'd also have a few friends, and everyone would start going to similar events so you'd see each other a lot, and that branched out into events organised just in our groups - mostly very simple events like "let's all meet in the park and drink and barbecue today". It was all quite straightforward and struggle-free. As people came and went I found myself going round that loop several times in my 20s, developing new groups of friends as old ones slowly dissipated. The only slightly tough part of it was learning how to be sociable with total strangers. Most people are a bit shy and it's not really natural to make fun conversation with someone you just met and know nothing about, but it's like anything, it comes with practice. I wouldn't describe most work as a struggle. There has to be some higher purpose than just getting through the day. Startup life can achieve that in some way, if you're a very early employee or founder as that way the hard decisions and unexpected events are shared in your group. I'm like that right now - not a founder but a senior executive at a startup firm, and I'm lucky enough to be (by coincidence) working with someone who was in the same class as me at university, someone who I had stayed friends with throughout our 20s. And yeah, building a company is tough work, it's definitely a struggle that I feel enhances our friendship, certainly we see a lot more of each other these days!
• diaperIITB 9y ago
  I moved country when I was 21 for my first job, it was a complete culture shock to me and I didn't know anybody. It is really hard to make friends even when you are young. Living in shared apartment, playing sport you love, going for dance classes, etc. These activities definitely helps. It took me 1 year to finally crack the code.
  • sitajay 9y ago
    I have somewhat similar experience. I shifted from a small town to a metro city for pursuing my undergraduate programme. I was alienated from the whole class for not being 'cool' or 'hip' enough to hangout with them. External biases made it really hard for me to make friends. It took me time to get comfortable with who I am and what are my values. But still, I have an inferiority complex which hinders me to get along with anybody as the college experience still loops in my mind saying I am not enough.
• marincounty 9y ago
  I had this one co-worker call me every day. He would just yack, and yack. Some times I would put the phone down, and come back in 5 minutes, and he would still be talking. He was eccentric, had a horrid childhood, but genuinely nice. I thought he was nuts, but nice. We ended up becoming best friends. They used to call us the odd couple. I ended up trusted him more than family. We just included each other in everthing without even thinking. My girlfriends were put off by him at first, but he would wear them down talking, and before I knew it, he was calling them daily. And when he missed a day, they would ask me if he is ok. He never crossed the line either. He died a few years ago, but his friendship technique was something I thought was brilliant. Just wear the person down. I can pass this along, I once heard a therapist say something like, make friends with people your own age, or younger. Her rationale was they will die before you. When I was in my tewenties, I just didn't have much in common with my peers. I wasen't more mature, but didn't like my generation that much. My friends were just older. I really loved all of them. If I had a do-over, I might have really tried to make friends with people my own age. I'm all alone now. It does suck. Anyways, my eccentric friend knew how to make friends. I haven't tried his technique, but might?
  • lttlrck 9y ago
    A therapist said make friends your own age or younger because they’ll die before you? Huh? Am I have a brain fart?
    • marincounty 9y ago
      She was trying to convey you don't want to alone. I didn't write the sentace correctly. Never followed the advice. In all honestly, I remember her telling me she was going to take some time off. I was so relieved on so many levels.
• Pica_soO 9y ago
  My assumption is that with 30 age really becomes visible. It was at this age, people- the same sort of people i would hang around with and goof with- started to refer to me as "Mr." - as if by having the first grey hair- you somehow become some authoritative figure to be afraid of. Which is ridiculosis - but you cant change what people think when they see you for the first time.
  • nugi 9y ago
    Oh, but you can. I find how I dress and hold myself signals "age" more than my actual aging. If you act tired and old, no matter your age, it is a signal. We also have hair dye, dentures, plastic surgery for those that care. And many do. Youth is a verb.
• heynowletsgo 9y ago
  Because love takes time, and money is time in this society. Takes a lot of money to have friends, and most men are actually to poor to afford friends. That's included in the price society pays for loving wealth first. You cannot serve two masters. You can of course fake it, drinking buddies ect... it's like most things in a money first group, the real thing is continually cheapened until everyone looses interest and then we blame them for having too high of standards.
• Myrmornis 9y ago
  I've been amazed at how unfriendly neighbours are in the same building with multiple rented apartments. Literally the only interactions I've had with neighbours over the last 3 years is when they finally overcome their disinclination to interact to come, furious, to the door to ask that some music or TV program be turned down. I always smile and say hello to the people living in the same building, and at least 70% of the time that is met with looking in the other direction. (East Bay, San Francisco Bay Area).
  • jacob019 9y ago
    Weird, here in Indianapolis it can be rude not to say hello to neighbors & strangers and acknowledgment is about 100%. Still can't wait to leave though.
  • malvosenior 9y ago
    I think the idea is that people don't always want personal connections with other people they're going to be forced to see on a regular basis (and live next to). Your anecdote about neighbors angrily banging on your door to tell you to turn down the tv is an example of that. If they were your friends they may have been socially obligated to either suffer through the noise or come over and hang out. After a long day of work you may feel like neither of those things. It's sort of similar to why a lot of people don't like dating co-workers. If it goes south, you'll still have to see and work with this person every day. A lot of people would probably prefer to compartmentalize those they live next to and those they hang out with.
    • Myrmornis 9y ago
      It's just odd to me as I grew up on a street (privately owned houses) in which everyone knew everyone else and many pairs of house owners would be on terms which would involve random conversations in the street, helping out when people are away (pets, plants, burglary precautions), maybe even dinner invitations and babysitting. And yet these people also saw each other every day, indeed since they were house owners, they were much more shackled together than people in rented accomodation. So it doesn't seem like it's the shackled-together aspect that causes the unfriendliness. On the contrary, a model which fits better is that people are inherently antisocial and unfriendly, and find that with rented accommodation they can get away with it.
• poulsbohemian 9y ago
  In the past month three men, (one 45ish, another 55ish, another 74) two of whom I was barely acquainted with, have poured their souls out to me over their relationship and business troubles. I'd argue that it isn't hard to make friends, it's just hard to meet people in the first place. Men in particular get into a habit of focusing on business and family. More than once I've heard older men voice a complaint if their wives weren't the ones to build social relationships, as they expected them to fulfill that role. Below 30, people have more opportunities -- school, sports, activities -- through which they simple meet more people. Above 30, the number of opportunities to meet other people declines unless one makes a concerted effort to seek out their tribe.
  • chapill 9y ago
    They don't sound like very American men. Like the song goes, "I'm afraid of Americans... They don't need anyone, they don't even just pretend." I realized I have no friends at age 19. I've been fine with that for decades. I won't make any such generalizations about women. I know where I'm at. But I will say the younger guys seem weaker these days. They don't have the same general tough, friendless demeanor the Gen Xers had.
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      This post is, and I am not using the term to be hyperbolic or insulting, pathological. If we need songs to prove the point, Hank Williams, undoubtedly an American man, wrote "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" in 1949.
      • chapill 9y ago
        >This post is ... pathological. Flattery will get you nowhere. >Hank Williams Alcoholic, died age 29, sings about how he is lonely, like other alcoholics do. British singer describes how he's afraid of Americans. You see the difference, right? The current generation, the weak ones, they like to sing about how tough they are. "Heathens" or "Royals" is the typical sort of chest puffing bragging about their own prowess. That's a lot different from outsiders describing their fear of your kind in song.
• olivermarks 9y ago
  I think headlines like this are very dangerous. You are either a socially outgoing person or you're not. For people who aren't, this confirms their lack of social life as 'a problem'. This isn't helpful to them on so many levels. You make friends and grow your social circle by having a common interest with people. This could be knitting, cars, pacman...it doesn't matter, it's just a common bond and a language you speak. Meeting in real life is essential though. Online acquaintances aren't 'friends'....
• irrational 9y ago
  When you were younger you probably made friends because you were all in school/college/university together. Some people make friends at work for the same reason (I've never really understood this though. After seeing them for 8 hours or so the last thing I want to do is spend time with them outside of work.) Where else can you go where people are gathered where friendships are likely to be created? Church/mosque/synagoge/temple/etc. was the typical answer for thousands of years. Maybe a service club like Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary? Though I typically think of those belonging to those kinds of clubs as being old men. Maybe there is somewhere else you could volunteer where you might meet like-minded people?
  • DenisM 9y ago
    * Sports: lifting, yoga, martial arts, rock climbing, hiking. * Adult classes: dancing, cooking, painting. * Hobbies: guns, diving, photography, fishing, boating. * Lifestyle: all kinds of travel, alcohol and other substances. * Professional: startups... eh... scratch that. * Charity: pet shelters, soup kitchens, organizing. * Politics: volunteering, door-to-door. The trouble begins when you realize you don't actually care about any of these things.
    • gknoy 9y ago
      I realized profound joy when I realized that an above-average number of the parents at the [non-mainstream sport] studio to which I take one of my kids were people who shared a _lot_ of my nerdy-interests. It was one of those rare "I've found my people!" moments.
    • InclinedPlane 9y ago
      And? What ARE you interested in? Books, board games, video games, anime? There are about a zillion conventions, regularly meeting local groups (basically everywhere), and other ways to interact for enthusiasts of those things.
    • leetcrew 9y ago
      > The trouble begins when you realize you don't actually care about any of these things. yeah, this is me. how do you meet the people who just want to sit around, drink a few beers, chat a little, and maybe watch a movie?
• k__ 9y ago
  I know a bunch of people who don't make many new friends and this has many reasons. People get families. They have time for other people after the kids are done. Depending on the time they got the kids this can take till they are mid 40. People met a whole bunch of people till they got 30 and decided that they only need the 2-5 best who are left in the end. People have a career that eats most of their time and they want to invest the rest of this time into their relationship and not general friendships. In general I have the feeling many people are more focused after 30. Mostly on romantic relationships. Most new people I added to my "friends" in the last 3 years were love interests. Since I'm polyamorous, this isn't much of an issue for me, but I can imagine this to be an issue for monogamous people. They get a partner and that's it. The people they meet after 30 who are willing to share much of their time are singles searching for a partner, so if you already got one, you're not of interest.
• toomanybeersies 9y ago
  I've just recently moved countries, and I've found that it's really difficult to actually meet people and make new friends, regardless of age. All my friends are also expats/immigrants. I don't like spending too much time around tech people, since I do that for 8 hours a day, so tech meetups are out of the question. I went to the hiking club, but the average age is like 50. Nightclubs just aren't the place to find friends. Generally, after school or university, people's circle of friends is fairly set. The problem is that after university, we have a lot less free time, and there's a lot less opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and walks of life. Clubs are meetups are great for meeting people with similar interests, but not so great for broadening your horizons. A lot of the things I'm interested in now I never would've done if it wasn't for meeting random people at university.
  • sumedh 9y ago
    > All my friends are also expats/immigrants. I guess immigrants have it bit harder because you come from a different culture/language/race so connecting with natives is a bit hard and then you end up connecting with other immigrants.
• ahallock 9y ago
  For me, and especially because I work remotely, it's because there's no central gathering place. Schools and colleges make it easy to find friends. Work a little less so, but I still managed to have a lot of friends there as well.
  • misnamed 9y ago
    Sounds like you need a 'third place' - I had one for a while, then it closed down (and I moved). But when you find one, they're great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
    • VLM 9y ago
      Genealogy can be interesting. My ancestors "third places" have mostly closed down. I'm the first in my male lineage in an unknown but large number of generations to not be a Freemason. On the other side of the family, Church is not politically cool today.
      • ValentineC 9y ago
        I've found my local hackerspace to be an awesome "third place", and we're hoping to figure out a way to market it as such to boost our dwindling membership.
        • surge 9y ago
          My best friends came from a local (now defunct hackerspace) which spun into a lock picking group (of which some people from hacker space were members, which spun into some of my best friendships and a recent career move.
• angarg12 9y ago
  Can there be a cultural bias to this? Coming from a mediterranean country, many of the points that other comments raise as problems for meeting people past 30 are not so pronounce. Is not that it isn't harder to meet people and make strong bonds, but its common for men in their 40s and 50s to play Football, hang out with their colleagues for a drink after work, meeting friends of friends, etc. Generally speaking I feel like social ties are much stronger there, so it may be worth to take a look at how people behave in other places when addressing these topics.
• booleandilemma 9y ago
  I feel like everyone I meet nowadays is too self-centered and competitive to be friends with. Does anyone else feel this way? I hope I’m not just projecting.
  • jacob019 9y ago
    Yes. People lose their luster over time. What has changed is the self and ones perspective. What does it say about yourself when you notice peoples faults instead of what you admire in them? The faults were there all along.
    • nyedrytdyf 9y ago
      i want my luster back
• leggomylibro 9y ago
  As someone petering towards the end of their 20s with no friends or people in their life at all... Y'all are scaring me.
  • Double_a_92 9y ago
    Same here. Wanna be friends? xD I always associated friendship with the things we were doing togheter. E.g. in college my mates were friends because we could work on projects togheter while having some fun doing it. Without that they are just random nice people that I happened to know... There was never an urge to do more with them like drinking a beer or so. Am I weird?
• Thriptic 9y ago
  I find myself in this boat as we speak, and I'm not even 30. I certainly have plenty of acquaintances at work and at the hobbies and activities I participate in, and we do some group things every few months. I also have several close friends who I chat with every day online who don't live near me anymore. However, I have 0 real friends who I interact with IRL. If you asked me who I would call if I was having an emergency and needed help, who I could share sensitive things with IRL, or who I could call up and ask randomly to grab a beer with me, I would have no names to give you. That includes the person I'm in "a relationship" with who also feels more like an acquaintance to me as we hang out once every few weeks for a few hours and otherwise barely talk. As a result, I spend most of my weekends just sitting alone working or trying to entertain myself with content. I'm not really sure how to proceed, as every time I expend a bunch of effort and push myself out of the acquaintance stage, that person leaves town for work and I am stuck right back where I was. It's a large enough problem as to where I've considered moving to places less advantageous career wise just because they are less transient.
  • matte_black 9y ago
    I too am in this position. I do not have one friend in this world I can count on, only family members. And the way things are going, this is how it may be forever. And if I didn’t have family, and was just some orphan in the world, who knows what I might do. Probably turn to a life of white collar crime at some point.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      Might be the new reality that everyone needs to be nomadic to survive. My parents had lots of friends, likely because they were financially able to put their roots down in a community. I’ve pretty much been unable to live in the same city for more than 3-4 years or so, at least not since better economic times. From jobs disappearing/moving to cost of living forcing a move, us younger folks don’t have the security of knowing where we will be in 5 years, which makes it harder to make friends and acquaintances.
      • 9y ago
• davesque 9y ago
  American here: I've had the problem at a few different times in my life that, whenever I actually suggested to guy friends that we hang out, they interpreted it as a pass and thought I was gay. I'm not making this up at all. I think part of the problem is not just the way that priorities change as we get older but the fact that the US seems to have an extremely closed-off and anxiety-ridden culture to begin with. Maybe, in a sense, people here have too much personal space and just aren't good at being around each other?
  • pwaai 9y ago
    I think this is a uniquely Anglo cultural thing, in the backdrop of a stricter gender norms formed out of industrialization. Everybody is so afraid of being seen as gay while maintaining a front of being politically correct about it (I suppose there is genuine fear of being publicly labelled a homophobe or a racist). In almost all parts of the world, there's nothing wrong with grown men hanging out or grabbing drinks to share trial and tribulations of life.
    • davesque 9y ago
      I've noticed this when traveling in other countries or when dealing with people from outside of the US. I think that's why the majority of my friends in college were exchange students.
    • gowld 9y ago
      Perversely, in some very homophobic cultures, men hold hands with men because they are so homophobic that there is not even an insinuation that they might be willing to publicly show homosexual inclinations, so handholding is assumed platonic.
      • mikulas_florek 9y ago
        Which cultures?
        • skosch 9y ago
• JohnStudio 9y ago
  One of the big assumptions is that you need to make friends. Part of the disconnect of modern social media, is that it's social. It's far from that. The older we get, the more we prefer to concentrate on greater things than ourselves. Broad strokes like having kids, being married, and contributions to career possibly and cultural en-devours. People wonder why as we get older, we become more conservative ... that's just extended to making friends, and expanding our social network. Most people that do attempt to do so, are often motivated by anything but the aspects of "social". Case in point - business networks and the activities that expand wealth of things other than friends. I'm not trying to be negative, just fruitful in contribution. I am a bit of a techno-extrovert but most of my friends (all 4 of them, that I count on one hand) are hermits themselves. I value the time I spend with them more when we are apart more. Oh wait .... absence makes the heart grow fonder applies here. :) I made a funny.
• thomasfromcdnjs 9y ago
  I'd probably just add to all the good answers here that there also might be a lacking of knowledge around friendship. What good friendship is and takes. I'm just speculating that abundance, city life plus the internet has taken a toll on social skills in recent times. And another point, as someone has said somewhere else in here, "friendship" could have just been perpetuated by sitcoms. Probably what is more important is just a community where you see the same faces more often and friendship would generally just be a natural byproduct of that given enough time.
• VLM 9y ago
  If everyone started out identical, however unlikely that is, and hobby interests compounded like interest, increasing the balance of ... warhammer 40K, for the sake of example, by 1% every year, then at age 18 you'd have identical interests and experiences and therefore make shallow friends with all kinds of randos who will diverge dramatically in the future, and by age 50, 1% compound hobby interest per year means you'll all be very diverse and therefore unlike to friend up except with people like you. There's actually a pretty good financial analogy with... finances. At uni "all of us" lived the same lives in the dorms. We had all the same financial life, which was "student poor". Rapidly the ultra rich kids moved to the ultra high rent apartments, we had lives that diverged, etc. Decades later rather than all of us having the same financial condition and experiences, there are likely very few people exactly like me financially. Finally there's a lot of hand wringing that I'm not hanging out with people who have nothing in common with me other than drinking the same beer or cheering for the same sportsball team. A lot of people grow up and see that as the waste of time that it is. At 18 you can be fooled into thinking a shared enjoyment of "Miller Lite Ice" is a deep personal connection, but many people can't be fooled that way at age 50. Not really a problem.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    When I was younger I thought sports were stupid, but as I've grown older I've come to enjoy watching football a lot and to especially enjoy watching it with other people. Yeah, it's not going to go on my tombstone when I die, but how many things are? It's a common thing to watch, speculate about, emote over, etc., and the game itself has grown more interesting to me as I've come to understand it more. I also think the importance of having a common lifestyle or a lot of shared interests can be overstated. I don't share that many hobbies with my wife but I enjoy talking to her and spending time with her regardless. I enjoy meeting up with old friends from school even when they're at totally different career stages than I am. You don't have to do the most expensive thing you can afford every night.
    • VLM 9y ago
      That circularizes the problem in that we use the same word to describe someone who happened to separately watch the same TV program as to describe something like a non-romantic life long soulmate. I think the article is talking about the latter, although the former is an open question, may or may not be an issue.
• kyo3 9y ago
  If it makes you guys feel better, I'm 25 and it still feels impossible to find platonic friendliness.
• mjcohen 9y ago
  If you want to meet people with a common interest, try improv. Going through a series of improv classes with the same group gets you well acquainted. One thing I like about improv is that I am forced to interact with others, something I was not good at. Now I am better. Not great, but definitely better. Plug: In Los Angeles, I recommend the Westside Comedy Theater (westsidecomedy.com) just off the Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade. Very welcoming to all.
• ausjke 9y ago
  life just got too busy and you no longer stay together for friendship long enough(unlike you have a few years for that during childhood, school, college, etc).
• jfv 9y ago
  I've always found that being in a serious/stable relationship tends to slowly cut people off over time. I honestly like being single in my mid-30's because there's always a little kick in the pants to get out and socialize that my married friends don't have. Every time I end up in a stable live-in relationship (and I've seen this happen to a lot of my friends as well), the idea of going out and seeing/making friends more than once a week feels more and more unnecessary over time. It's so much easier to cook dinner and watch Netflix rather than get dressed and be on the prowl (both for romantic relationships and interesting people to hang out with).
  • groby_b 9y ago
    One could make the argument that this happens if the "stable live-in relationship" is actually a codependent relationship.
  • ryandrake 9y ago
    As a married guy I have to say: That “prowl” sucks! I’m so glad to be in a long-term relationship because the time and money commitment of going out and putting foot to pavement was a huge drain—something I won’t miss ever.
  • hycaria 9y ago
    On one hand I share your feeling about being on the prowl for new people, on the other hand when I go out alone, my favorite thing is to meet and get a taste of people’s life. And then everyone reminds me how much I can’t wait to come home to my partner who is just better than everyone else in this world. I wonder if I’ll be able to make new close friends and not just superficially socialize now that I have someone that just gets me. I also really wish I could meet older people (I’m in my mid twenties and think 40 to 60) but I don’t know how to proceed. I do from time to time with my in laws friends but how to find people that age genuinely on my own ...
    • ElongateMuskrat 9y ago
      I had the opposite problem using meetup.com in the suburbs to meet young people like myself. For example, I would go to salsa or swing dancing meet-ups and all of the people would be couples in your 40 to 60 range. So maybe try that? Just curious, why exactly do you want to meet people twice your age?
• VLM 9y ago
  The puzzle is unsolvable if you ask why can't I find friends. Probably nothing wrong with you. The puzzle is instantly solvable if you ask why can't I be a good friend to others. Lets see, at age 19 I was juggling part time school, Army Reserves service, a grunt manual labor job, and an internship fake job, I was kinda busy. At age 22 I was working a semi-challenging full time programming job while still going to school just under the full time tuition credit limit to finally get my CS degree, so MTWR all night lectures and saturday morning class lectures until noon, so if someone said "hey lets have some beers" I'd be like LOL no. Starting around age 31 I was busy for a couple years with my father's obscure diagnosis terminal liver cancer which appeared out of the blue for no reason and couldn't be correctly diagnosed for months, which means not just the illness but helping mom move to apartment and sell the old house after fixing it up a bit, honestly I don't think I had a minute off from age 31 to about 33 or so when things started settling down. From age 29 until, well, frankly now, I have been busy raising two kids, and "daddy please come to my soccer game" trumps "hey lets have some beers" every time. And I spent most of age 30 talking to gastroENT doctors and dietitians and pediatricians about what ended up being Celliac disease for my older son, which ironically is very relaxing once you emerge from the medical industrial complex with a diagnosis, but until then its endless hell. At age 44 my MiL is slowing down and its time to move her from her house full of stuff requiring some repairs and cleanup to an apartment or "assisted living" or whatever, so I'm guessing this will consume about a year or two of my life. Around age 26 I got married, must have done it right still married to her, but doing a standard big spending American style marriage meant we consumed pretty much a year of our spare time, and I was merely the groom (tux fitting is like 15 minutes one time for guys whereas custom handmade wedding gown fitting is like five two hour trips to the gown maker for a dress she only wore a couple hours on the big day, for example)! So yeah I have no idea why some dude can't find friends, but I could write for pages why I would be a terrible friend to someone who needed time. Lets face it, some rando from a hobby or work is pretty low on the totem pole which is crammed with family members.
  • turingcompeteme 9y ago
    > but I could write for pages why I would be a terrible friend to someone who needed time And in the time it took you to write those pages you could have instead started the basis of a friendship with someone. Yes, you are terribly busy, but I guarantee you that there are people who are much busier than you who still maintain friendships. It sounds like you have already given up on making friends, but I hope that's not the case. It really is worth it, but it means making an effort, and maybe a slight shift in priorities. I think you also overestimate how much time friends require. I average maybe an hour a week and that is more than enough to maintain multiple friendships.
• bovermyer 9y ago
  I turn 36 in a week. I find it easy to make friends, but I've never been good at making the kind of friends I'd die for. There's a handful - less than five. Even that category, though, fades with time and distance. This doesn't really bother me. I think relationships are probably more ephemeral than the zeitgeist would have you believe. That's not a bad thing, or a good thing. Just an observation based on anecdotal experience.
• tr0ut 9y ago
  I don't really believe it is harder across the board after 30. I think it can be difficult in certain situations. But overall I believe it to actually be easier after 30. You're no longer trying to fit in or trying to be with a person/s for reasons other than pure friendship. You're most likely settled a bit in your life at this stage. Thus not competing for things. Probably planted roots in the area you're residing for various reasons. I think these things make it easier later in life.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Yeah, but you also have a job you can't just blow off like you can your college classes and maybe a family or other obligations, and then on top of that you aren't constantly being more or less forced to socialize the way you are in school. When you combine that with the waning of institutions (really everything from religious groups to voluntary associations to bowling leagues) you have a recipe for lonely people.
• rafi_kamal 9y ago
  I'm 24 I'm already finding it hard to make new good friends. To me a good friend is someone whom I can reach out to without thinking twice, it could be for discussing that shower thought, ranting about the work, asking for suggestions when I'm in trouble, talking about the book I just read. I made quite a few friends since college in the sense that I hang out with them from time to time, but not any good friends.
  • Markoff 9y ago
    why it has to be one person IRL? I can do most of this on reddit and i am way older
    • nyedrytdyf 9y ago
      there are definitely different dynamics. IRL a person will get back to right away; online, your comments can be ignored. IRL, you have the context of the person's personality to supplement the content of what they're saying (for better or for worse, but definitely different). human communication is also hardly only based on just speaking words, with body language and gestures and facial expressions working to convey full meaning. it is hard to feel warmth in online discussions, or at least harder. furthermore, online discussion seems much more targeted, and less exploratory in terms of subject matter (this is neutral, not saying better or worse) whereas IRL you can flow from topic to topic. also, i'd say discussing personal topics in person is more rewarding due to a combination of all the above.
• emodendroket 9y ago
  > Thayer Prime, a 32-year-old strategy consultant who lives in London, has even developed a playful 100-point scale (100 being “best friend forever”). In her mind, she starts to dock new friend candidates as they begin to display annoying or disloyal behavior. Nine times out of 10, she said, her new friends end up from 30 to 60, or little more than an acquaintance. > “You meet someone really nice, but if they don’t return a call, drop to 90, if they don’t return two calls, that’s an immediate 50,” she said. “If they’re late to something in the first month, that’s another 10 off.” (But people can move up the scale with nice behavior, too, she added.) OK, here is one case where the lack of friends is not mystifying at all.
  • maxaf 9y ago
    At this hour we have a recording of the woman's voicemail greeting: "Your call is very important to us. Please leave your name & number, and we will get back to you as soon as possible."
  • loopdoend 9y ago
    And to think that many lonely people have probably read this, thinking it's normal, adopting her practices...
    • 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
      Well, I think most people have friend systems. Just not quite as brutal. If you invite someone and they bail 10 times, maybe you stop inviting them. I am pretty sure certain events I’ve been invited to was only because I was good friends with someone else. And once they stopped going my invites stopped as well. Some people you’re close to may have other things going on in their lives, but you loop them in anyway for when their situation changes.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        I'd say there's a pretty big gulf between that and "ten points off the one hundred-point scale for being late for something."
• motohagiography 9y ago
  Activity friends are key, but that requires activities. The traditional networks around things like churches, rotary, clubs, chambers of commerce, masonry, hunt camps, golf, sailing, and political parties still exist and are open to members. They do require a level of sincerity and self acceptance that is perhaps outside the comfort zones of many younger people, but arguably so do friendships. Friendships for men in particular are fraught in the best of circumstances, but it's an extra challenge to live in a city and become someone other men respect enough to keep around over the long term.
• throwaway2117 9y ago
  As another commenter posted, I wished someone had told me this when I was younger. I never had a lot of friends in high school. I was a nerd when and where being a nerd was bad. I never really got the dynamic that mirrororing helps a lot with this and that I contributed to this by unwittingly coming across as aloof. What friends I had weren't... great. Frankly, after high school I never saw them again and honestly don't feel like I was missing much. What compounds this is I have severe myopia. Always have, always will. It's not the kind of thing that surgery can fix. This meant, say, playing team sports just wasn't possible. It's also a limiting factor in so many things. Not being able to drive a massive handicap. It impacts the ability to even watch sports so that's not something I ever developed an interest in. I also have anxiety issues. Not major. Not "I can't leave the house" type issues but... issues. In high school I never had to try so it wasn't an issue. In college I did, although I didn't realize it at the time. But it kept me from going to classes in part because I just didn't want to have to deal with not being able to see/read the board from that distance. So I was pretty much a no-show and ended up dropping out. This also meant that I just didn't make a circle of friends in college like so many seem to. There's been some interesting research done on people who appear trustworthy. This is a hard thing to measure but it seems to hold almost universally true. I think the study was about people who appear "untrustworthy" were more likely to be given the death sentence out of a pool of people who were all later exonerated with DNA evidence. I feel like I'm one of those people that people just react negatively to. Even if they don't I don't think it matters because I pretty much believe it to be true. Combine that with some low-grade anxiety and you get a bad mix of trust issues and keeping one's distance from people. I only ever really had one serious relationship and it didn't work out in a fairly gut-wrenching way that's stayed with me for years, in part from the self-flagellation for the choices I made that contributed to that ending. So here I am, years later in my 40s. I have acquaintances but not much in the way of true friends. Honestly I can't even remember the last time I had a deep conversation with somebody. I'm reminded of Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty when asked "how are you?" and he replied that it'd been a long time since anyone had asked. That's how I feel. How people form relationships mystifies me so unlike some whose friends fall away but they still have their families, I don't even have that. So here I am still wondering, how do people make friends?
  • 9y ago
• lsiebert 9y ago
  I play in a regular board game night in SF (south of market), where I've met plenty of people. Being involved in various types of gaming for most of my life, and that has lead to multiple friendships in my life, and with online or networks of games/gaming clubs, I've travelled across the country and was able to see people I know in basically every city. And I'm really not that good at being social. I'm rather introverted, really, but having a shared activity makes getting together a lot easier. If I click with someone friend wise I can always suggest we get lunch sometime.
• narrator 9y ago
  I have tried to make guy friends and the main problem seems to be that they're boring. We just run out of stuff to talk about unless we have some business related stuff to talk about. I prefer lady friends ( AS IN FRIENDS WHO ARE FEMALE WHO I DO NOT HAVE A SEXUAL OR WORK RELATION WITH AND WHO I AM NOT TRYING TO DATE ) as there's always the flirty subtext to play around with and they are just pleasant to be around and they probably think I'm trying to date them, even though I'm not. I just find them pleasant to be around and to talk about trivial day to day stuff with. Maybe I'm really strange here, but do guys even have lady friends who are not their relatives, who are not their co-workers, and who they are not trying to date? Edit: Downvotes? Is there something controversial about being friends with women to just have enjoyable conversation and platonic interaction without some sort of ulterior motive?
  • 1ark 9y ago
    I agree, we guys are quite boring and run out of stuff to talk about! And we interrupt each other, try to add our 2 cents all the time, dominating conversations. Women actually listens and are polite, and that enables deeper and more meaningful conversation. Much more pleasant to be friends with.
  • theli0nheart 9y ago
    Not strange at all. I’d really like to have more friends who are women, but social norms make that hard to do. Most women I hang out with are my wife’s friends or friends’ wives/girlfriends, but I feel like getting any closer than an acquaintance is culturally taboo.
    • jacob019 9y ago
      Not to mention that the wife might have concerns.
  • keithnz 9y ago
    I'm not a downvoter but I think your very first premise is really flawed. A blanket statement saying men (or at least the ones you meet) are boring is kind of not recognizing the massive diversity of people. But it sort of gets clearer when you say next that you like the flirty subtext of talking with women, and then that starts sounding a bit creepy, especially when you are adding in the over emphasized insisitence its not about dating/sex. I find it harder to make friends with males because it's often hard to find a good connection. I'm 47. But I have made good friends with other males once we find a groove (often based around humour) I've often been surprised about the things other males think about once they open up. Initially some males can seem quite one dimensional.
• SubiculumCode 9y ago
  It is hard to make friends. In some ways, we turn to online communities. Take for example HN. A great resource of intelligent knowledgeable people. But because the focus here is on high signal to noise postings, relationship building is not exactly encouraged. If there is one thing I'd like in a site like this, is a dual-mode. e.g. High-quality posts in the thread, but a side mode for chat.
  • nugi 9y ago
    I would love this. Are there any HN, or generally similar quality chatrooms, maybe discord? I have seen a few, but most were code focused rather than social.
• arca_vorago 9y ago
  I would like to take a moment and say how invaluable I have found online tools to maintaining a modern friendships. I met people in ventrillo playing counter strike in my early college days right after getting out of the Marine Corps who still show up on our various mumble servers on the reg, over 10 years later. Some of them live across in the world. Germany. Sweden. GB. Thousands of miles are nothing for online friendships.
• ggm 9y ago
  Nobody has said amygdala yet so I will. There. It's out there. If you're under 25, you don't have a fully formed amygdala, and you're open and receptive to rash ideas. Diving off the roof of a house into the pool. riding on the back of utility trucks with no seat. Drinking scotch from the bottle. Forming friends. Then you grow up.
  • pwaai 9y ago
    Yeah there's something that happens to our brains once we enter an age where we are supposed to be rearing offsprings. But I also suspect a strong socioeconomic factor as well. When you are no longer in university and in the work force or even a family of your own it changes priorities a lot.
    • skosch 9y ago
      ... once we enter an age where we are supposed to be rearing offsprings. That's the idea, evolutionarily? Do you have sources for that? Not that it wouldn't make sense, but if our ancestors had kids as soon as they could then their offspring would have already been teenagers by the time their amygdala matured. I'd like to learn more.
• rdiddly 9y ago
  Now there's something noticeable by its presence in a 2012 article - a Louis CK quote. Anyway the article names various and sundry complicated and small manifestations of this phenomenon, but what's the big picture? Maybe making friends past a certain age is hard because it's unnatural and somewhat irrelevant? Maybe making friends is just another naturally- and reproductively-selected trait that helps with mating and is much less relevant otherwise. Meaning that wanting friends, results in having more friends, which means more hunting/foraging helpers and teachers of same, which makes you more likely to survive long enough to mate, and more likely to find a mate (since all your friends will have siblings etc., and the ones from outside your tribe are particularly valuable statistically/genetically speaking) and successfully pass that friendly tendency on to the next generation. Or heck maybe wanting friends is an indirect and sublimated sexual urge in and of itself. It's not like homosexuality comes outta nowhere. And/or maybe being with one person is psychologically a surrogate or substitute for (or practice for later) being with your mate, just like owning a dog is to having children. Anyway, once all the mating stuff is over with, maybe you're immune to it all. I don't have much to go on here, other than 1) my tendency to look to evolution and the Ape for explanations of human behavior, and 2) the fact that I noticed I lost interest in friends as soon as I found a mate I was happy with. And interestingly, being with the previous one, whom I wasn't happy with, didn't put a damper on my social tendencies at all. (But I was younger then too, so there's at least one confounding variable.) Regardless, I suddenly notice there are large swathes of life that seem to be there only to trick you into mating. (That is, the ones that aren't there to trick you into giving someone money.) (Some people use the one to accomplish the other.) (And vice versa.) But then you reach a point where you're immune to all that, and it's a relief. You can finally get on with it, whatever the "it" is in your life. We flatter ourselves that life is complicated, important and purposeful, but actually it's pretty simple and probably random. Life just wants us to mate & raise kids, and then after that, it could give a shit what we do. (As long as we keep out of the way of other people mating & raising kids, of course.) That semen/those eggs are just your genes heading for the lifeboats of a sinking ship. But that also means once you're freed from "life's plan for you," you can stop giving a shit right back, and finally do whatever you want!
  • nyedrytdyf 9y ago
• truebosko 9y ago
  Going through my own such experience, at the ripe age of 32. Throughout life I had a strong core group of friends. Moved to the city to get a proper job, and grew my social circle. Between my late 20s and today, I've seen my friends move away for various reasons (growing family, can't afford the city, relationships, etc.), and myself having my days taken over by having a baby boy -- which I enjoy every last bit. It's been an adjustment. Getting used to the idea of having to sit at home most nights because your partner is out (and thus, you need to watch the baby), or simply being too exhausted from work/parenting/life to get back out of the house after you've put the little one down. Having my own child, combined with my friends growing in various ways as seen my social circle crumble. All in a mere two years. It's actually been a bit shell-shocking! There's light at the end of the tunnel. I've grown adjusted to my "new normal", and am finding new ways to create new relationships, or re-connect with the old ones. I'm setting up board game nights with the dads I've met in the area, getting out a bit more now that the little one is a bit saner to manage (although we're thinking of a second .. !), and keeping in touch with old friends through online games and scheduling time to see them every few months. I would implore anyone in a similar situation to not fall into the trap of thinking it's OK to be without friends. Short term, that seems reasonable ("I'm too busy with my kids and work .."), but long term, I can see that having serious effects on your personal life, and family.
• warabe 9y ago
  As a gay man who is almost 30, I think making friends is relatively easy for gay people thanks to dating apps. Perhaps, you cannot same gender friends in Tinder (if I'm wrong, please correct me), but a lot of gay people are using dating apps not only to find relationships but also to find friends. I also think social isolation around gay people makes friendship among gay people special. I don't know much about Western countries like U.S., but here in Tokyo, most of the gay are still in the closet. They have to pretend to be straight outside gay communities. It is really stressful. They cannot talk much about their lovers or their gay friends. A lot of gay people around me say drinking with straight people is just boring because of those reasons. That drives us to make gay friends. It is quite anecdotal, but I didn't have single friends a year ago, and now I've got 4, 5 close gay friends since I started using a dating app. I am actually very satisfied with my current life.
  • firstplacelast 9y ago
    Also gay, I think it is much more to do with our "delayed adolescence" and childless-ness. Or at least in the US that's what I see. The older I get, the more blessed I feel to be gay. I can move to any medium to large sized city tomorrow and probably find tons of guys in my age range that are looking for friends and shared-activity partners. I have many child-free gay friends in their late 30's-50's and their social lives are often 5x those of their straight counterparts.
    • rabidrat 9y ago
      All of your comments appear to be dead/flagged and I don't know why.
    • ziqiaojin 9y ago
      your mom gay
      • dang 9y ago
        We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• SubuSS 9y ago
  It is very interesting to read all these comments: I am trying to see why the 'social' networks aren't able to fill this gap of camaraderie (assuming that's what people are looking for when they say friendships). What are we worried about? The public nature of discussions? Worry about putting yourself out there and getting digitally recorded for ever? Why aren't we able to have a tinder for friends as a successful service? Yeah I can build yet another one but I am trying to see where my employer and other competitors are failing. Is there a giant gap of being able to discover like minded people / enable rich experiences that these aren't filling? FWIW from my side, I have had pretty deep / enriching discussions here / on reddit / stackoverflow etc. which have always been good enough. So I am probably not the right sample set to answer these :\
  • SubuSS 9y ago
    I don't know if anyone cares at this point, but I did google around and found an app called Patook that's for this: I didn't dig further than play around, but it is something others might want to check out! FYI.
• drewmol 9y ago
  I agree it takes consistent effort to develop new friendships well into adulthood (like any worthwhile relationship). For most, during childhood/adolescence/young adulthood it takes consistent effort to NOT develop friendships, the opportunities are often forced upon you. Advise: If you are an adult who is struggling to find friendship and find yourself pushing away opportunities bc of (percieved) unequal interest: Resist your ego's crusade of misery. If you've ever flaked on someone for a reason other than: you secretly hate them, or malicous disrespect... try calling an 11th time, maybe even a 15th(...apply discression here, and of course not in a row). Relationships are not a zero sum game, don't wait for hubris to rationalize loneliness. Edit: also, meetup.com
• yters 9y ago
  We've lost the families and social institutions that once developed those relationships, and in general the ability to put up with people outside our comfort zone. If you've read CS Lewis' Great Divorce, it is his vision of hell, everyone living in their own isolated, make believe houses, ever moving farther away from each other because they cannot stand anyone else.
  • branchless 9y ago
    Which is caused by high land costs. Now we must maximize our employability, and to hell with friends, family and community. The land costs, set by loose credit from banks, must be met.
• bawana 9y ago
  The older you get, the clearer you see the end of the tunnel. You've heard the quip 'Life is too short'. Well, the work of making friends , of defining how much committment there is to a relationship, etc...is not worth it. Happiness is something only you can allow yourself to have. And once you realize this, who needs the risk of having an emotional downside through a new relationship when you might not have enough time to right yourself??
  • urlwolf 9y ago
    This is very interesting. First time I hear anyone say that cultivating friendship is not worth it.
    • bawana 9y ago
      I didnt say it wasnt worth it. I just said that the value of a relationship requires a certain amount of time. As you approach the end of your life, the equilibrium of a friendship will not be attained and interpersonal relationships may be terminated (due to death of one of the participants) in disequilibrium - basically, you try to make a friend but that effort fails and you are emotionally drained at the end of your life. It would have been better to spend your time with people you know doing things you like.
• megaman22 9y ago
  Looking at the small town where I grew up, people in the generations before mine had the luxury that the friends they made in kindergarten pretty much lived next door to them their entire lives. They went to school together, they worked together, they saw each other all the time around town, they played softball and pickup basketball together on town teams, they married into large extended families, and their kids went to school together. For my generation, that's broken down, ultimately because that local economy has faltered and died. We had to go out into the world and make our way in a mass of strangers, without that deeply ingrained commonality to fall back on. And that's hard.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• make3 9y ago
  I just get bored by the new people I meet, which makes me sad; I don't feel emotionally invested in the new folks I meet at all
  • zbentley 9y ago
    Insisting on rapid emotional investment (in either direction) with new acquaintances, while not "wrong" per se, is equivalent to saying you'll only date people for whom you feel instant infatuation/"love at first sight". It massively reduces your options. These things take work, practice, and time.
• PKop 9y ago
  I'd advise people to join a Crossfit gym. Besides (in my opinion) being a physically and by extension mentally healthy endeavor, you easily meet and spend time with a group of adults of various ages going through the same challenge of the group workouts along side you on a daily basis. Often times you partner up on workouts, or at the very least talk over what the day's workout is. Many gyms organize both competitive (friendly) workout competitions (with other nearby gyms also) as well as social events with members. The nature of group physical exertion (high physical stress) provides a low social stress environment to make casual acquaintances many of which can become close friends. I see many in the comments lamenting the practical inability to strike up random conversations with strangers they encounter throughout the day. In the gym setting it is very easy to ease into these types of interactions when desired.. Over time without even trying you become pretty close with the trainers and members just by nature of being around them often, working together so to speak towards a common goal. This is also a great way as a couple to make friends. You join together, and right from the start you're not on your own.. and often times there are other couples attending classes as well.
  • beager 9y ago
    I've always thought it'd be a great thing to have an app or service that acts as a "lobby" of sorts to pair you with like-skilled folks for workouts, pickup sports, runs, etc. For instance, if I run an 11 minute 30 second mile, I'd love to be paired with someone who also runs that time, so I can enjoy the activity with someone without them getting mad that I can't run a 7 minute mile. It's a feature of online gaming matchmaking that I think could work well in the real world.
  • pritishc 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be just Crossfit. Earnestly asking for advice from gym veterans (regular gyms, no programs involved) can also open you up to new friendships.
• shams93 9y ago
  I don't think it has to do with age I think it has to do with the end of the 40 hour work week, the always connected work culture doesn't leave much room these days for people of any age to form old fashioned friendships outside of work
• iamleppert 9y ago
  People are a sum of their life experiences. People who are older, have more that goes into that equation. More often equates to complexity and intricacy, like a complicated key, that becomes harder and harder to find a lock for. In my early 20's, I was more open to hanging around people I know I didn't like, or wasn't compatible with, because I didn't want to be alone or without friends, craved attention, and saw every social encounter as a stepping stone and potentially valuable. Now, I know better. When you get older you realize you don't need to surround yourself with people whom you don't like, no longer crave as much attention, and already stepped along many of life's stones. You also put on less of a pretense to others and care less about being liked. It's more important to be authentic and true, even if that means having less friends, than a phony with a lot of fake friends. All this has the result of making it more difficult to randomly find real friends. It's common I'll meet many new people but the ones who I stay in contact with are few and far between, and that's okay. People come into your life and go out of it, it's just the way things work. I'm thankful for everyone I've had in my life and know that there are many more great people who I have yet to meet.
  • shubb 9y ago
    If this were the case, it would be harder to find a romantic relationship as we age. Adjusting for life circumtance and type of relationship sought, I don't see evidence of this. What do you think?
    • scardine 9y ago
      According to my older female friends finding romantic relationships is getting harder for them. My older male friends are less and less interested in romance as they report finding sex with no strings attached is getting easier with age.
      • watwut 9y ago
        That sounds like they were never interested in romance or relationship (beyond it being the means to get sex).
      • 9y ago
• jk2323 9y ago
  I think you can make very good friends at any age. But 1. I have very old friends with a lot of, let's call it "weaknesses". Our friendship is "grandfathered" but if I meet new people I don't tolerate such things anymore. 2. Sometimes you meet an interesting person and would like to hang out more but things don't develop. This person never has time etc. You can also maintain only a limited amount of friends.
• kleer001 9y ago
  Why? Babies and hobbies, drug abuse and work addiction. That's about most of it.
• acjohnson55 9y ago
  I think life just gets more complicated. Folks spread out. Work responsibilities grow. You have to prioritize time with your spouse. You have kids and their schedules to work around. My friends aren't the only thing I don't have time for. There are seemingly a million things I once was enthusiastic about that don't make the cut. One thing I noticed in the alumni base of a club I was involved in university is that participation drops to near-zero for the folks who are in their mid-30s through early-50s. Then it starts to pick up again. It's that time of having pre-adolescent kids where life seems to really detach people from their old social circles, but some reemerge once their last kid becomes a teenager. I just had my first kid and moved to the suburbs, and I can already tell my physical connections with folks have dropped considerably.
• errantmind 9y ago
  One of the reasons it is hard to make friends as an adult is because the associate between sincerity and naivety grows stronger over time. The more you get burned or see people get burned, the more closed off you become to real interpersonal connection. This is the default behavior. Once you realize this though you can do something about it. Ultimately you have to be willing to be vulnerable, to stick your neck out in order to cross that barrier from 'associate' to friend
• projektir 9y ago
  Because there are no good generic (read: not gyms) areas for repeatedly mixing people at that age since you're no longer in any kind of educational institution. Also, children.
  • nugi 9y ago
    So, join a gym? The childeren thing goes both ways. I know tons of people I wouldnt ever say hello to due to events around children. Lots of bored loney parents standing around while johnny picks grass in the outfield makes for a great way to meet people.
• drewmol 9y ago
  TLDR: pessimism, ego and undisclosed performance rankings
• jchallis 9y ago
  I have found Randi Zuckerberg's quip that of [family, sleep, fitness, friends and work] you can focus on three at a time. For me, it's family, work and fitness. If I have extra time, I use it for sleep. Friends are critically important. They just aren't as important as family, work, fitness and sleep. If I had more free time, I'd invest more in sleep than finding relationships.
  • pritishc 9y ago
    Doesn't fitness imply the need for sleep?
    • heedlessly2 9y ago
      i'm pretty sure it means exercise and diet.
    • jchallis 9y ago
      Yes. I'll refine to exercise/eat healthy as these require explicit time.
  • Adamantcheese 9y ago
    Added to that list should be hobbies because otherwise I can only pick two from that list.
• wruza 9y ago
  My guess is that I’m not interested in people at all, and so are my remaining friends. From time to time you meet a person who has a potential to be friends with, but all the potential activities you’ve already seen and got bored of. I don’t get drunk, high, do not do crazy things or sharp discussions anymore. Common interests are just that - common interests. What makes you friends with someone is not just spending time together, but doing something you’ll never do with random people (though few people think they are your friends because they spent some time with you). Now most of ‘still friends’ that I have simply offload their problems to someone’s ears when we meet, or endlessly discuss material matters like property prices, car options and female parameters. I don’t think you can make true friends in 30s unless you’re taking part in a war-like activity.
  • loorinm 9y ago
    There are a lot of worthy causes that are great places to make “warlike” effort in. Therefore friendships happen when each individual chooses to go fight the war worth fighting. Your friends are the people who meet you there on the battlefield. Whether it’s equality or justice or art or freedom or inclusion or community, those are all things worth fighting for.
• losteverything 9y ago
  I'm the guy people want to ne friends with. Im very friendly. I don't want friends. Most end the same way: we connect, share & remember things, then i turn cold and act less interested. Then we become good acquaintances. This pattern existed way back in high schoolHi Having friends is not on my list of success Or even a positive achievement. Being friendly is at the top of the list. I say to people i meet and to others now, make sure the potential friend really wants the job.
• grimgrin 9y ago
  There is going to be the personality type in here (see: me), that almost goes about friendships (subconsciously) like they do hobbies / new interests. You enjoy time with them, and then maybe after some time you sorta burn out. But also.. there are people you meet (in the past ~4 years it's been IRC buddies) and it connects extra well. Maybe they're people you really respect (I'm introspecting), and maybe you realize your _other_ friends were just filling some loneliness-void without a real foundation in what could be a nice friendship. Or maybe you're just bad at maintaining most friendships.
  • jacob019 9y ago
    yep, hard to care about making the effort
• amyjess 9y ago
  I'm 33. I had a lot of friends when I was in college. I think I hung out with like four different groups of people, and I'd often introduce people in different groups to each other. After I graduated, everything slowly fell apart. As the years went by, we all slowly but surely drifted away. I'm at the point where I hang out with very few people in real life anymore. I have one very close friend from college who I still go out drinking with every few weeks, but he's it. Facebook has been a life saver here: I still talk with old friends all the time on Facebook, but our friendships are mostly confined to Facebook. Every once in a while, someone will say to me "We should totally hang out again sometime!", and I'd be like "Sure, that sounds awesome!", and nothing ever comes of it. I don't think there's anything malicious involved; I just think that both of us are too socially awkward to actually schedule a time and a place to meet up. There have been a couple of exceptions, where "We should totally hang out again sometime!" turns into concrete plans, but those are few and far between. And it's worse if they're married and doubly so if they have kids. I think, before I go any farther, I should point out that I have no interest in ever having children, and I'm aromantic, which means that I am mentally incapable of feeling romantic attraction for another person. Though I'm technically a lesbian, I'm functionally asexual just because I have no interest in being part of a couple. Take the guy I used to call my best friend, for example. As soon as he met the person who eventually became his wife, I never saw him alone again. This was a guy who was like a brother to me; we'd often stay up late at night and talk to each other about anything and everything, and we'd often confide things in each other that we'd never tell anyone else (for example, he was the first person I ever came out to). But as soon as he met her, I couldn't hang out with him without his girlfriend/fiancee/wife tagging along. Hell, when he got engaged, I invited him out to a bar so I could buy him a glass of scotch to congratulate him on his engagement, and he brought her along there! It got to the point where I couldn't have a serious conversation with him. It also really annoyed me, whenever we'd hang out at a bar, she'd decide she was tired and wanted to go back. They'd tab out ASAP and leave as soon as their credit card came back. I am, by the way, talking about a bar that's literally right across the street from their apartment. They'd disappear before I could even finish my last drink... before he met her, when one of us would get tired and decide to end the night, we'd at least both stick around until we finished our last drinks and then go home at the same time. Or, for some of people I know who have kids, their kids are all they talk about. I've had to unfollow a lot of people on Facebook because their Facebook feeds just become constant streams of pictures of their kids and updates on their kids' lives (the only person I make an exception for on this is my cousin, and that's only because her kids are my family too). I've heard from a lot of people my age that they make most of their new friends by befriending the parents of their children's friends, so being childfree that completely cuts off the main avenue of making new friends for people my age (and honestly, it sounds like a terrible way of making new friends, where the only thing you have in common is that your kids like each other). Making new friends at my age sounds more like pretending than anything else. I dread the idea of joining someone's existing friend group and struggling to understand all their little in-jokes. And even when I do understand them, they won't have any emotional impact on me because I wasn't there when the joke started. And if they're my age, they're going to be spending a lot of time reminiscing over the good old days, and that will always make me feel left out because I'm the newbie who didn't share the good old days with them. I'll always be the fifth wheel. And then there's the fact that some of my former friends have become genuinely shitty people. Take my former best friend who I was talking about two paragraphs ago. Over the last few years, he's gone down an extreme alt-right rabbit hole. He'd always been a libertarian and a Christian, but he was always one of the good ones, and now he's gone full blown religious right extremist. His Facebook feed has largely consisted of memes with transphobic slurs, Nigel Farage videos, videos about how gay people can't get into heaven, screeds about how Jimmy Fallon's son deserved to die, the "piece of shit" meme about single mothers, etc. He went from being one of the most caring and compassionate people I knew to an utter monster. And, yes, his wife is partially responsible for this. She's an extreme tradcon who believes that a woman's highest calling is to be a 1950s housewife, and she's brought out the absolute worst in him. Eventually, after realizing he's too far gone to ever come back, I started ghosting both of them. I haven't spoken to him in over a year, and I actively avoid going to places where I know they like to hang out. I do, however, take a perverse pleasure in watching my count of mutual friends with him on Facebook drop like a rock. And they're all from people unfriending him. One of those people was a groomsman at his wedding, who publicly told him to "fuck off" after he posted something really heinous. The only good thing to come out of this though is that him going off the deep end has rekindled my friendships with his exes. The last two times "We should totally hang out again sometime!" actually resulted in something concrete happening have been with two of his exes, and we bonded over how he's turned into a horrible person. One of them even said that meeting me was the best thing that came out of dating him (and she's one of my friends who has a kid, but she's one of the few people I know who has kids where I can have a conversation with her about something other than her kid). But, honestly, losing the man who was at one time the closest thing I had to a brother fucked me up really badly. I don't have anyone who I could talk to the way I talked to him back in the day. We'd been through so much together, and he'd been right there with me for every single important milestone in my life since I was 19. We got each other into music, TV shows, hobbies, etc. He got me into goth music, and I got him into Doctor Who. I took up photography for a time because I wanted to be like him. I can't replace that. There is nobody I can meet tomorrow who I will ever have that kind of deep friendship with, because all these important milestones in my life have already passed, and I'll never get to go back in time and experience those milestones with someone else. I have one close friend left (the guy I still go drinking with every few weeks) who I went through a lot of these milestones with, but I never spent nearly as much time with him as I did with he-who-shall-not-be-named, and our relationship wasn't quite as deep. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's deeper than most other friendships I've had, and he's far more than just another drinking buddy, but not to the extent of thinking of him as my brother. I'm just not going to find another brother (or sister) at my age, as it's the kind of relationship you have to start cultivating when you're very young. The way I see it, I have another 30-40 years left in me before my body gives out, and I'm going to spend all of them without having the kind of friend I had from 19 to 31. I don't really know how I'm going to deal with that.
• b0rsuk 9y ago
  Get a hobby. Start going to a place where people practice it. I'm over 30 and board games work well for me. Most people I play with are younger. The oldest of us, resembling the one from French Connection, is a former programmer(?) and regularly mops the floor with other players, often at games he's playing for the first time. I heard he attends dancing lessons too. I think it's a matter of getting your priorities right and not neglecting work/life balance. My brother is a devops rather obsessed with career, progress, income, has wife and kids. If he sends you a message it's usually because he's about to follow up with something he needs of you. If he calls it's usually past 20:00 and he's not interesting in listening to you... then when he finishes talking he says he no longer has time. He regularly takes his work home. If he has a single friend, I'm not aware of that. He doesn't read, doesn't watch movies, no longer plays games. Doesn't appear to be interested in anything but work. My simple principle is work to live, not live to work. Work should enable decent living and a lifestyle where I can occasionally travel at my own will, buy some fancy items and eat well. If the workplace regularly organizes parties or sends people on delegations, I'll look for another one. My brother says I could stockpile money much faster abroad. Stockpile... for what? Time is the resource you can't replace.
  • el_cid 9y ago
    It seems you might be rationalizing your lower-income a bit. Let me try to explain why. I agree about the work-life balance, but at 30 you're in the best shape you'll ever be: physically & mentally. In my opinion there is some sense in sacrificing a bit of the present in order to make the future more palatable. Especially at the age of 30. A bit of extra effort at this age can save a lot of trouble down the road. Granted you can take this to the extreme and be like your brother. But I've seen so many miserable people in their 50s at my workplace, living paycheck to paycheck, buy all kinds of useless trinkets and always talking about their next 'adventure' - a holiday to some expensive resort on the other side of the globe or something. I don't want to live like that at 50. I am willing to sacrifice some of my present time & enjoyment to avoid that.
    • letsgetphysITal 9y ago
      There are some things you can't do (or are much more difficult) once you reach retirement, such as some physically demanding activities. You can either live life while life is worth living, or you can waste your prime accumulating wealth you can't take with you at the end and aren't healthy enough to enjoy to the fullest. Just another perspective, not a personal attack.
• compatipal 9y ago
  Maybe it helps, but I've built compatipal.com for exactly this reason. Describe yourself with short attributes (tags), say "JustinBieber" and "Slipknot"... then find others with an interesting combination of tags in your proximity and contact them, or let others find you. You have to think a little about what tag combination describes you best. The main problems I faced were: Where do you find people when you spend 95% of your time at home/work? And: I believe part of the reason, why I don't want to talk to just anybody I meet on the street is not because I'm an introvert, but rather because it's highly inefficient to talk to hundreds of people and spend hours of awkward conversation just to maybe find one that I can get along with. If you want, you can enter your mail and 2 tags, it's free (just use your spam email adress if you don't trust me... just make sure, that somebody interested can contact you). The vision is to someday find your true soulmate(s) with a few clicks.
• waytogo 9y ago
  Super nice thread with inspiring thoughts. My shot: Once I had a family with wonderful little kids I understood what 'quality time' really is. As much I enjoyed being with my friends or even ex-girl-friends: If I think back of what we did together (getting wasted, so-so vacations, mediocre dinner parties, boring talks at coffee shops) it's so much better now. It's funny: I am very often invited to dinner parties (private and business ones). Every single time, I just don't want to go. Not because I am anti-social, not at all, it's just that I enjoy time with my family so much more—they are my friends.
  • isolli 9y ago
    Just make sure you have a backup plan when your kids move out :)
  • jacob019 9y ago
    Thanks for this. Hope to get to that place.
• z3t4 9y ago
  Who has time for friends ? All relations are about spending time with someone. You can get a good relations with anyone by just spending time with them. Most people are actually not that bad when you get to know them.
• yason 9y ago
  Friendships need presence and presence can be supported by hanging out and/or commitment. Ideally both but commonly by only one or the other. Phases in life make hanging out easier in the early life and harder in midlife, then easier again when you're old. In turn, commitment usually depends on the particular individuals and not so much from the age. The relationship between some friends you were hanging out with in your twenties might lack commitment and they tend to disappear as you grow older. Things were easy as long as you kept seeing each other anyway. Then again, some people you might see less frequently but you somehow know they'll always be there somehow when needed; that is commitment. When you're middle-aged you don't generally have time to hang out. So you need to build on commitment instead: find people you actually care about and who actually care about you, and who can be relied on even if you can't see every month. Unfortunately, finding these people is a rarity. It's only slightly easier than finding a life-long spouse, and you probably can't expect to find more than a small handful during your life. Friendships need to be intentionally nurtured but also sufficiently balanced. It's easy to find "friends" who you will listen to but who never have the time or patience to listen to you. Or "friends" who need you as an entertainer: they aren't interested in you in particular, they just long for company, any company. In this case you're giving more than your "friend", and you'll eventually grow grumpy about seeing the person. Averaged over the years, you should be getting back about as much as you put in the relationship yourself for a fruitful companionship. If it's always you who has to call and suggest something, you'll just be annoyed at some point. Both need to nurture, support, and invest in the relationship in roughly equal amounts on some, probably slightly relative, scale. It's also harder to find friends in midlife because your bar has gone higher up. You've learned the value of just friends and good friends in all the rough seas of life, and you just won't bother with everyone who's nice. You realise that life is finite and it's often more valuable to do things on your own rather than in a company where you only connect on some levels.
• staticelf 9y ago
  I am soon to be 28 and do not have many friends. However, it is by choice. Partly because I have moved around a lot and partly because there is no need for me to have a lot of friends. But I have also noticed that is very hard and very much so for me that works remotely, not attending any sports events or similar and spend way too much time either gaming or working of side projects.
• Traubenfuchs 9y ago
  I met most friends I made besides/after college on gay dating apps.
• kibrad 9y ago
  speaking as 33 year old, i can tell you why people don't make friends with me - because i don't want any friends. my wife and children + colleagues are more than enough
• Yaggo 9y ago
  I have never be able to make [close] friends, especially same-sex friends. It bothered me when I was younger, but not much anymore (I'm 35 now). I get enough social interaction at work, my spouse is very close friend of mine, and kids and hobbies keep me busy. Only on occasions like wedding, name giving parties etc. having no friends bothers me little but I've three siblings. It's interesting that the recommendation to make friends in hobbies haven't worked for me neither. I guess there's something in my personality which makes it hard, regardless of the situation. It's relatively easy for me to get along with people, but really difficult to convert the relationship from acquaintance to true friendship.
  • KozmoNau7 9y ago
    It took a long time for me as well. Kickboxing/crossfit didn't work. Volunteering at a local historic motor racing event every summer since 2010 didn't work (I like the guys, but they're acquaintances, not friends). It wasn't until I got hardcore into going to metal/rock concerts and festivals, and got into pen'n'paper roleplaying that it finally clicked for me, and I started making friends again.
  • heedlessly2 9y ago
    >I have never be able to make [close] friends, especially same-sex friends I hear this a lot from women and their inability to make friends with other women. More commonly, most of their males friends were just "hovering" around them as nice guys hoping to eventually score a chance with them. But when these token women try making friends with the same gender, those other women are naturally less attentive because they don't have the same romantic inclination as those "nice guys"
• madshiva 9y ago
  Easy, like 1, 2, 3. Go out, drink beer. These noob these days.
• xstartup 9y ago
  By this time people have suffered a lot. Faced economic hardships. I used to make friends regardless of their socioeconomic background but the ones who were poor, always made me feel as if they are poor because of people like me. I am rich. They could justify every worse thing they did to me, just because they thought I had it easy and they had to struggle much. I never got to understand how these guys can justify scamming me. Couple of them screwed me over lots of money and made my life hell but nvm I recovered and still thriving.
  • gonzo41 9y ago
    You met shitty poor people. Being poor doesn't make you screw people over, but if you're rich, you may not have notice or appreciated how your wealth was interacting with these people. Great example was in the show Friends. There was this episode when Febie? and Joey were broke as f--k and they got all bent out a joint having to be in situations with the others where they were spending more money than they could afford just to keep up appearances. And then they got even more hurt because of then the others pivoted to pity and charity. Anyway, you're still thriving to it's all a wash in the end.
    • xstartup 9y ago
      I've have helped lots of people and I am a firm believer of "If you can help, you must". Heck, my wife was also poor but she is the best person I've ever met. She is the only one who can set millions of dollars on fire for me. But over the time, my inability to act indifferent to people's struggle has burned me over a countless number of times. Examples include places where I gave out few hundred thousands in help and got scammed out of millions. These days I am living under the rock so that I do not see others' struggle and jump there to help.
      • nugi 9y ago
        "my wife was also poor but she is the best person I've ever met" You still make it sound like you see it as some black mark against someone. I doubt you meant to come off that way, but you really did. Imagine if I said: "Xstartup is (gay,black,jew), but is a really great person" Sounds bad huh?
• deleted 9y ago
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• kokey 9y ago
  As someone who has been an expat in several locations and also divorced, I have found that it's not really due to age but down to where the people around you find themselves in their life and where you find yourself in life. When young people go to college a significant portion of them are in a situation where they would need to seek and develop new friendships. The same happens if you move to a location which has a large expatriate population. It's when you don't have your old friends around and surrounded by people who are in the same situation. That means the people you work or take classes with are also open to making friends with people they work or take classes with. Everyone also live, work and socialise as close to each other as possible, for this purpose. This is in contrast to, say, if you move to a new country or a city where the majority of the people already have established friendships and families where they live and work. These people don't live close to where they work, they live close to where it's convenient for their established friends and family. They don't feel the need to make friends at work. This makes it hard for you, as an outsider, to make friends where most people you deal with don't have that need. This changes again if you have children who go to school and you find yourself with other parents in the same situation. The same when people move when they retire somewhere.
  • k__ 9y ago
    True. I know people who fit in the classical "over 30" role with 23 because they got two children and I know people who don't fit in that role with 42. But I think there is a high correlation between age and state of life. Also, the people over 30 that aren't in that "I don't have time for other people"-state are often those who struggle to find friends.
  • erikb 9y ago
    Also, it's hard but not impossible. I'm in that situation right now, where I work in a new location but most of my colleagues have established lifes here. However there are also a small number of colleagues in similar situations, and also there's some movement going on all the time. So yes, my friendships don't grow as quickly as I'd like, but they grow. One thing to note though is that one needs to pursue it proactively. Don't be ashamed to ask people to add you to their whatsapp group. Don't be afraid to supply other people with food they like, so they will remember you when they want to relax. And take off some time from your hobbies and work schedule so you can participate in meetups.
• Dowwie 9y ago
  I've organized my life around career and family. Forging relationships at work hasn't transcended employment in that I lose touch shortly after leaving an organization. I've found that professional communities, from executive mba program to various tech communities, as having the potential to create new relationships but it requires time and tending to, and so now I am in my late 30s affirming the challenges of making friends. Acquaintances, however, are far easier to achieve.
• davebryand 9y ago
  It's not. Choose to give unconditional love and choose to be lovable. You'll have more friends than you know what to do with.
  • drukenemo 9y ago
    hummm this is no really true in my experience. Many people are takers and not real givers.
• dep_b 9y ago
  Boardgames are an excellent gateway drug into friendships. Some people you already know or meet love to play them once you get your initial party together, get enthusiastic about them, invite other people they know and before you know it you have a thriving community of people around you. All that for not more than US$200 in games annually which is way less I spend in beer and much more effective. And boardgamers tend to be (but not exclusively are) on the geekier side of life so I have an easier connection to most people, shared interests or people do things that I think are really cool but never did etcetera.
• book_mentioned 9y ago
  Show HN: Kismet – get an e-mail introduction to a fellow HN member every day | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393566
• cvaidya1986 9y ago
  To me making friends is organic. Follow your interests and you’ll meet fellow travelers in your path.
• _mischief 9y ago
  36, recently moved to London and struggling to find friends, especially other techies. I know people often recommend meetups, and I have attended a variety of those over the last year. The pattern I've noticed, especially on tech meetups, is that people show up in small groups with their existing friends or colleagues. If you come up and start a conversation, they mostly don't engage (bring up new topics, respond at length) - they just respond in a passive way to keep the minimum level of politeness, and wait until you realise they want to go back to talking with their friends. Starting a conversation with a stranger seems to be a rude thing to do, since you're making them uncomfortable. The ones that do engage turn out to be non-tech (recruiters, marketers, people who want to start a tech career but don't know how), or people desperately looking for a job and thus checking if you can get them into anything. What success I've had was: - making friends at work (but for some reason it's always non-tech people - probably for the competition reason mentioned in the article - and it falls apart because they already have better friends they prioritise) - starting a gaming group (but that had no followup - if I don't run a game, people don't invite me to their other things) - making friends with a neighbour (an old lady open to friendship with anyone, that seems to have held up since she's retired and has lots of time) At this point, I'm lost for ideas. Google "London friends" or something, and you'll find people talking about how they're lonely and they'd like more friends. Seriously, where do those mythical lonely people exist?
• Allower 9y ago
  What a load of nonsense
• intrasight 9y ago
  I would be interested in hearing what other's think about this from an economic theory viewpoint. As others mentioned in this discussion friendship = time x struggle Time, for everyone, is the ultimate "limited resource". As a kid, time seems an unlimited resource. As you get older it becomes more and more limited - both daily and in absolute quantity. My situation. At 50 with my daughter off at school, and my wife working/living a thousand miles away, I realized that many of my "new" friends were coupled to my daughter and my wife. I didn't have my own friends locally - most were concentrated in my hometown. I was lonely but really didn't know it. I go to the gym every day and often take group fitness classes. At some point a woman showed up in the class who had just moved back after being away a couple years. She and I became close friends and she introduced me to several of her close friends. Now I find myself with a very intimate social network and feel blessed beyond measure. Our is very much a "time x struggle" closeness - much time together and much of it working out and, when not working out, sharing our personal struggles. My advice to anyone who suspects at some level that they are lonely is that you're probably right. But the world is full of kind, loving, trusting people - seek them out!
• mgeorgoulo 9y ago
  Chances are, older people have been deceived more. This is a reason to be a bit more sceptical upon meeting a new person. While this may be subtle in itself, the very assumption that your peer may also be sceptical about you can make the situation even harder. I'm afraid it takes two naive individuals, blindly disregarding the risks, to start a meaningful friendship.
• trumbitta2 9y ago
  Bias: I actually made more friends in the last 10 years (I'm 40) than in the first 30 years of my life.
• cdelsolar 9y ago
  Does anyone want to be my friend?
• deleted 9y ago
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• rweba 9y ago
  I remember reading and commenting on this same article when it was posted a few years ago. I agree with most of the comments posted here. In a certain sense making friends is really very simple. But, to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, that does not mean that it is EASY. It just requires CONSISTENTLY spending A LOT of time in a collegial atmosphere with someone. If you do that, assuming you have a few things in common and don't annoy the heck out of each other, you will inevitably become friends. This is why people make such good friends in college or in the army. But consistently spending a lot of time with someone you just met is not easy for most adults outside of a romantic relationship or a work thing. It's the paradox of choice, we have so many activities going on and different options on ways to spend our time that we have a hard time being consistent with developing any one specific relationship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
• mc_rorie 9y ago
  I found this particular quote to resonate with me: "We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way." This continued to happen to me over and over again and I couldn't find any personal tools that helped me get over that hump. As a direct result of my frustration, I am building a solution for this problem called Considerit (considerit.co). Check us out if this sounds like something you would be interested in and sign up for our Beta. Our goal is to help you achieve the outcomes you want with your relationships.
• brango 9y ago
  I can recommend the book Anatomy of Friendship [1] by Reisman. It's an old book but dispels the myth that things are more difficult now than in days gone by, since he quotes ancient Greeks/Romans lamenting the difficulties of friendship. It really made me understand friendship, how to make friends, and how friendship varies throughout our lives. Definitely worth digging up a copy. It's a shame it's no longer in print. [1] https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Anatomy_of_Friendship.html?id=G63aTaSNeNAC https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Anatomy_of_Friendship...
• brango 9y ago
  I'm surprised no one's mentioned the pick up community, AKA gaming (as in "The Game"). It's a good way for hetero guys to meet other hetero guys. A lot of people who stick with it are the type who want to better themselves in some way, which is quite inspiring. Plus, you'll learn skills to meet loads of girls as well, and it's up to you whether you choose to put in the time to have them as friends. I know a lot of people who it's helped, and I've made some good friends through it as well. The social skills can also be translated to business/events so even if you're not interested in a stream of conquests, it can be valuable. It's the one thing I wish I'd found when I was at university.
• sebringj 9y ago
  Situational Proximity - Beside the obvious compatibilities...If you are continually around someone in your youth and hang out, you tend to make long lasting friends. If you are partially and sporadically around someone because of logistics (spouse, work, location) you will not make long lasting bonds at the level you would compared to the first example. The other parts of the discussion are not significant to those points IMO.
• Lordarminius 9y ago
  When you're young the criteria for making friends include shared interests in the opposite sex, academics, partying and so on. People are rarely judgemental. Later in life a huge component of relationships is based on comparison of status and material acquisitions.
• PricelessValue 9y ago
  Because you aren't a kid anymore? You are older and have a wife, children, nephews, nieces and responsibilities? Not only that you have friends from childhood, high school, college, work, etc and there are only 24 hours in a day? It's called growing up. Are we supposed to stay naive children forever without responsibilities forever?
• feralmoan 9y ago
  So in conclusion, friendships happen via function or temporal need, and that's a truth for a lot of people. Thanks for lowering the bar, game theory.
• deleted 9y ago
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