14 ms·

How friendships change in adulthood

288 points by simonebrunozzi 4y ago

irrational 4y ago
> there are three expectations of a close friend that I hear people describing and valuing across the entire life course, Somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy. I have two close friends. All three of us are in similar life circumstances. Married, kids in elementary/middle/high school, programmers, in our 40s or early 50s, etc. But, our entire friendship revolves around boardgames. We get together every Thursday night to play games for 3-4 hours. Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game. Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up. Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more.
- CleverLikeAnOx 4y ago
  I found I formed a deeper connection with my D&D group once we started doing non-D&D things together. It was a switch from consistent friends to close friends.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  It sounds like your definition of a close friend differs from the one described.
- jdkoeck 4y ago
  Sorry but I call bullshit. > Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game. So you never, ever mention any personal event at game night? I don’t think so. > Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up. If one of them moved to a new house and needed help, would you go? Yeah, you would. > Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more. Nonsense, the secret ingredient of a good game is good company. So yeah, you big fluffy, you enjoy your friend’s company!
  - Kiro 4y ago
    Big disagree on that. I play boardgames for the games, not the people.
  - irrational 4y ago
    > So you never, ever mention any personal event at game night? I don’t think so. We really really don’t. We are there to play games, we don’t have time or brain space for small talk. We play heavy games that take a lot of deep thinking.
    - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
      Curious: what kind of board games do you play? Also: have you considered the possibility that they might not be "close friends", as you describe them? What makes you say they are? Just interested in your answer, not wanting to demolish your point of view.
      - irrational 4y ago
        All kinds: pax Pamir, brass, food chain magnate, race for the Galaxy, a feast for Odin, Trickerion, root, etc. They are my only friends. Since I don’t have any closer friends, I consider them to be my close friends.
- specproc 4y ago
  Yeah, me and 4 others and 40K, at 40.
- codecutter 4y ago
  They are probably your acquaintances (to play boardgames), not real friends.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    "Acquaintance" is a word many more americans should be using much more of the time. The over-use of "friend" to describe "anyone I know" has been a problem for me ever since I moved here (3 decades ago). It also has implications for reporting too, where "anyone a person of interest knew" is a "friend".
djha-skin 4y ago
I always feel like I'm outside looking in when people talk about making and keeping friends. I was make fun of a lot as a kid, moved around a lot, and then as a young adult I didn't prioritize making friends, thinking I'd have my whole life to make some. I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work). I have a family and that's super nice, but I still never really experienced this. Reading about it just hurts. Sure, I had "friends"in college, but we don't keep in touch.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  I find I've managed to find friends incidentally just by doing things. Taking up tennis, I've made friends, rollerskating, friends, and one potential close friend, kids sports, friends. I've actually been somewhat surprised by how much random people desire connection upon the most tenuous of common interests. Get involved in something, anything, that you like and slowly reach out to others with the same interests and you'll find friendships. Something I've found though, build them slowly lest they burn out quickly upon a pyre of previously unaware incompatibilities of opinion. I seem to be an approachable person; being at least a superficially nice person, easy with a smile, seems to make a difference. My few 'best' friends I see ever so rarely, but when we get together it's like no time has passed. I think that's a true test of deep friendship compatibility.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    This. Find some group activity that's not work. Don't be shy to change said activity until you find one that you like. Then you'll have a group of people that are interested in at least one thing you're interested in and don't need to do office politics with you. Some kind of friendship with at least some of them will just follow.
- 10hr 4y ago
  You had a massive, untested assumption about life which ended up wrong. At least you got the family part
- moltar 4y ago
  > I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work). I think this might be a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m 40 and I’m still making friends. I don’t see why there must be some sort of magical age limit. Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?
mxwsn 4y ago
For all the talk of how doing a PhD is terrible, friendships in a college-like environment after undergrad was a bright point for me and many others. I moved and started a 9 to 5 last year and it's quite a change in lifestyle, and at 30 it's striking to start to deeply understand this same life transition many friends from high school and undergrad experienced 7 years ago already.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Just wait for the transition to parenthood. If possible, try to time it with your closest friends because otherwise you'll rapidly run out of both 'lifestyle in common' and time. (Tangentially: I've been thinking a lot about the theme of 'lifestyle in common' ever since both my parents and in-laws have retired and almost instantly assume that, because they can schedule 100% of their day, that we can too: my mother organised a family gathering for a Tuesday lunch - "Mum, I'll be at work, in the city, and the kids are at school...". This extrapolates in interesting ways as well)
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    On the flip side, when you have kids suddenly every other person you've ever known with kids of a similar age will come out of the woodwork to say hello. :)
- blitzar 4y ago
  doing a PhD was one of the worst experiences of my life. friendships in a college-like environment durring the PhD was a bright point for me and many others and one of the best experiences of my life.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I’ve genuinely consider it but after several years of trying to go back I’ve come to the conclusions schools hate non traditional students.
rkagerer 4y ago
https://archive.ph/ck3Zo https://archive.ph/ck3Zo
revskill 4y ago
What i care: Health, sports, peace of soul, ability to learn, science, music, programming, mathematics. What my "friends" care: Money, more money, more money. That's why i'm still lonely.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Look for local communities in your areas of interest. To some extent, you also have to put yourself out there. You're the bait with which you're fishing.
  - revskill 4y ago
    No, it's from my childhood. All people i met don't have the same passion as mine. I just accepted the truth and no longer care what others do anymore. COnsider this as a confession, no need to up/down vote.
- redcenturion 4y ago
  Hey! I got lonely/depressed in 2020 and started a hiking group. It was a cool experiment that failed. I was not able to monetize or scale it. I was bummed for awhile, but upon further reflection I examine the Pareto 80/20 in action. Because I started this group I met some amazing people that love adventure and plan/invite me to their adventures. I also met a very good friend who is focused on business/start up life. So my life has improved a lot even though the outcome was not what I was hoping for. I'm still on the journey to understand and operate in my zone of genius. Though I think money is important (to the extent that bills are paid and 9-5 can be avoided) I value experiences and creating impact. Let me know if you'd like to connect.
  - booleandilemma 4y ago
    If this is satire, this is Grade A satire.
    - rayrey 4y ago
9530jh9054ven 4y ago
"Someone to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy." Perhaps this is just due to the fact that I've never had a friend, but I'm not sure what the difference is between what the professor is describing and say a sex worker or escort. So long as the client can afford to, all of those criteria are fulfilled. Is there something I'm missing?
- resiros 4y ago
  yes. A friend is also someone that depends on you, that enjoys you, that is excited when they see you.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    That sounds like a dog.
    - b112 4y ago
      That sounds like a dog. Dogs are pack animals, just as humans are, and part of the reason we like them, is because they have and bond via traits we... wait for it... like! And while dogs have a very specific place in our society, that does not mean human friendships, built upon the same ideals and core fundamentals, are the same. But you knew that, I presume?
      - blitzar 4y ago
        They dont call dogs mans best friend for no reason.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Dogs of course evolved these qualities for survival, and to collaborate with people. A dog must ensure their owner lives them.
    - joenot443 4y ago
      I love my dog almost as much as I love my friends, but I’d feel sorry for someone who isn’t able to see the difference between the kinds of joy those relationships can bring a person.
AussieWog93 4y ago
>As people enter middle age, they tend to have more demands on their time, many of them more pressing than friendship. After all, it’s easier to put off catching up with a friend than it is to skip your kid’s play or an important business trip. The sad part is that it doesn't have to be this way. The notion that friendship is something you make time for (to the detriment of your other pursuits) seems to be very modern, very Western and an absolutely terrible idea. Just anecdotally, the friendships where people rely on one another for assistance - helping one another achieve their goals rather than hindering them - seem to get stronger and stronger whereas the "let's catch up" friends seem to wither over time. Somewhat counter-intuitively, doing simple things like giving a friend a lift when their car breaks down, providing them with meals when they're unable to cook for themselves or helping them move house actually cause you to value the relationship more.
- flashgordon 4y ago
  This is so spot on. I feel like I am such a shitty friend especially after having witnessed my friends go above and beyond for when we needed their help without even being asked for it.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    My wife's family has a real knack for working out what each other need, basically asking each other how they're going and really keeping a finger on the pulse when listening to the responses. It's an art form for sure, but working out who needs assistance and in what form makes it really easy to provide it.
  - szundi 4y ago
    No worries, you can always find time and opportunities
    - flashgordon 4y ago
      Oh totally. Coming across these friends in my life made me realize I had to really work on my empathy and selflessness!
russellbeattie 4y ago
Alcohol, or some other sort of addictive vice, seems key to adult friendships. Alcoholics have lots of friends, as do gamblers, obsessive exercisers, inveterate golfers, sex addicts, drug addicts, sports fanatics, gamers, etc. American society doesn't have social norms like many other countries which compel people to include others out of habit. I lived in Spain for a few years - turning down invitations was a legit hassle. And you've probably heard Brit comedians constantly complain about having to make excuses to avoid social gatherings. Americans don't have that problem - we assume you have your own things going on and don't want to bug you, and no one wants to presume to invite ourselves. And who knows what sort of nutjob your neighbor might turn out to be - you're stuck with them for as long as you live where you are, best to just avoid eye contact. The only times in my life I've gotten invited out of the blue to some event was to religious things. "The barbecue will be great - we all head over after the service..." So we need an excuse. Some irresistible reason to force ourselves upon each other. Alcoholics don't want to drink alone. Athletes need teams or opponents, druggies need their dealers, etc. It can't be a hobby. You have to need to do whatever it is you're doing, to get past the barriers of American distrust and to have a ready rationalization for spending time with people who aren't your family.
richardw 4y ago
We’re emigrating soon, to Sydney Australia. I’m 49, she’s 45. I love the friends we have here and am going to miss them hugely. I’ve found friends through work, university, cycling, kids. I’ll need to ramp this up and be proactive because it won’t just happen without effort, given the demands on our time. But I’ll miss the 30-year relationships that take zero energy to be around, where you can take a mental snapshot of pure contentment.
stefandesu 4y ago
> In the hierarchy of relationships, friendships are at the bottom. Depends where you are in life. For me as a single guy in his early 30s, friendships are absolutely at the top of the hierarchy for me. > Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And this is WHY friends are above family for me. Admittedly, if I had my own family (as in wife and kids), they'd be my top priority in life for sure. However, unfortunately I do notice that it's getting harder to meet up with friends as their obligations in life increase. One of my best friends has started university again while still working part-time, and so even though he lives in walking distance, we don't see each other very often because he's extremely short on time. Two other of my closest friends live in a different country, but somehow we're managing to meet up 3-4 times a year for at least a week each. That might change though when you'll eventually have kids. To be honest, I won't read the whole article, but I just wanted to say that it can be different. At least I really hope that my friends will be a high priority for me even if my or their life situations inevitably change.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Sorry wouldn't a single guy in his early 30s have the relationship with a romantic partner be on top of social hierarchy? I am in the same place, I while I logically understand that it's probably easier to find a girl friend if I had a friend or two first, I still have a much stronger desire to have a romantic partner that just a friend.
  - Volrath89 4y ago
    Having regular friends, including male ones, greatly increases your odds of meeting a romantic partner. Also not all single guys in their early 30s are eager to find a romantic partner. I am also in that age bracket and I am avoiding having another monogamous relationship for at least some years
  - Kye 4y ago
    Friends can be the canary in the coal mine: if your partner hates all your friends, or worse, tries to push you away from them, it's a screaming red flag. Nobody goes into a relationship expecting it to happen. Abusers are adept at pulling people in deep before revealing it was a trap. It can happen to anyone.
roguesupport 4y ago
From the same evil imbeciles who want "Pandemic Amnesty". stop giving them attention.
Teknoman117 4y ago
I thought a lot about this over the pandemic. I was always shy in grade school (heck, who are we kidding, I'm still shy). We moved around a bunch and after we left what I consider the closest thing I have to a hometown, making friends was rough. There's only 4 people I talk to (occasionally at best) from childhood/adolescence. It's weird. People talk about having friends as adolescents and discovering themselves through their friend groups. Article calls out learning to be intimate as well. I honestly feel like I missed out on that. My self discovery was honestly done mostly alone for the most part as my passions formed a kind of constant I could depend on. I only really had surface level connections, mostly through video games. College was a huge breakout moment for me. I was surrounded by people who were interested in the same kinds of things I was! I ended up building a major social presence on campus through our computing clubs. I just liked talking shop with people and would help with homework and personal projects. Made a lot of good friends. Now here I am, in the last months of my 20s, and I'm rather proud that I'm still in contact with the vast majority of them. Being in a California school studying CS, most of them ended up in the Bay. Some immediately left for Seattle or Austin, others did later. I ended up in Irvine as I did an internship at the socal office of one of the tech companies. It was hard. My entire social world imploded over a few months. Dozens of people to talk to on campus immediately went to zero once I started working. I liked my coworkers and it was fun to talk shop with them, but there was a big age gap that made it hard to form personal connections. There's only one in or two coworkers who I became close enough to to, say, ask for a ride to a doctor. I'd wake up, and it'd be quiet. I'd get home from work, and it'd still be quiet. Thankfully a few months in, a friend suggested we put together a discord server of all our collective friends from school. Started at 10 people nearly every night playing games and talking about work and life. Not everyone joined, as this was fairly gaming focused. I swear this Discord group was the only thing that kept me sane over the 4 years I was down there. Then the pandemic. Work went indefinitely full-remote and I was still living alone (27 years old and I was still not happy enough with myself to try dating). I moved back in with family and cancelled my lease once it became apparent that it was going to last awhile. That saw me back up near the Bay. I didn't see anyone in 2020 because we all took COVID seriously (discord group was our coping mechanism), but after the vaccines in 2021, work was still fully-remote so took advantage of my location to start regularly seeing friends I hadn't been able to see much since college. I hadn't been that happy in a long time. 2022 comes around and offices start to reopen. I'm looking at the logistics of moving back to Irvine. One of my friends asks why I'm moving back to SoCal if I was clearly so much happier in the Bay. I was close to friends, close to family, etc. Why not try to stay. Considering many at my company seemed to prefer remote work anyways, I figured that I should ask about making my relocation permanent and moving to the main office up here. Approved immediately with zero resistance - and I on top of that I got a sizeable raise for the cost of living increase. So I found an apartment in city with good access to public transit. I see friends multiple times a week now. We have a weekly movie and game night, regularly meet up for dinner in the week or weekend, etc. People's spouses, girl/boyfriends, etc. are part of the friend group. I feel like I regained something I thought I'd lost forever. It's been a surreal and happy six months since I've moved here. Friends are important, at least to me. No one should tell you any different. There's a reason some call them found family.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
The reason why we have fewer friends now is because we have optimized life for economic growth, not happiness. Technology is the primary thing to blame here. If we didn't have technology, we would have to rely on each other more and we would not have social outlets like the internet to provide a superficial social bandage to our underlying social needs.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  It's also the width of the economic growth mindset. We fuel the 'have more devices and be free-er and independent' so naturally people can live on their own (misery). I may be imagining things but when you live in a small place where you have no choice but to share the load and pleasure of life (granted the group is emotionally stable), you don't suffer from that. You're a jolly bunch making your place nicer, finding and cooking food, and being goofy at night around the fire.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > granted the group is emotionally stable No group is emotionaly stable. We just deal with all the problems that come up more, or less effectively.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      You know what I mean, not too crazy / violent. Of course it's never absolute peace. But at the same time this is one factor that drove 'modern societies' to more and more isolation. It's tempting to not want to deal with others. But at that point it's detrimental.
- seydor 4y ago
  So suppose economic growth ends today. How do you optimize for friendship?
  - vouaobrasil 4y ago
    It's an interesting question but it won't stop. I think the question is (for the individual), how can you organize your life and your priorities so that friendship plays a more central role in your life?
varispeed 4y ago
The so called "friends" always look to take advantage of you or make you act against your own interest so they can feel better than yourself and then when there is an opportunity they'll backstab you. My life has become so much better when I cut all contact with all people I used to know - turns out they weren't friends anyway. That being said, I limit my contacts to strictly business. If something does not benefit me, I don't engage. No more stress, no more drama, more free time, more enjoyment.
- drbeast 4y ago
  The reality is most friendships aren't healthy or worse are extremely limiting. People who still have friends from childhood into late adulthood are mostly likely insecure and haven't grown up at all. Exceptions to this do exist, but 9 out of 10 this holds steady.
  - throwaway_au_1 4y ago
    I wish I could downvote you. Your comment is unsubstantiated nonsense.
    - drbeast 4y ago
- moneywoes 4y ago
  Sorry to hear that. Do you fear being lonely
  - varispeed 4y ago
    I don't feel lonely. I used to, but when I dug deep into those feelings I realised it was mostly because of the social construct that are being imposed upon us and peer pressure. People say "how come you don't have friends? What's wrong with you?" which can make one anxious and wanting to belong and which can be misconstrued as feeling lonely. People also used to need friends, so that they could share their experiences and gain knowledge how to deal with life situations. For instance, if you found yourself in debt or having trouble at work, you would ask a friend for advice what to do or look for reassurances that you are doing the right thing. Usually though your "friend" would know about this just as much as you do, resulting in poor advice or they would use that private information in the future against you or to get some advantage. Now, thanks to internet, you can get expert advice for cheap and the risk of your personal information being used against you is much much lower. I think friendships were an evolutionary stop for information exchange and now that we have something much better, it will eventually fade away.
griffinkelly 4y ago
> “That is how friendships continue, because people are living up to each other’s expectations. And if we have relaxed expectations for each other, or we’ve even suspended expectations, there’s a sense in which we realize that,” Rawlins says. “A summer when you’re 10, three months is one-thirtieth of your life. When you’re 30, what is it? It feels like the blink of an eye.” I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and if it's possible to slow my perception of time. Life moved really fast during covid for me, I've tried to jump into new opportunities to learn things recently, and that's helped slow down my perception of time, and least I think for right now.
Aeolun 4y ago
If my friends were all still living in the same street, or the same house, with all their kids (and sometimes grandkids), it’d be much easier to drop by unannounced. We could spontaneously decide to do the same things if we saw someone go out in the morning. Since my old friends are now on the other side of the world, we have to make do with the new friends/parents that actually live in our street. It helps that the houses are small, so we actually have like 10 families on a 25 meter stretch of road.
fleddr 4y ago
As it comes to friendships, people mistake time for priority. Yes, I get it, people are busy. But they still have time. The average citizen spends several hours per day passively consuming entertainment. You may even have spare moments at work or in a commute. You can call your friend. Or send a quick message to do some slow chat. And even in hectic schedules you can meet once a week or even once a month. When you haven't connected to a friend in months, you're a shitty friend. You don't have a time problem, you have a priority problem. And that's the thing that people are unwilling to admit: it's just less important after a certain age, where we use time as an excuse.
- comprev 4y ago
  A method which has proven successful with friends is arranging for a future appointment to have a call. Usually we ask what the other is up to next week and book in a 1-2hr slot one evening for a call. I've found male friends open up much more about how they are when speaking and appreciate the regular monthly check-ins.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Social apps are easy in, easy out. Physical interaction with friend is greater effort unless you're roommates or very welcoming neighbors.
- drbeast 4y ago
  This time a thousand. If so called friends don't make priority for you then they never were your friends.
- awillen 4y ago
  > When you haven't connected to a friend in months, you're a shitty friend. Needlessly harsh overgeneralization, I think. I hate phone calls for the sake of catching up, and I have plenty of friends who are the same. We'll go months without talking until there's some reason to - maybe I'm going to be visiting their city, or I want to let them know that my wife is pregnant, or I just watched a new TV show that I think they'll love. When those things happen, I text, and we chat and maybe see each other, and our friendship isn't ever diminished just because we haven't spoken in months. I'm very happy with these friendships, and my friends are very happy with these friendships, and yet you're telling me that we're all shitty friends. Maybe you need to be contacted regularly by someone in order to consider them a friend, but not everyone shares that need. Other people aren't shitty friends just because they don't meet your needs.
dqpb 4y ago
> Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college There are many people for whom going to college was the direct result of hard work, self agency, and determination.
giantg2 4y ago
Reminds me of an Episode of That 70s Show, when the mom is asking the dad about how it seems he doesn't have any friends. He says he does and names someone he hasn't seen in years but would give him the shirt off his back. I have a couple friendships like that. Not all friendships look the same.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Dads on many family sitcoms don’t seem to have friends. I guess it’s a sad reflection of a typical situation
Kiro 4y ago
The norm that you need friends is so hardwired in society that it's taboo to even suggest you can be happy without them.
photochemsyn 4y ago
There's a difference between sociology (as taught in American universities) and cultural anthropology, and this article is a nice demonstration of that difference. Note that everything in this article only applies to a relatively small socio-economic grouping - i.e. relatively well-off college-educated Americans. This is explicitly stated, more or less, in the article: > "The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”" There are many different cultures and economic groupings, globally speaking, and they don't all devolve into isolated 'nuclear family' groupings over time, as this article implies. The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community? If you attempt to take an outside perspective, it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Where do you get this impression? The article was clearly written for American audiences, and the sociologist Rawlins clearly focuses on American society. You make it sound like they are just talking out of their rear end, making things up based on their own privileged and unrepresentative personal experience, but my impression is that their opinion is formed by their own research, which might be a couple decades old, but is probably still relevant. If there's anything to complain about here, is that Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. Even on HN, where we have a large contingent of Europeans participating, we don't hear too much about Europe. It's almost always about the US.
eyear 4y ago
It all depends on how friendship is defined. There are shallow friendship and deep friendship.
User23 4y ago
Perhaps the main quantitative difference is that on average you spend considerably less time with your friends as an adult than you did as a child.
zamfi 4y ago
(2015) — but presumably not that much has changed?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jackconsidine 4y ago
I liked this article. I think more about friendships than any other philosophical topic. I moved to a new city at 22 where I knew almost no one. It turns out that it's orders of magnitude harder making friends without a few seed connections. The nuances of meeting people and building relationships are so arbitrary and idiosyncratic; some things, like sports, happen to be really conducive to making friends, whereas conferences and tech meetups for me proved less fertile. Even acquaintances often simply aren't looking to change their group of close friends. It was frustrating and discouraging for a long time and then suddenly I found myself with people to call on and spend time with. Half a decade later I moved and had the opportunity to try the experiment again. This time secondary connections made finding my network almost trivial. Maybe age helped too, being further removed from the university cliques. I was relieved to find out, albeit way after the fact, that many have this experience. One friend recently quit his job to start a company focused on this phenomenon [0]. I hope he can displace the zombie of Meetup. [0] https://getopenmat.com/ https://getopenmat.com/
- Behemoth66 4y ago
  Thanks for this comment. I just moved to a new city at 25 and have been pessimistic about being able to meet anyone.
  - jackconsidine 4y ago
    Love the username- please tell me it's a Master + Margarita reference Anecdotally here's what's worked for me: 1. Intramural sports- even if you're not sporty, some leagues have zero barrier to entry (Bowling or sand volleyball 6's). There are usually pickup sports apps as well that you could probably find based on your city (i.e. JustPlay) 2. Volunteering- especially neighborhood / trail cleanup groups that you can find on Instagram or Meetup. These are low commitment and people tend to be friendly. Habitat for Humanity was another one that had lots of young people new to the city. 3. Free Fitness (or any other hobby) Groups- you can find anywhere. November Project, for example is in most cities
- legerdemain 4y ago
  Apple Store link on the site is broken, and there's no such app in the Apple Store?
SergeAx 4y ago
Having friends in childhood/pubescence is a survival level necessity for most of the kids. We all know countless examples of awful things done to keep or gain the position in school/class hierarchy, to fulfill expectations, to deserve respect of peers. This urge dissolves in most of the people towards adulthood and maturity, when we are learning to find inner support, to form our own opinion about ourselves and to rely on that opinion more than on an external judgement.
drbeast 4y ago
Friendships? What a useless concept. Friends come and go and are as reliable as Italian sports car. People who I've thought of as good friends don't return texts or calls and when they do, the answer either is one party putting out all of the effort to spend time or worse an, "I'd love to see you but there are other people on tryong to see too." Last person who said that to me was met with a, "well darn sorry I called, go ahead and delete my number." Here's a fun challenge to test the value of your friend ships: stop initiating contact and see if they'll put forth effort to maintain the friendship. If no, then they really weren't your friend.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Not to be mean, but maybe you don’t have very good friends? Everyone knows some acquaintances but true friendships are super valuable.
  - drbeast 4y ago
    The vast majority of "friends" are actually recurring acquaintances. The number of real friends an adult could rely on are probably counted in 1 hand.
    - srean 4y ago
      You are right and that would be plenty
  - rakejake 4y ago
    Problem is, I find it very difficult to define the boundaries of "true friendship" because I have not had any events in my life that tested those friendships. Family (at least the ideal functional family) as portrayed in media, and that I have seen in my parents' generation is supposed to be the fail-safe support system that has your back no matter what. True friendships are supposed to be "almost as good". I can point to several instances where family members rallied together to bail out another family member from a crisis. I have never seen this happen in my friends circle. Not that I think it is not possible, some of us have been friends since middle school, and we regularly keep tabs on each other over phone despite many of us being in different locations. But in a time of crisis, how far would they go to help me out? I really don't know. And looking at history (my own family's history and general anecdotes), I'm going to guess nowhere near as far as what family would do for you. I obviously still value the friendship and ensure I don't miss meet-ups (real or virtual), but I have come to the conclusion that even "strong friendships" have hard ceilings. These ceilings are almost impossible to breach and I imagine only something like literally saving your friend's life could promote you to the next tier. I agree with the saying "Blood is thicker than water".
lemax 4y ago
As a gay adult not planning to have children, friends are the center of my life and probably will be for a long time. I think gay culture in NYC is an excellent example of the opposite of what this article describes - we all work hard, and many of us have partners, but we all maintain an evolving network of friends. It’s not hard to stay in touch or run into someone or make plans on a whim. It feels kind of like we’re all permanently adolescents. People come and go (jobs, travel, new opportunities), but with enough connections there’s always someone you’ve known for a while who is currently around. Sometimes these friendships aren’t very deep, sometimes they are. Some are brief, some are decades long.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  Jealous. So, so jealous.
jmyeet 4y ago
So the best advice I would give anyone is spend your college years making friends because in my experience your ability to make and maintain friendships falls off a cliff after college. The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children. This acts as a shared experience just by proximity. If people aren't in the same life stage that friendship tends to be trasnactional or unstable. By "transactional" I mean you might be friends with people in your softball league or who play basketball with on the weekend but mostly those friendships will tend to revolve around that common interest or activity. maybe that'll develop into a deeper friendship but the odds are against it. Likewise, you will develop "work friends" by virtue of spending so much of your time at work. For the most part however these aren't friends at all. If you leave that job, that shared shared experience ends and you will likely never see them again. Maybe you'll promise to catch up. Maybe it'll happen once or twice but again it's now in an unstable state and won't tend to last. As time goes on your friends will be replaced by family. The only way friendships in adulthood tend to survive (IME) is by scheduled activities. You set the expectation that that's what you'll be doing at a particular day and time. That's why you'll see sports so often here because a softball game needs to be played at a particular place and time. Pick-up basketball however is less the case for this so you'll likely see the same people less. It's also why parenthood tends to spell the end for many such friendships. If you have 2 young children at home it makes it harder to maintain a scheduled activity long-term. There'll be times your children will be sick, you'll need to go to school or whatever.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  > The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children. This has been the hardest thing about being in my 30s as a single (and not particularly looking) lesbian woman. It's an unusual enough life choice that there just plain isn't a friendship pool. Most single people my age are low-key using their friend gatherings to look for partners. So my options for friends are either much older or much younger. I have more in common with the kids (gaming, techy stuff, etc.) but society says you're a creep if you do that so I'm basically alone. It sucks. I don't want a partner, but man I wish I wanted one.
scarface74 4y ago
When I was single, I had mostly female friends who I hung out with, traveled with, etc. I had no interest in being in a relationship with them. But when I got remarried, they went to wayside. Not because of jealousy. Just because I didn’t need the drama. A major cause of first marriage ending was emotional infidelity on both sides. I work remotely in consulting (full time job in the consulting department at $Bigtech) and teams only last as long as a project last. It’s even harder now that my wife and I are “digital nomadding” flying across the US and not setting up roots anywhere. My one close friend that I’ve kept in touch with since high school 30 years ago has small kids now. We try to squeeze time in. But it’s hard.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
@dang, I submitted "How Friendships Change in Adulthood" and of course the title posted missed the initial "how". I think it's the worst feature of HN. This is a good example of a title that becomes far worse when "how" is removed, IMHO. I hope this feature gets canceled.
- mkmk3 4y ago
  Disagree that its far worse, I dont see an issue in this case
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    It means something completely different than the author or submitter intended. How is that not worse?
    - darkerside 4y ago
      FWIW, headlines are frequently not written by the author of the article
- pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
  Come on, the giggle when it rewrites "How I write" into "I write" is totally worth it.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  HN always renames the titles to be garbage. Either automatically or manual.
- O__________O 4y ago
  At the very least, these title edits should be opt-in where user use given options and supplied with the related reasoning — not just automatically done without warning.
- password4321 4y ago
  Sometimes you can edit the submission to put things back in / fix capitalization (for an hour).

> there are three expectations of a close friend that I hear people describing and valuing across the entire life course, Somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy. I have two close friends. All three of us are in similar life circumstances. Married, kids in elementary/middle/high school, programmers, in our 40s or early 50s, etc. But, our entire friendship revolves around boardgames. We get together every Thursday night to play games for 3-4 hours. Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game. Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up. Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more.

CleverLikeAnOx 4y ago
I found I formed a deeper connection with my D&D group once we started doing non-D&D things together. It was a switch from consistent friends to close friends.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
It sounds like your definition of a close friend differs from the one described.
jdkoeck 4y ago
Sorry but I call bullshit. > Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game. So you never, ever mention any personal event at game night? I don’t think so. > Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up. If one of them moved to a new house and needed help, would you go? Yeah, you would. > Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more. Nonsense, the secret ingredient of a good game is good company. So yeah, you big fluffy, you enjoy your friend’s company!
- Kiro 4y ago
  Big disagree on that. I play boardgames for the games, not the people.
- irrational 4y ago
  > So you never, ever mention any personal event at game night? I don’t think so. We really really don’t. We are there to play games, we don’t have time or brain space for small talk. We play heavy games that take a lot of deep thinking.
  - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
    Curious: what kind of board games do you play? Also: have you considered the possibility that they might not be "close friends", as you describe them? What makes you say they are? Just interested in your answer, not wanting to demolish your point of view.
    - irrational 4y ago
      All kinds: pax Pamir, brass, food chain magnate, race for the Galaxy, a feast for Odin, Trickerion, root, etc. They are my only friends. Since I don’t have any closer friends, I consider them to be my close friends.
specproc 4y ago
Yeah, me and 4 others and 40K, at 40.
codecutter 4y ago
They are probably your acquaintances (to play boardgames), not real friends.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  "Acquaintance" is a word many more americans should be using much more of the time. The over-use of "friend" to describe "anyone I know" has been a problem for me ever since I moved here (3 decades ago). It also has implications for reporting too, where "anyone a person of interest knew" is a "friend".

djha-skin 4y ago

I always feel like I'm outside looking in when people talk about making and keeping friends. I was make fun of a lot as a kid, moved around a lot, and then as a young adult I didn't prioritize making friends, thinking I'd have my whole life to make some. I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work). I have a family and that's super nice, but I still never really experienced this. Reading about it just hurts. Sure, I had "friends"in college, but we don't keep in touch.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
I find I've managed to find friends incidentally just by doing things. Taking up tennis, I've made friends, rollerskating, friends, and one potential close friend, kids sports, friends. I've actually been somewhat surprised by how much random people desire connection upon the most tenuous of common interests. Get involved in something, anything, that you like and slowly reach out to others with the same interests and you'll find friendships. Something I've found though, build them slowly lest they burn out quickly upon a pyre of previously unaware incompatibilities of opinion. I seem to be an approachable person; being at least a superficially nice person, easy with a smile, seems to make a difference. My few 'best' friends I see ever so rarely, but when we get together it's like no time has passed. I think that's a true test of deep friendship compatibility.
- nottorp 4y ago
  This. Find some group activity that's not work. Don't be shy to change said activity until you find one that you like. Then you'll have a group of people that are interested in at least one thing you're interested in and don't need to do office politics with you. Some kind of friendship with at least some of them will just follow.
10hr 4y ago
You had a massive, untested assumption about life which ended up wrong. At least you got the family part
moltar 4y ago
> I didn't realize that people just stop making new friends after 30 (outside work). I think this might be a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m 40 and I’m still making friends. I don’t see why there must be some sort of magical age limit. Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?

mxwsn 4y ago

For all the talk of how doing a PhD is terrible, friendships in a college-like environment after undergrad was a bright point for me and many others. I moved and started a 9 to 5 last year and it's quite a change in lifestyle, and at 30 it's striking to start to deeply understand this same life transition many friends from high school and undergrad experienced 7 years ago already.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Just wait for the transition to parenthood. If possible, try to time it with your closest friends because otherwise you'll rapidly run out of both 'lifestyle in common' and time. (Tangentially: I've been thinking a lot about the theme of 'lifestyle in common' ever since both my parents and in-laws have retired and almost instantly assume that, because they can schedule 100% of their day, that we can too: my mother organised a family gathering for a Tuesday lunch - "Mum, I'll be at work, in the city, and the kids are at school...". This extrapolates in interesting ways as well)
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  On the flip side, when you have kids suddenly every other person you've ever known with kids of a similar age will come out of the woodwork to say hello. :)
blitzar 4y ago
doing a PhD was one of the worst experiences of my life. friendships in a college-like environment durring the PhD was a bright point for me and many others and one of the best experiences of my life.
the_only_law 4y ago
I’ve genuinely consider it but after several years of trying to go back I’ve come to the conclusions schools hate non traditional students.

rkagerer 4y ago

https://archive.ph/ck3Zo https://archive.ph/ck3Zo

revskill 4y ago

What i care: Health, sports, peace of soul, ability to learn, science, music, programming, mathematics. What my "friends" care: Money, more money, more money. That's why i'm still lonely.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Look for local communities in your areas of interest. To some extent, you also have to put yourself out there. You're the bait with which you're fishing.
- revskill 4y ago
  No, it's from my childhood. All people i met don't have the same passion as mine. I just accepted the truth and no longer care what others do anymore. COnsider this as a confession, no need to up/down vote.
redcenturion 4y ago
Hey! I got lonely/depressed in 2020 and started a hiking group. It was a cool experiment that failed. I was not able to monetize or scale it. I was bummed for awhile, but upon further reflection I examine the Pareto 80/20 in action. Because I started this group I met some amazing people that love adventure and plan/invite me to their adventures. I also met a very good friend who is focused on business/start up life. So my life has improved a lot even though the outcome was not what I was hoping for. I'm still on the journey to understand and operate in my zone of genius. Though I think money is important (to the extent that bills are paid and 9-5 can be avoided) I value experiences and creating impact. Let me know if you'd like to connect.
- booleandilemma 4y ago
  If this is satire, this is Grade A satire.
  - rayrey 4y ago

9530jh9054ven 4y ago

"Someone to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy." Perhaps this is just due to the fact that I've never had a friend, but I'm not sure what the difference is between what the professor is describing and say a sex worker or escort. So long as the client can afford to, all of those criteria are fulfilled. Is there something I'm missing?

resiros 4y ago
yes. A friend is also someone that depends on you, that enjoys you, that is excited when they see you.
- blitzar 4y ago
  That sounds like a dog.
  - b112 4y ago
    That sounds like a dog. Dogs are pack animals, just as humans are, and part of the reason we like them, is because they have and bond via traits we... wait for it... like! And while dogs have a very specific place in our society, that does not mean human friendships, built upon the same ideals and core fundamentals, are the same. But you knew that, I presume?
    - blitzar 4y ago
      They dont call dogs mans best friend for no reason.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Dogs of course evolved these qualities for survival, and to collaborate with people. A dog must ensure their owner lives them.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    I love my dog almost as much as I love my friends, but I’d feel sorry for someone who isn’t able to see the difference between the kinds of joy those relationships can bring a person.

AussieWog93 4y ago

>As people enter middle age, they tend to have more demands on their time, many of them more pressing than friendship. After all, it’s easier to put off catching up with a friend than it is to skip your kid’s play or an important business trip. The sad part is that it doesn't have to be this way. The notion that friendship is something you make time for (to the detriment of your other pursuits) seems to be very modern, very Western and an absolutely terrible idea. Just anecdotally, the friendships where people rely on one another for assistance - helping one another achieve their goals rather than hindering them - seem to get stronger and stronger whereas the "let's catch up" friends seem to wither over time. Somewhat counter-intuitively, doing simple things like giving a friend a lift when their car breaks down, providing them with meals when they're unable to cook for themselves or helping them move house actually cause you to value the relationship more.

flashgordon 4y ago
This is so spot on. I feel like I am such a shitty friend especially after having witnessed my friends go above and beyond for when we needed their help without even being asked for it.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  My wife's family has a real knack for working out what each other need, basically asking each other how they're going and really keeping a finger on the pulse when listening to the responses. It's an art form for sure, but working out who needs assistance and in what form makes it really easy to provide it.
- szundi 4y ago
  No worries, you can always find time and opportunities
  - flashgordon 4y ago
    Oh totally. Coming across these friends in my life made me realize I had to really work on my empathy and selflessness!

russellbeattie 4y ago

Alcohol, or some other sort of addictive vice, seems key to adult friendships. Alcoholics have lots of friends, as do gamblers, obsessive exercisers, inveterate golfers, sex addicts, drug addicts, sports fanatics, gamers, etc. American society doesn't have social norms like many other countries which compel people to include others out of habit. I lived in Spain for a few years - turning down invitations was a legit hassle. And you've probably heard Brit comedians constantly complain about having to make excuses to avoid social gatherings. Americans don't have that problem - we assume you have your own things going on and don't want to bug you, and no one wants to presume to invite ourselves. And who knows what sort of nutjob your neighbor might turn out to be - you're stuck with them for as long as you live where you are, best to just avoid eye contact. The only times in my life I've gotten invited out of the blue to some event was to religious things. "The barbecue will be great - we all head over after the service..." So we need an excuse. Some irresistible reason to force ourselves upon each other. Alcoholics don't want to drink alone. Athletes need teams or opponents, druggies need their dealers, etc. It can't be a hobby. You have to need to do whatever it is you're doing, to get past the barriers of American distrust and to have a ready rationalization for spending time with people who aren't your family.

richardw 4y ago

We’re emigrating soon, to Sydney Australia. I’m 49, she’s 45. I love the friends we have here and am going to miss them hugely. I’ve found friends through work, university, cycling, kids. I’ll need to ramp this up and be proactive because it won’t just happen without effort, given the demands on our time. But I’ll miss the 30-year relationships that take zero energy to be around, where you can take a mental snapshot of pure contentment.

stefandesu 4y ago

> In the hierarchy of relationships, friendships are at the bottom. Depends where you are in life. For me as a single guy in his early 30s, friendships are absolutely at the top of the hierarchy for me. > Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And this is WHY friends are above family for me. Admittedly, if I had my own family (as in wife and kids), they'd be my top priority in life for sure. However, unfortunately I do notice that it's getting harder to meet up with friends as their obligations in life increase. One of my best friends has started university again while still working part-time, and so even though he lives in walking distance, we don't see each other very often because he's extremely short on time. Two other of my closest friends live in a different country, but somehow we're managing to meet up 3-4 times a year for at least a week each. That might change though when you'll eventually have kids. To be honest, I won't read the whole article, but I just wanted to say that it can be different. At least I really hope that my friends will be a high priority for me even if my or their life situations inevitably change.

newsclues 4y ago
Sorry wouldn't a single guy in his early 30s have the relationship with a romantic partner be on top of social hierarchy? I am in the same place, I while I logically understand that it's probably easier to find a girl friend if I had a friend or two first, I still have a much stronger desire to have a romantic partner that just a friend.
- Volrath89 4y ago
  Having regular friends, including male ones, greatly increases your odds of meeting a romantic partner. Also not all single guys in their early 30s are eager to find a romantic partner. I am also in that age bracket and I am avoiding having another monogamous relationship for at least some years
- Kye 4y ago
  Friends can be the canary in the coal mine: if your partner hates all your friends, or worse, tries to push you away from them, it's a screaming red flag. Nobody goes into a relationship expecting it to happen. Abusers are adept at pulling people in deep before revealing it was a trap. It can happen to anyone.

roguesupport 4y ago

From the same evil imbeciles who want "Pandemic Amnesty". stop giving them attention.

Teknoman117 4y ago

I thought a lot about this over the pandemic. I was always shy in grade school (heck, who are we kidding, I'm still shy). We moved around a bunch and after we left what I consider the closest thing I have to a hometown, making friends was rough. There's only 4 people I talk to (occasionally at best) from childhood/adolescence. It's weird. People talk about having friends as adolescents and discovering themselves through their friend groups. Article calls out learning to be intimate as well. I honestly feel like I missed out on that. My self discovery was honestly done mostly alone for the most part as my passions formed a kind of constant I could depend on. I only really had surface level connections, mostly through video games. College was a huge breakout moment for me. I was surrounded by people who were interested in the same kinds of things I was! I ended up building a major social presence on campus through our computing clubs. I just liked talking shop with people and would help with homework and personal projects. Made a lot of good friends. Now here I am, in the last months of my 20s, and I'm rather proud that I'm still in contact with the vast majority of them. Being in a California school studying CS, most of them ended up in the Bay. Some immediately left for Seattle or Austin, others did later. I ended up in Irvine as I did an internship at the socal office of one of the tech companies. It was hard. My entire social world imploded over a few months. Dozens of people to talk to on campus immediately went to zero once I started working. I liked my coworkers and it was fun to talk shop with them, but there was a big age gap that made it hard to form personal connections. There's only one in or two coworkers who I became close enough to to, say, ask for a ride to a doctor. I'd wake up, and it'd be quiet. I'd get home from work, and it'd still be quiet. Thankfully a few months in, a friend suggested we put together a discord server of all our collective friends from school. Started at 10 people nearly every night playing games and talking about work and life. Not everyone joined, as this was fairly gaming focused. I swear this Discord group was the only thing that kept me sane over the 4 years I was down there. Then the pandemic. Work went indefinitely full-remote and I was still living alone (27 years old and I was still not happy enough with myself to try dating). I moved back in with family and cancelled my lease once it became apparent that it was going to last awhile. That saw me back up near the Bay. I didn't see anyone in 2020 because we all took COVID seriously (discord group was our coping mechanism), but after the vaccines in 2021, work was still fully-remote so took advantage of my location to start regularly seeing friends I hadn't been able to see much since college. I hadn't been that happy in a long time. 2022 comes around and offices start to reopen. I'm looking at the logistics of moving back to Irvine. One of my friends asks why I'm moving back to SoCal if I was clearly so much happier in the Bay. I was close to friends, close to family, etc. Why not try to stay. Considering many at my company seemed to prefer remote work anyways, I figured that I should ask about making my relocation permanent and moving to the main office up here. Approved immediately with zero resistance - and I on top of that I got a sizeable raise for the cost of living increase. So I found an apartment in city with good access to public transit. I see friends multiple times a week now. We have a weekly movie and game night, regularly meet up for dinner in the week or weekend, etc. People's spouses, girl/boyfriends, etc. are part of the friend group. I feel like I regained something I thought I'd lost forever. It's been a surreal and happy six months since I've moved here. Friends are important, at least to me. No one should tell you any different. There's a reason some call them found family.

vouaobrasil 4y ago

The reason why we have fewer friends now is because we have optimized life for economic growth, not happiness. Technology is the primary thing to blame here. If we didn't have technology, we would have to rely on each other more and we would not have social outlets like the internet to provide a superficial social bandage to our underlying social needs.

agumonkey 4y ago
It's also the width of the economic growth mindset. We fuel the 'have more devices and be free-er and independent' so naturally people can live on their own (misery). I may be imagining things but when you live in a small place where you have no choice but to share the load and pleasure of life (granted the group is emotionally stable), you don't suffer from that. You're a jolly bunch making your place nicer, finding and cooking food, and being goofy at night around the fire.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > granted the group is emotionally stable No group is emotionaly stable. We just deal with all the problems that come up more, or less effectively.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    You know what I mean, not too crazy / violent. Of course it's never absolute peace. But at the same time this is one factor that drove 'modern societies' to more and more isolation. It's tempting to not want to deal with others. But at that point it's detrimental.
seydor 4y ago
So suppose economic growth ends today. How do you optimize for friendship?
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  It's an interesting question but it won't stop. I think the question is (for the individual), how can you organize your life and your priorities so that friendship plays a more central role in your life?

varispeed 4y ago

The so called "friends" always look to take advantage of you or make you act against your own interest so they can feel better than yourself and then when there is an opportunity they'll backstab you. My life has become so much better when I cut all contact with all people I used to know - turns out they weren't friends anyway. That being said, I limit my contacts to strictly business. If something does not benefit me, I don't engage. No more stress, no more drama, more free time, more enjoyment.

drbeast 4y ago
The reality is most friendships aren't healthy or worse are extremely limiting. People who still have friends from childhood into late adulthood are mostly likely insecure and haven't grown up at all. Exceptions to this do exist, but 9 out of 10 this holds steady.
- throwaway_au_1 4y ago
  I wish I could downvote you. Your comment is unsubstantiated nonsense.
  - drbeast 4y ago
moneywoes 4y ago
Sorry to hear that. Do you fear being lonely
- varispeed 4y ago
  I don't feel lonely. I used to, but when I dug deep into those feelings I realised it was mostly because of the social construct that are being imposed upon us and peer pressure. People say "how come you don't have friends? What's wrong with you?" which can make one anxious and wanting to belong and which can be misconstrued as feeling lonely. People also used to need friends, so that they could share their experiences and gain knowledge how to deal with life situations. For instance, if you found yourself in debt or having trouble at work, you would ask a friend for advice what to do or look for reassurances that you are doing the right thing. Usually though your "friend" would know about this just as much as you do, resulting in poor advice or they would use that private information in the future against you or to get some advantage. Now, thanks to internet, you can get expert advice for cheap and the risk of your personal information being used against you is much much lower. I think friendships were an evolutionary stop for information exchange and now that we have something much better, it will eventually fade away.

griffinkelly 4y ago

> “That is how friendships continue, because people are living up to each other’s expectations. And if we have relaxed expectations for each other, or we’ve even suspended expectations, there’s a sense in which we realize that,” Rawlins says. “A summer when you’re 10, three months is one-thirtieth of your life. When you’re 30, what is it? It feels like the blink of an eye.” I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and if it's possible to slow my perception of time. Life moved really fast during covid for me, I've tried to jump into new opportunities to learn things recently, and that's helped slow down my perception of time, and least I think for right now.

Aeolun 4y ago

If my friends were all still living in the same street, or the same house, with all their kids (and sometimes grandkids), it’d be much easier to drop by unannounced. We could spontaneously decide to do the same things if we saw someone go out in the morning. Since my old friends are now on the other side of the world, we have to make do with the new friends/parents that actually live in our street. It helps that the houses are small, so we actually have like 10 families on a 25 meter stretch of road.

fleddr 4y ago

As it comes to friendships, people mistake time for priority. Yes, I get it, people are busy. But they still have time. The average citizen spends several hours per day passively consuming entertainment. You may even have spare moments at work or in a commute. You can call your friend. Or send a quick message to do some slow chat. And even in hectic schedules you can meet once a week or even once a month. When you haven't connected to a friend in months, you're a shitty friend. You don't have a time problem, you have a priority problem. And that's the thing that people are unwilling to admit: it's just less important after a certain age, where we use time as an excuse.

comprev 4y ago
A method which has proven successful with friends is arranging for a future appointment to have a call. Usually we ask what the other is up to next week and book in a 1-2hr slot one evening for a call. I've found male friends open up much more about how they are when speaking and appreciate the regular monthly check-ins.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
Social apps are easy in, easy out. Physical interaction with friend is greater effort unless you're roommates or very welcoming neighbors.
drbeast 4y ago
This time a thousand. If so called friends don't make priority for you then they never were your friends.
awillen 4y ago
> When you haven't connected to a friend in months, you're a shitty friend. Needlessly harsh overgeneralization, I think. I hate phone calls for the sake of catching up, and I have plenty of friends who are the same. We'll go months without talking until there's some reason to - maybe I'm going to be visiting their city, or I want to let them know that my wife is pregnant, or I just watched a new TV show that I think they'll love. When those things happen, I text, and we chat and maybe see each other, and our friendship isn't ever diminished just because we haven't spoken in months. I'm very happy with these friendships, and my friends are very happy with these friendships, and yet you're telling me that we're all shitty friends. Maybe you need to be contacted regularly by someone in order to consider them a friend, but not everyone shares that need. Other people aren't shitty friends just because they don't meet your needs.

dqpb 4y ago

> Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college There are many people for whom going to college was the direct result of hard work, self agency, and determination.

giantg2 4y ago

Reminds me of an Episode of That 70s Show, when the mom is asking the dad about how it seems he doesn't have any friends. He says he does and names someone he hasn't seen in years but would give him the shirt off his back. I have a couple friendships like that. Not all friendships look the same.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Dads on many family sitcoms don’t seem to have friends. I guess it’s a sad reflection of a typical situation

Kiro 4y ago

The norm that you need friends is so hardwired in society that it's taboo to even suggest you can be happy without them.

photochemsyn 4y ago

There's a difference between sociology (as taught in American universities) and cultural anthropology, and this article is a nice demonstration of that difference. Note that everything in this article only applies to a relatively small socio-economic grouping - i.e. relatively well-off college-educated Americans. This is explicitly stated, more or less, in the article: > "The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”" There are many different cultures and economic groupings, globally speaking, and they don't all devolve into isolated 'nuclear family' groupings over time, as this article implies. The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community? If you attempt to take an outside perspective, it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain.

nerdponx 4y ago
Where do you get this impression? The article was clearly written for American audiences, and the sociologist Rawlins clearly focuses on American society. You make it sound like they are just talking out of their rear end, making things up based on their own privileged and unrepresentative personal experience, but my impression is that their opinion is formed by their own research, which might be a couple decades old, but is probably still relevant. If there's anything to complain about here, is that Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. Even on HN, where we have a large contingent of Europeans participating, we don't hear too much about Europe. It's almost always about the US.

eyear 4y ago

It all depends on how friendship is defined. There are shallow friendship and deep friendship.

User23 4y ago

Perhaps the main quantitative difference is that on average you spend considerably less time with your friends as an adult than you did as a child.

zamfi 4y ago

(2015) — but presumably not that much has changed?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jackconsidine 4y ago

I liked this article. I think more about friendships than any other philosophical topic. I moved to a new city at 22 where I knew almost no one. It turns out that it's orders of magnitude harder making friends without a few seed connections. The nuances of meeting people and building relationships are so arbitrary and idiosyncratic; some things, like sports, happen to be really conducive to making friends, whereas conferences and tech meetups for me proved less fertile. Even acquaintances often simply aren't looking to change their group of close friends. It was frustrating and discouraging for a long time and then suddenly I found myself with people to call on and spend time with. Half a decade later I moved and had the opportunity to try the experiment again. This time secondary connections made finding my network almost trivial. Maybe age helped too, being further removed from the university cliques. I was relieved to find out, albeit way after the fact, that many have this experience. One friend recently quit his job to start a company focused on this phenomenon [0]. I hope he can displace the zombie of Meetup. [0] https://getopenmat.com/ https://getopenmat.com/

Behemoth66 4y ago
Thanks for this comment. I just moved to a new city at 25 and have been pessimistic about being able to meet anyone.
- jackconsidine 4y ago
  Love the username- please tell me it's a Master + Margarita reference Anecdotally here's what's worked for me: 1. Intramural sports- even if you're not sporty, some leagues have zero barrier to entry (Bowling or sand volleyball 6's). There are usually pickup sports apps as well that you could probably find based on your city (i.e. JustPlay) 2. Volunteering- especially neighborhood / trail cleanup groups that you can find on Instagram or Meetup. These are low commitment and people tend to be friendly. Habitat for Humanity was another one that had lots of young people new to the city. 3. Free Fitness (or any other hobby) Groups- you can find anywhere. November Project, for example is in most cities
legerdemain 4y ago
Apple Store link on the site is broken, and there's no such app in the Apple Store?

SergeAx 4y ago

Having friends in childhood/pubescence is a survival level necessity for most of the kids. We all know countless examples of awful things done to keep or gain the position in school/class hierarchy, to fulfill expectations, to deserve respect of peers. This urge dissolves in most of the people towards adulthood and maturity, when we are learning to find inner support, to form our own opinion about ourselves and to rely on that opinion more than on an external judgement.

drbeast 4y ago

Friendships? What a useless concept. Friends come and go and are as reliable as Italian sports car. People who I've thought of as good friends don't return texts or calls and when they do, the answer either is one party putting out all of the effort to spend time or worse an, "I'd love to see you but there are other people on tryong to see too." Last person who said that to me was met with a, "well darn sorry I called, go ahead and delete my number." Here's a fun challenge to test the value of your friend ships: stop initiating contact and see if they'll put forth effort to maintain the friendship. If no, then they really weren't your friend.

saagarjha 4y ago
Not to be mean, but maybe you don’t have very good friends? Everyone knows some acquaintances but true friendships are super valuable.
- drbeast 4y ago
  The vast majority of "friends" are actually recurring acquaintances. The number of real friends an adult could rely on are probably counted in 1 hand.
  - srean 4y ago
    You are right and that would be plenty
- rakejake 4y ago
  Problem is, I find it very difficult to define the boundaries of "true friendship" because I have not had any events in my life that tested those friendships. Family (at least the ideal functional family) as portrayed in media, and that I have seen in my parents' generation is supposed to be the fail-safe support system that has your back no matter what. True friendships are supposed to be "almost as good". I can point to several instances where family members rallied together to bail out another family member from a crisis. I have never seen this happen in my friends circle. Not that I think it is not possible, some of us have been friends since middle school, and we regularly keep tabs on each other over phone despite many of us being in different locations. But in a time of crisis, how far would they go to help me out? I really don't know. And looking at history (my own family's history and general anecdotes), I'm going to guess nowhere near as far as what family would do for you. I obviously still value the friendship and ensure I don't miss meet-ups (real or virtual), but I have come to the conclusion that even "strong friendships" have hard ceilings. These ceilings are almost impossible to breach and I imagine only something like literally saving your friend's life could promote you to the next tier. I agree with the saying "Blood is thicker than water".

lemax 4y ago

As a gay adult not planning to have children, friends are the center of my life and probably will be for a long time. I think gay culture in NYC is an excellent example of the opposite of what this article describes - we all work hard, and many of us have partners, but we all maintain an evolving network of friends. It’s not hard to stay in touch or run into someone or make plans on a whim. It feels kind of like we’re all permanently adolescents. People come and go (jobs, travel, new opportunities), but with enough connections there’s always someone you’ve known for a while who is currently around. Sometimes these friendships aren’t very deep, sometimes they are. Some are brief, some are decades long.

legerdemain 4y ago
Jealous. So, so jealous.

jmyeet 4y ago

So the best advice I would give anyone is spend your college years making friends because in my experience your ability to make and maintain friendships falls off a cliff after college. The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children. This acts as a shared experience just by proximity. If people aren't in the same life stage that friendship tends to be trasnactional or unstable. By "transactional" I mean you might be friends with people in your softball league or who play basketball with on the weekend but mostly those friendships will tend to revolve around that common interest or activity. maybe that'll develop into a deeper friendship but the odds are against it. Likewise, you will develop "work friends" by virtue of spending so much of your time at work. For the most part however these aren't friends at all. If you leave that job, that shared shared experience ends and you will likely never see them again. Maybe you'll promise to catch up. Maybe it'll happen once or twice but again it's now in an unstable state and won't tend to last. As time goes on your friends will be replaced by family. The only way friendships in adulthood tend to survive (IME) is by scheduled activities. You set the expectation that that's what you'll be doing at a particular day and time. That's why you'll see sports so often here because a softball game needs to be played at a particular place and time. Pick-up basketball however is less the case for this so you'll likely see the same people less. It's also why parenthood tends to spell the end for many such friendships. If you have 2 young children at home it makes it harder to maintain a scheduled activity long-term. There'll be times your children will be sick, you'll need to go to school or whatever.

Mezzie 4y ago
> The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children. This has been the hardest thing about being in my 30s as a single (and not particularly looking) lesbian woman. It's an unusual enough life choice that there just plain isn't a friendship pool. Most single people my age are low-key using their friend gatherings to look for partners. So my options for friends are either much older or much younger. I have more in common with the kids (gaming, techy stuff, etc.) but society says you're a creep if you do that so I'm basically alone. It sucks. I don't want a partner, but man I wish I wanted one.

scarface74 4y ago

When I was single, I had mostly female friends who I hung out with, traveled with, etc. I had no interest in being in a relationship with them. But when I got remarried, they went to wayside. Not because of jealousy. Just because I didn’t need the drama. A major cause of first marriage ending was emotional infidelity on both sides. I work remotely in consulting (full time job in the consulting department at $Bigtech) and teams only last as long as a project last. It’s even harder now that my wife and I are “digital nomadding” flying across the US and not setting up roots anywhere. My one close friend that I’ve kept in touch with since high school 30 years ago has small kids now. We try to squeeze time in. But it’s hard.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

@dang, I submitted "How Friendships Change in Adulthood" and of course the title posted missed the initial "how". I think it's the worst feature of HN. This is a good example of a title that becomes far worse when "how" is removed, IMHO. I hope this feature gets canceled.

mkmk3 4y ago
Disagree that its far worse, I dont see an issue in this case
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  It means something completely different than the author or submitter intended. How is that not worse?
  - darkerside 4y ago
    FWIW, headlines are frequently not written by the author of the article
pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
Come on, the giggle when it rewrites "How I write" into "I write" is totally worth it.
Gigachad 4y ago
HN always renames the titles to be garbage. Either automatically or manual.
O__________O 4y ago
At the very least, these title edits should be opt-in where user use given options and supplied with the related reasoning — not just automatically done without warning.
password4321 4y ago
Sometimes you can edit the submission to put things back in / fix capitalization (for an hour).