30 ms·

Why don’t more people live close to friends?

• demomi 3y ago
  It's not a problem with the people as much as it's a side effect of high mobility etc. Your friend might decide they're moving to New Zealand and that's them gone forever. And so it's just sensible not to bet on friends sticking through life. If you value it above all else then there's literally small villages in the middle of nowhere you can pool together and buy.
• no_wizard 3y ago
  A somewhat modern feeling I have is also that it’s hard to make close friends as an adult. There’s less willingness to interact with strangers or even the possible idea of having a good interaction with someone that’s a stranger. I think that would also help alleviate the problem significantly is if we were able to meet people in safe spaces somewhat randomly without people feeling like it’s an affront or something
  • moralestapia 3y ago
    The paradox is that LOTs of people feel this way (me included), and lots of them would be willing to put some real effort into developing new friendships. Yet it still doesn't happen. Now, what could be behind that? (Not rhetorical, genuinely interested)
    • teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Are you out there putting in effort to find and make friends?
      • moralestapia 3y ago
        Of course!
        • teaearlgraycold 3y ago
          Nice work!
    • tifik 3y ago
      For me its mostly projecting my own insecurities onto others. Being in a space where you are guaranteed a shared interest with others (places hobbies get practiced at, volunteering gigs) is a great way to aleviate the fear of rejection, looking like a weirdo, creep or whatever.
      • moralestapia 3y ago
        It's nice that you know what kind of things you can improve on, that's like 90% of the road traveled.
    • neom 3y ago
      "You're not uncool. Making friends as an adult is just hard" - https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/11/10/making-friends-adults https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/11/10/making-friends-ad...
      • moralestapia 3y ago
        Hey, we sort of became friends last month :D
        • neom 3y ago
          We are friends, friend! :)
    • marcell 3y ago
      "Friendship" doesn't happen in a vacuum. You need dependence and value exchange between two "friends." Technology has replaced most of our needs and dependence on other people, with great economic benefit. The downside is it eliminates the need for other humans, and consequently removes the potential for fulfilling relationships. Just two example out of millions: Uber reduces the need to have friends drive you to the airport. ChatGPT reduces the need to ask your friends about their areas of expertise.
      • lotsofpulp 3y ago
        This comment puts into words what I feel. For example, my parents generation immigrated to the US, and are very close as a diaspora/tribe. They can go to any city and visit a friend of a friend’s house and be considered friends themselves. But they all went through the same immigrant struggle of establishing themselves in a foreign nation, relying on their network to be able to vacation and travel since they did not have enough money to stay in hotels or eat out or fly. However, ALL the kids of that generation have none of that connection to each other. We would feel like we are imposing if we called a cousin’s friend in a different city to hang out or stay over. We prefer to stay in nice hotels, and fly to exotic destinations. And I don’t think we can re-create the type of relationships our parents had with their extended tribe, no matter what, since we are all very independent.
        • legerdemain 3y ago
          Counterpoint: my parents came to the US when I was a child and they have none of those things. Their family ties weren't strong enough to last. Their ties to family back home deteriorated. There is no diaspora of extended family in other cities. Their own relationship was toxic and abusive, and they divorced. They are now living out old age alienated, isolated, and alone. They're not rare, they're just not nearly as vocal as the "my big, fat Greek wedding"-type people.
      • Lapsa 3y ago
        in fact - that's the reason advice can backfire. modern day online friends can end up being somewhat incompatible when moved closer together
    • com2kid 3y ago
      I spent a few years running a startup that was tackling this very issue. Sadly getting $ for "solving social isolation in America's cities" was hard to do, but I am still confident that the approach the company was taking would have worked for at least a double digit % of people. tl;dr friendship is formed when there is alignment of values/personality (but not in the way people always expect), and also when a lot of time it put in. The time thing is powers of 10. IIRC, 10 hours to get to know someone as an acquittance, 100 hours is a casual friend, 1000 hours is a good friend, and 10,000 hours is a lifelong friend you can really depend on. The way to fast track this process is to create a shared feeling of oppression. Military boot camps rely on this technique to rapidly form group bonds. It is the same idea behind quite a few team building outings as well. It is also why college dormmates can form long lasting relationships, lots of time spent together during a period of high stress. Same goes for people working at high pressure startups together.
    • hibikir 3y ago
      An argument is that friendships are rarely planned, and involve a variety of unexpected, fortuitous encounters. It's easy to make friendships in high school or college, as you really get to see a bunch of people over and over again, and eventually a few will become your friends. A long enough tenure at a job can do something similar. But look at how we have life set up in a US suburb, where all our travel is in an environment where we cannot talk to anyone, most of our commerce is done in places designed to get you in and out as fast as possible, and where employees rotate often enough it might not be all so easy to ever make them register as people, much less build relationships with you. Stopping anywhere is inconvenient enough that that few people spend a significant amount of time lounging anywhere other than their home. So where are you, exactly, supposed to make friends? You have to be trying pretty hard. People's best bets is to pick up a hobby where people meet regularly, like an exercise class, or a boardgame meetup. Then you have enough people that the probabilities of finding someone compatible go up.
  • tifik 3y ago
    Its unclear if you are talking about yourself or making a general observation about people around you, but in case its the latter: I believe this to be very much subject to strong confirmation bias. You dont open up because you believe thats just not what people do. But I find that to be false 9/10 times I break through the fear and show genuine interest. Safe spaces would include anywhere people that share a common interest gather, for me thats a climbing gym I go to regularly. Volunteering is also great in regards to meeting people that share similar values.
    • nine_k 3y ago
      The issue with being friends is that it mostly works if it's actually present continuous, not present perfect. That is, to be friends means to be able to find time and interesting stuff for each other with some regularity, on a scale of weeks, not years. Adult life often leaves little time for that, especially now that various forms of easy-to-reach entertainment compete with friendships. Another obvious bottleneck is having (young) kids. To open up is actually a non-zero effort and a noticeable time expenditure; plus you have to allocate time to listen to your friend, too :) Without regular nurture a friendship withers. (Ask me how I know.) Kids just have so much more time in their hands. (Unless they are also overloaded like tiny adults, then they also have trouble finding friends and, importantly, hanging out with them.)
      • kjkjadksj 3y ago
        This is all true but at the end of the day its on you to make that time. If you try and make it happen, people will try and make themselves available or try and reschedule. Especially if they have kids, they are probably chomping at the bit for excuses to hang out with adults.
  • courgette 3y ago
    I discovered that I can be instantly be close and talks about relatively deep subjects with most other foreign workers. ( I am too and it’s obvious ) Being severed from your own culture create a link. And with people sharing a language, it’s even quicker. A common ice breaker is to gently make fun of American. Interesting point: I would probably never have talked with those folks back home. And they would have not either. It’s actually refreshing. We see each other back home as well. —- My actual point: when I come home, I started to behave the same way. And .. it kinda works.
    • rocketbop 3y ago
      Having something (but not everything) in common is the root of most friendships. The common thing can be club membership, location, interest in weed, some hobby, or almost anything. Without something to connect over it’s hard to get past small talk.
  • rocketbop 3y ago
    It’s definitely harder after a certain age. Friends come ready made when you’re in school or college and to an extent when you’re young and in your first jobs. The idea of safe spaces implies that the existence of unsafe spaces. If you’ll excuse me pontificating for a moment, it might be useful to try to reframe this outlook; if you wait to feel safe before taking chances with people you’ll miss out on many potential interactions and relationships.
  • mikrotikker 3y ago
    The last two people my partner has tried to make friends with have turned out to be utter scum. I also seem to attract utter scum, I had to tow some crack heads off the local beach and tow them to work, I got their number and could have been friends with them but who wants to be friends with crackheads? The other people my partner could be friends are in completely different stages of their lives (e.g. gonna be grandmas soon). At this stage in my life (36) I've become weary of humans.
• deleted 3y ago
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• nonethewiser 3y ago
  Isn’t being friends with your neighbors a far more obvious answer to this? I thought that’s where this was going. > Sometime during the pandemic lockdowns, I began to nurture a fantasy,” Adrienne Matei writes. “What if I were neighbors with all of my friends? Every day, as I took long walks through North Vancouver that were still nowhere near long enough to land me at a single pal’s doorstep, I would reflect on the potential joys of a physically closer network. My family was close friends with our neighbors, because they were neighbors. Many of my friends were close with their neighbors. I imagine it was far more true in the 50s and 60s. It certainly was based off personal anecdotes I’ve heard from the let friends and relatives. It was a city block in a small/medium sized city. Neighborhood picnics, barbecues, kids running around. Perhaps this breaks down with more urbanization.
  • nice_byte 3y ago
    > Isn’t being friends with your neighbors a far more obvious answer to this? you don't get to choose your neighbors...
    • nonethewiser 3y ago
      Do you find yourself not having much in common with your neighbors, not liking them, etc? A large part of friendship is some circumstance that puts you in the same time and place (school, work, sports, etc.). There must be some pretty big barrier if you can’t make friends with most of your neighbors.
      • bradlys 3y ago
        I don't know my current neighbors at all (I live in an apartment building with 150+ units) and I'm fine with that. However, when I was in a house... I met some. They were often the worst kind of people. The most NIMBY neolib white-flight our-neighborhood-is-going-to-hell 60+ year old assholes you could imagine. The one we thought was nice apparently would beat one of his kids and make him sleep outside the house. That was the nice one! I can't say I know many good stories about neighbors. Look at movies - conflict with neighbors is a constant theme.
• galoisscobi 3y ago
  I personally live in the same zip code as my company’s water coolers. That’s where elders (C suite) say best collaboration and creativity (TM) happen and they won’t let me go remote. All my friends are disbursed all over the country located at the zip codes their company’s water coolers are at (read: remote work is not the norm). Some lucky ones are remote and they’re able to live in places that are best for them (near family, good surf etc).
• ambicapter 3y ago
  I have also fantasized about this recently. I also think it'd be great to live near people who are having children at the same time as I am having children. It seems pretty hard to coordinate however. I just bought a condo and my friends are still renting. That basically puts us in different zipcodes by default. As well housing is so touch (in the US) that when you find a good deal you're unlikely to move, even if you'd be closer to friends.
  • mattweinberg 3y ago
    > I also think it'd be great to live near people who are having children at the same time as I am having children. This came automatically for us as our kids got old enough to go to school. You naturally meet lots of parents in your community with kids the same ages as yours, through school activities and extracurriculars.
  • deleted 3y ago
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• BenFranklin100 3y ago
  Access to friends is probably the biggest reason I prefer dense urban environments. There’s something magical about being able to step out your door and be within a 10-20 minute walk of close friends or family. It invites casual get togethers like Saturday afternoon coffee or an after work drink. Living an hour or two apart kills these opportunities. I recall walking through Vienna one weeknight evening and being amazed how the Austrians would be gathered around tables just enjoying a drink and conversation. These in-person casual interactions are what life is made of. America’s car centric zoning policy and outright bans of denser types of housing makes this lifestyle all but impossible.
  • mikrotikker 3y ago
    I'd far rather go for a long drive in a comfortable car with scenic views than go to a bar. My closest (in both meanings of the word) friend is three hours away through a scenic mountain pass and when we go there its for an entire weekend. This gives time to help with things like building a shed or swapping an engine in a car.
    • throwaway22032 3y ago
      Heh. I live in a city and more and more I feel this. The whole idea behind urbanism seems to be - give up the outdoors, give up hobbies that require tools and space. Go to the bar. Or a "makerspace" where you can have controlled use of someone else's tools. Rent this, rent that, take an uber here and there. It's just so commercialised.
      • tormeh 3y ago
        I get it, to a certain extent. But it’s not quite that simple. Many rural hobbies have pretty intense initial capital outlays, while urban ones tend to have higher running costs. Making tools that end up basically unused in suburban sheds is a big industry.
      • hackernewds 3y ago
        Why not both? Except in the city, you can meet your friend and go together in the outdoors instead of 3 hour solo commute time, where there's no real interaction with them.
• johnea 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Huh?
  • TobyTheDog123 3y ago
    People in HN threads should collectively start timing how long it takes for Gen Xers and boomers to come out of the woodwork to gatekeep something that has evolved past their tunnel-vision.
• bradlys 3y ago
  Cause we have an economy that has atomized everyone to where you have to fight for your own survival - constantly. I'd love having some of my friends be my neighbors. But I had to move cross country just to find a partner because living in Silicon Valley was going to leave me an incel. (No surprise - I leave and I've had far more partners than I ever did in SV) I'll move back eventually with a partner in tow but the same issues will arise. My professor friends can't afford a $2-3m house. My friends who work as nanny, acoustics engineer, events manager, local government staff, IT at local school, etc. also cannot afford the suburb I would be living in where the average home is $2.5m. They instead leave the area, live in apartments, or live with their parents. The few who are still in these professions but aren't shackled by these issues are over 50 years old and come from old money. (We're not particularly close) Now, I'm in NYC and shockingly - I have quite a few friends who aren't too far away (some are only 2-3 blocks!) but we are all painfully similar. We work in high paid jobs, we're single men, and we have similar interests. It's not the worst thing but I'm getting a very homogenous group of friends while living here.
  • yosito 3y ago
    > I'll move back eventually with a partner in tow Why though? What is the appeal of SV when you could live anywhere?
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    It is a nice set of problems to have though, diversity of neighborhood or living with millionaires. Choosing to work somewhere you can do something you love for executive wages, or move to another city, with a move that costs pocket change so that you can find love.
    • bradlys 3y ago
      Comes with a different set of problems - tbh. The women I'm looking for need to be single and in a similar socioeconomic bracket. Those two things are basically impossible to find together.
  • prawn 3y ago
    Your first sentence makes me wonder how much "taking work home" has compromised our social lives. On any given night trying to catch up with friends, it's likely that at least one will have a deadline they're working to, or trying not to fall behind on workload in general. If you come up against that a couple of times, or have your own work pressures, I find that you're less likely to initiate anything.
• Barrin92 3y ago
  I mean, don't many people in the demographics mentioned, 20-40s university educated city dwellers, already do this? Sharing a flat is very common in my social circle. I've always lived with people and not only is it less isolated but you save a lot of money splitting rent, electricity and food bills. And having roomates during the pandemic was really good for my mental health. Having to live completely alone through all the lockdowns was awful for a lot of people.
• naremu 3y ago
  I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends. And suburban (and frankly disturbingly high percentages of urban) America IME is a strange cross between in constant proximity of others, and constant suspicion of others. Like there's just enough people around to not be alone, but not enough to feel safe for many. There's another comment in this thread positing that the social closeness of the old days broke down because of more urbanization, but it's clear it's sprawl that's killing socialization. The other day a friend and I were talking about cities since I complain a lot about this now, and we did a quick check: Houston is far, far LARGER than say, Zurich, but their population density is a fraction. Everyone lives in cars that don't talk to each other, going to little boxes that mostly don't talk to each other. And the parking lots required for people to travel to a restaurant or bar means that there's less restaurants and bars. Incidentally, I've found a single combination pedestrian/bike trail near me, and it's busier than the other trails, and people there are so much friendlier. It's a joy to go, and I'm slowly realizing I may still be introverted, but being out and about without it being a chore actually alleviates a lot of my anxiety.
  • zamnos 3y ago
    This is a bit of an unconventional POV, but I don't consider large areas of suburban sprawl to be cities but just really big towns. This covers Houston, swaths of Atlanta, lots of Southern California. There are lots of people living there compared to rural areas, to be sure, but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city at all. It's endless suburban sprawl, and many people do appreciate that. Just don't call it a city when it's really not.
    • dopidopHN 3y ago
      I don’t think it’s unconventional, it’s just a definition of suburbs. Worse of both world in my book. Unless you want to raise your kid in isolation.
• emptybits 3y ago
  The author laments a long walk, passing so many neighbours and potentially unmet friends along the way. Looking for close friends who aren't around anymore. We probably chanced across our close friends one day because we were living or doing something nearby. And introduced ourselves. And sometimes friendships spark. The article is great but I feel it could also recognize the birds in hand nearby. "And if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." -Steven Stills.
• atlgator 3y ago
  Would if I could. Missed my window on the remote work bonanza.
• jabbany 3y ago
  > You'd Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Really though? Anecdotally I feel the opposite... Proximity tends to breed opportunities for conflict. Personally, I really appreciate the distinction between neighbors that you have a more "professional" relationship with versus friends who maybe you have fewer day-to-day contact with but can be more intimate emotionally...
  • electriclove 3y ago
    Thanks for providing this POV. Many of the responses here seem to think that density is a good thing. I feel the completely opposite way -> I need space. I need space away from my neighbors. I like not having other people park their cars next to my home. I like not hearing my neighbors have an argument or a party. I like not sharing the walls of my home with others. I like walking on a path by myself sometimes. There might be folks that like high density living, but please understand that there are others that prefer the opposite. It might be due to personality type or stage of life but there is no one size fits all.
  • noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, I also definitely feel this. I was roommates in a large house with 3 good friends for a few years and I definitely feel like I'm better friends with all of them now that we don't live together.
  • wnolens 3y ago
    Conflict is part of relationship. The less you spend time with someone, the less intimate it is, not more. What you seek is the benefits of relationship without any of the drawbacks. But they come as a package deal.
    • jabbany 3y ago
      By the same logic, boundaries and distance are also part of a healthy relationship, and there's no point to forcing proximity when it is not desired. The original title of this post was "You'd Be Happier Living Closer to Friends." which I disagree with. It has since been changed to "Why don’t more people live close to friends?" which feels like a much more reasonable inquiry. The matter of fact is not everyone wants to be social and connected all the time. While it might be interesting to discuss how the modern world limits people who do enjoy being more close to their friends, my point is that it is critical to also recognize that, no, sometimes you'd be less happy living closer to friends.
• stetrain 3y ago
  In most of the US it's kinda hard to live genuinely close to a large number of people. And close doesn't have to be just physical distance, things like convenient public transit can put a lot of people and amenities within a 15-minute radius. That not only influences your ability to leave near friends you have already made, but also opportunities to make new friends by finding events or groups that match your interests.
• brianjking 3y ago
  First I'd have to understand how to make some friends as a 37 year old man who works entirely remotely. I'm trying on Bumble BFF mode, but not having tons of luck.
  • k4j8 3y ago
    I've had some success with sites such as Facebook Groups or Meetup. They organize events to connect strangers with a shared common interest, in my case casual hiking and board games.
  • chasd00 3y ago
    To not feel isolated friendship is something that will have to be done in meatspace. Take up a hobby or interest shared by others and participate in events or outings together. It will give you something in common to talk about and take the edge off striking up a conversation. Just becoming a regular at a busy coffee shop is a step in the right direction.
  • bemmu 3y ago
    Try a Hacker News meetup.
  • emodendroket 3y ago
    To me Meetup seems like a much more natural model. There's some activity I have an interest in and I can meet other people who also want to do it. The Bumble BFF thing like... OK, we have nothing in common except we want to make friends? Seems odd.
  • DanTheManPR 3y ago
    One way to do it is through hobby groups which meet IRL. You can make friends in the hobby-space there, and then gradually start inviting them to things that are not related to the hobby (becoming more of a true friend).
  • kuhzaam 3y ago
    As a 36 year old that recently moved yet again to a new city (the third time in my adult life), I've had decent luck joining recreational sports leagues. Lots of leagues will have options to sign up as a "free agent", which usually means you'll get placed on a team with other free agents, which tend to be others in the same boat of trying to meet new people. If you aren't necessarily the athletic type, bowling and kickball are pretty good options. I've found that most of these leagues (especially if you sign up for the novice/recreational level) are NOT very competitive, and most people are just out to have fun, meet friends, possibly have some drinks, etc.
• lapcat 3y ago
  8. My friends live in Silicon Valley.
• philsnow 3y ago
  > why don’t we do this? The fetishization of the nuclear family, of course, as well as the building and zoning codes that facilitate that fetishization. Zoning calls them "single family homes" but it doesn't call it "nuclear family homes" or anything like that. Single family homes are more about American individualism[0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. That's why, outside of at most a couple aberrations like NYC (where multi-generational families live in condos all together or else fragmented around a neighborhood but still within walking/subway distance of each other), we have a fetishized (less so in recent decades) car and road culture and insane density-averse zoning policy instead of shared infrastructure and dense, affordable housing. [0] or at least, as idolized by those who made the zoning rules so long ago. so... go change them! Get into local office. Get into state office. I'm no iconoclast, but there are definitely some long-standing norms and "traditions" in our society that could stand to go.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > about American individualism[0] and not wanting to share anything if you don't absolutely have to. I don’t know if this is an American quality specifically. It could just be that Americans can (or used to be able to) afford it, whereas most other people in most other societies never could. For example, what young married couple would want to live in their parents house if they can afford their own? All of my extended family grew up in intergenerational households because they were poor immigrants who had to make do, but all the cousins became doctors/lawyers/engineers/etc and got their own house. That is not to say that my cousins would not let their elderly parents stay with them if the need arises, but being financially independent does allow people to do what they want.
    • lambdasquirrel 3y ago
      Well it's great that America tested that out so the rest of the world can see how miserable it is. Europe paid attention. Verdict is still out on China and India.
      • vladvasiliu 3y ago
• AceJohnny2 3y ago
  I can attest to the value of living close to friends. A few of us moved into 3 apartments in the same apartment complex, and it's really great. Other close friends have a place that's 20 minutes walk away, so we frequently do things together. Of course, we live in the Bay Area where the housing market is shit, so we recognize how lucky we are to afford our situation. It was much easier for me when I lived in a small city in Europe. The population density and walkability of the place made it. (Incentivize more building! Abolish CA Prop 13!)
  • chasd00 3y ago
    I lived with the same three guys from the time I was 18 to about 31. It was pretty great, our gfs hated it and I eventually got married and started a family but it was fun while it lasted.
  • electriclove 3y ago
    Are you all single, married, with kids? Preferences can change as your life changes.
    • AceJohnny2 3y ago
      Good point. >30s, some married, no kids.
• chaostheory 3y ago
  There is another answer to living close by. If VR and AR one day meet the promises of old sci-fi, distance will be less of an issue. It will be a dramatic improvement over phone calls and FaceTime / zoom. Unfortunately, the current form factor of affordable units (sub $500 standalone units like the quest2) intimidates nearly everyone including techies on HN; most people refuse to even try it. Of the few brave people willing to try it, most don’t go beyond 10-15 minutes. The other major problem is affordability. While it isn’t a problem for many people in our bubble, most people will balk at spending $2000 or more on bleeding edge tech. AR and VR currently are at the same stage of personal computers in the late 1970s, only a few die hard techies like me can see its current and future potential
• TobyTheDog123 3y ago
  It's a shame that the whole "walkable city" concept has become a bit of a meme in the US - it truly should be a thing that we all strive to create - to nurture in-person relationships through the physical design of the space. >I’m not talking about crime, don’t be ridiculous. While gender-affirming care and bodily autonomy is (obviously) a critical point, I am very much also talking about factoring in crime. There is no way I'd live in SFO/LA/NYC/SEA. When we talk about limited mobility, we have to talk about places where that kind of physical interaction has undue risk attached.
  • electriclove 3y ago
    The city centers in the areas you mentioned are definitely off my list as well for the same reason. There are nice suburbs in those areas but there goes the "walkable city" aspect.
• throwaway22032 3y ago
  "The fetishization of the nuclear family" mentioned in this article feels unnecessarily provocative, as if the author isn't well socialized (perhaps overly associating with minority subcultures that don't recognize traditional norms?) The basic premise of the article is fine, living within a reasonable distance of friends makes a lot of sense, but some parts of it are extreme. Most people wouldn't buy a house with a friend because they have a wife, husband or significant other with whom they either currently live, or are working towards living with.
• bsder 3y ago
  How about we do something about being able to support a family on a single, decent job for 30+ years? That would mean people can stay in their neighborhoods and get to know people over time.
• notRobot 3y ago
  Related, from a couple months ago: How to live near your friends: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665568
• nitwit005 3y ago
  We talked about this in my friend group. The issue is you have to optimize multiple distances: work, spouse's work, kids school, parents, friends, etc. Most people seem to optimize living near their parents or adult children, which probably also makes them happier: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...
• schlowmo 3y ago
  One aspect of this which I find myself often think about is that it takes some deliberation with whom you want to spend your time when you get older if you're not living the usual family life. I'm in my thirties now and sometimes it feels like there's plenty of time to figure this out. But most of my closest friends are somewhat older than me. Almost none of them have started a family in the traditional sense. Most of the people they were friends with drifted of in their own little family worlds over time. Another good chunk of former friends pursued professional/academic careers which led them to move quite some distances. And I can really understand their fear that the younger people they befriended (like me) will do the same (which I and my long-term partner are ruling out but they heard a lot of people saying that before doing it anyway). I find it comforting that we talk about this from time to time and try to reassure each other that there will be a shared future as we get all older together.And I sometimes think this wouldn't happen if we were all the same age. It kind of helps getting the perspective of older friends which have lost track of a whole lot of people during their lifes. At my current age I can feel the impacts getting closer. It's oftentimes a really short way from "friends for life" to "acquaintances from the past". And I wouldn't mind at all if the roomate analogy of the author would be literally that shared future: > It’s not dissimilar to a big house with lots of roommates, or even a college dorm — it’s just that the living areas are separated by a few blocks instead of a few feet.
  • noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, I think I feel this from the other direction. I'm not that much older than a lot of my friends, but I've lost many of them over the years to marriages and children. Many of them moved across the country or at least a large distance away to facilitate that, but even the ones who stayed nearby justifiably made their life about their spouse or children over their friends, and there was often little to be done to keep myself involved in their life. On the other end, I've also dealt with many long-term couples without kids who have gone through messy breakups after 5-15 years of relationship, which often left all of their friendships in tatters, if if they didn't move away entirely and cut all contact. Add to that that many of the single folks I'm friends with are increasingly desperately trying to find a partner and sacrificing time with their friends to make that happen. I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm now in a zone where I don't want to move because I don't have somewhere to move to that has more than a couple people I know, and I wouldn't want to lean on them so hard to be my social connection, but increasingly the folks I know where I live now are leaving, physically or emotionally, to make their own life without me. It's understandable but consistently brutal how fast you can go from someone's best friend to someone they haven't remembered to respond to in months as soon as they have a family of their own.
• iambateman 3y ago
  Sprawl exists because it’s nice. People really like having a 3,000 square foot detached single family home with a 2 car garage. Especially when all of their friends have one. The only way everyone gets that, by definition, is sprawl. Of course, the drawbacks to personal health and well-being and societal stability are immense. But it’s really nice, too. Like, sitting in a massive basement with three TV’s while the grill is going is nice. Not bringing groceries in from the rain is nice. Having a fenced back yard for a dog is nice. Having guest space and individual rooms for both kids and a walk-in closet is nice. As advocates for better cities, we need to spend a lot more time helping people see the possibilities of thoughtful urban living. A lot of people simply can’t imagine what it would be like to “give up” the luxuries of their sprawl in order to get more proximity to, well, friends.
  • WaffleIronMaker 3y ago
    > Sprawl exists because it’s nice. I think the vast swaths of single family homes have much more to do with restrictive single-family zoning rather than just because there's demand for it. In many areas, there is clearly demand for more high density housing as well, but often mixed use developments are not available under restrictive zoning laws. I hope someone more qualified than I could expand on how the FHA influenced the development of single family homes, along with the history of redlining.
    • TylerE 3y ago
      This sort of view is needlessly antagonistic of those you may be trying to influence. People like what they like, stop telling them they're wrong for liking it! We're not all able-bodied extroverts that are unbothered by noise.
      • ETH_start 3y ago
        They didn't invalidate the idea that some people prefer sprawling neighborhoods. They just posited that that is not the only, or the primary reason for the extend of sprawl.
      • 3y ago
• Jemaclus 3y ago
  It'd be easier if I had local friends, honestly! I made a lot of friends in the last 10 years, and over time, they've all moved away from where I live to other places. My best friends are 500, 1700 and 2000 miles away, respectively, and if I want to see them, someone has to book a flight. So I just Zoom and have to be satisfied with that. Otherwise, I'll echo the others around here who talked about the suspicion of others that gets in the way. I live in an area where if I go to a coffee shop at any given time, the chances of seeing someone I know -- other than the barista, of course -- is fractionally small, much less running into someone enough times to form a genuine friendship. It's hectic.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Not everyone has so many friends in a cluster and close is relative
• carrolldunham 3y ago
  I always get pushback for this but I think the idea that adults 'hang out with friends' is a meme from sitcoms. I think people grew up absorbing sitcom premises as representing life. I look at my parents and grandparents they don't have many friends - there's one or two people they see once or twice a year. That's normal. Having 3-5 people who you catch up with regularly through the week and hang out like teenagers, is a premise for a comedy with dynamics. It's not real life after 30.
  • chasd00 3y ago
    That’s definitely true if you have a family which your parents and grandparents did by definition. My wife and I have just a few friends we see irl regularly (couple times a month) but that’s about it. I still keep up with my college friends but it’s over iMessage as we’ve kinda scattered geographically over the years. Between my wife and kids I feel pretty socialized and don’t feel the need to seek out anyone else.
  • friendthrow242 3y ago
    The Soviet Bloc is calling: after work, you would drop in to eat and drink with your friends; or your friends would drop by and eat and drink with you -- everyday. Materially life sucked; but less shit to worry about, and you had the stuff that mattered: relationships. Couldn't get anywhere in that sort of world without them -- so everyone made an effort to cultivate friends, or atleast many acquaintances. Now? You don't need friends -- you have money. Neither are you willing to suffer through another's perceived faults. Everyone is quick to turn others into persona non gratas because of silly things like political views, or a certain character quirk that drives the neurotic insane, or the way they dress, speak, or act. Doesn't help that it starts at the familial level. If your family isn't large or your family hasn't made the effort to cultivate relationships, then you're less likely to be exposed to other people, and build your own from there. +1 to how most American families are tiny, and most aren't intimate with their extended family. No one knows how to get along with other people. Everyone has to be a perfect piece of furniture to be allowed a place in the dining room of one's life. And who has the time? There's so much shit to do. Gotta spend all my free time building up my career. My neighbours? Why would I waste a perfectly good evening drinking and talking about life, when I could go to my company's happy hour to schmooze with my colleagues... or better yet: get a good night's rest so I can give my 100% to my company's: shareholders/c-suite/founders/whatever. My neighbours aren't gonna get me that promotion -- so fuck em. Shit, my house needs renovations. I gotta bring my kids to piano recital. I gotta get a repair man for the washer. I gotta buy new clothes, because my old ones are starting to fall apart. I gotta bring my car for maintenance. I gotta watch entertainment because I'm so fucking exhausted from selling my mind for the privilege of being able to stay alive. Gotta set up a doctor's appointment because I got RSI in my hands. Gotta call up my insurance company because they denied another fucking claim. Material prosperity is a pox on the human soul.
• diveandfight 3y ago
  So the author points out that some reasons constraining mobility are outside of a person's control: > When we talk about limited mobility, we have to talk about states that are actively and legislatively hostile to marginalized people. And then proceeds to frame the choice of "where to live?" as solely within a person's control, "What’s holding you back, and what conversations do you have with yourself about when and whether that will change?" > And so, a prompt for discussion: What would have to change, for you to move closer to the people who nourish you, who support you, who make your life better and easier in so many ways? I'm getting fatigued with seeing/hearing this meaningless virtue signaling. It usually takes the form of, "We see you," "We acknowledge particular challenges for certain people," and then proceeding to make a point that either completely disregards or directly contradicts (in this case) the speaker's/writer's acknowledgement of racism/hostility/lack of safety/etc. This article is some privileged person nonsense.
  • quinn3604 3y ago
    The article briefly speaks on why people might not have control over where they live - and then the author then continues to discuss the matter as if an individual does have control, as you said. However, this is far from meaningless, because many do have a say in where they live, and still neglect to factor in living near to close friends. I agree that it doesn't apply to everyone, but this doesn't make it nonsense in my opinion.
  • emodendroket 3y ago
    The author's contention is the "unprivileged" person probably doesn't have this problem by virtue of not having left their hometown in the first place.
• Apreche 3y ago
  Cars
• Entinel 3y ago
  They gave many reasons but I have a different one. I don't have any friends.
  • Paul-Craft 3y ago
    You're not some kind of exception, either. 12% of Americans have no close friends. Another 7% only have one. https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/ https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-a...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• JamisonM 3y ago
  Seems like the obvious answer to this question is just greed and/or ambition, right? The target audience for this article seems to be white collar workers and most professionals can mostly live wherever they want, they just have to accept the pay grade & accommodations that come along with that choice: none of which involve poverty or desperate circumstances. Anyhoo.. anyone that wants advice about making friends locally my only offering is go volunteer at a local community organization, help run the local community hall or skating rink, you'll meet interesting people with pro-social views. If you find people like that to be around what you find is that being their friends is pretty easy.
• Krisjohn 3y ago
  All these articles about "just moving". Who can afford it? We would lose A$24,890 just on stamp duty - a "tax" that goes to the government based on nothing other than the value of the property that they've been inflating over the last three decades. If I had a spare $25k kicking around, using it just to pay off creditcards would make me much happier than moving next to friends.
• kpennell 3y ago
  @dang @sharkweek 'You'd Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don't You?' is the actual title of the piece. Not sure why this got edited.
• sn41 3y ago
  Sounds like "The Garden" of Epicurus, a community of like-minded individuals who lived outside the city walls [1]: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus#Teaching_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus#Teaching_career
• muyuu 3y ago
  People move a lot these days because of mainly economic circumstances that fit their age, work, family circumstances and friends are made mainly earlier in life. Chances are thus that most friendships will be separated over time. That's not even considering relationships that start remotely in the first place.
  • emodendroket 3y ago
    Well in a sense the opposite is true; people move much less than they did in the past.
    • muyuu 3y ago
      It's not a new phenomenon, it's been going on for generations. In my country, my generation moved more than the previous ones. Perhaps we've reached a tipping point but not anywhere near to the point that people will not move away from most of their meatspace acquaintances and friendships.
  • cityofdelusion 3y ago
    Indeed, its a statistical inevitability. For a childhood friendship to survive locality, their parents must not move, both you and the friend must not go to college anywhere, both you and the friend must not move anywhere else for a job, you must both live in the same part of the city and/or take jobs in the same part of the city, and for the entire duration up to the present, economic and family matters must not move both of you. I imagine most people can list off their childhood friendships and see how each one eventually succumbs to something above. By the time you are middle-aged, your old friends (and many times family) will be split up all over the country or even the world. Most people I know that maintain a close-knit friend group are very much in the group that are born and raised in some tiny rural town and never leave or they have transitioned to long-distance e-friendships.
• blastro 3y ago
  I bought the house across the street from my best friend a few years ago. It's been an excellent decision. We actively recruit our other friends to do the same, but no one else has jumped on it yet.
• emodendroket 3y ago
  This article casts moving far away from home as some great tragedy but about the last place I'd want to go again is my hometown. I certainly don't feel like there are such close friends there that it's like they are long-lost family (and, you know, your actual family sometimes it's kind of mixed too). I think the article also doesn't consider another possibility that I would toss in there: your friends and you may not have as much in common as you used to.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  My problem is I don’t have any friends so I would need to solve that first.
• ETH_start 3y ago
  I think this is a great idea but it's hard to effect in practice. We have formalized relationships between significant others, including the obligations that come with that. Less formalized relationships like friendships have less defined obligations, so it may be hard to negotiate who makes the effort of moving to bring the friends' residences in geographical proximity.
• politelemon 3y ago
  Well according to this is because many of us don't have friends. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35608965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35608965
• atemerev 3y ago
  Because my country suddenly (ok, gradually) turned murder-crazy, and half of my friends emigrated and will never be able to return, and the other half escaped war and destruction and atrocities, and the other half is still there and defending their country from the crazy murderous idiots of my former country? Something like that.
• yellowapple 3y ago
  One of the perks of living in a smaller city (in my case, Reno) is that if your friends are in the same city at all, chances are y'all are already within close proximity.
  • Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    I wouldn't count a city of 250k as "smaller". Of course, perspective. I'm in a "big city" right now, smaller than Reno, and it is the biggest city I've lived in.
    • yellowapple 3y ago
      > I wouldn't count a city of 250k as "smaller". Salt Lake City is even smaller by that metric, with only 200k people. What gives? Well, that's why we measure metropolitan areas instead of cities themselves. If your metro area is in the top 100 in the US, then it's bigger than Reno/Sparks by a considerable margin.
      • Broken_Hippo 3y ago
        Up until 10 years ago, the largest city I had lived in had 50-60k people. It wasn't really worth it to count a metro area: That was the hub for the small towns of the area, and honestly pretty normal where I was in the Midwest. Some had no taxis (and pre-uber) and in others, you couldn't count on a taxi to get you to work on time. Only 1 had busses outside of school busses (but all had school busses). Now, "big city" is 180-200k. I wouldn't know about where it ranks in the US, as the reason I went to a "big city" was because I moved out of the US.
• asdfman123 3y ago
  > The fetishization of the nuclear family Just because you know a big word doesn’t mean you have to use it. Nuclear families are just what’s left after stripping away larger families which have been the norm throughout human history.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• pharmakom 3y ago
  Cars. Everything is designed around cars. Cars require lots of space, particularly at the destination (parking). So everything is built spread out (sprawl). Now you can choose between living in a tiny apartment or something bigger, but far away from everything. When you are younger, enough of your friends might choose the apartment and you can live near friends. This is for many what makes the college experience special. As you grow older, more will choose (perhaps including yourself!) to live far away. One day you realise that you have no proximate friends. Cars, man.
  • reyqn 3y ago
    I think cars was the single most stupid "evolution" for humanity. And when maybe we had an out (prioritizing public transports, because fossil fuel is running out), then what... ELECTRIC CARS FOR EVERYONE. Cars take up so much money and space and energy... And the time that you should gain thanks to your car is just lost in transportation time, because now you can (and have to) live farther from work / friends / family / activities.
    • Philorandroid 3y ago
      Conversely, cars made it possible to: - Live outside of dense urban environments while still working in one - Travel to visit friends and family not living down the street - Not be dependent on shaky public transport infrastructure (US) - Travel where public transport isn't available Everyone owning a car might not be the most efficient or pleasant solution, but certainly there are more productive attitudes to have than "cars are bad and I hate cars because they're bad".
      • reyqn 3y ago
        You just can't imagine how dense and efficient the public transport network could be if humanity didn't invest trillions over trillions of dollars into cars and car infrastructure. Cars are bad and I hate cars because they're the worst idea humanity ever had.
• jschveibinz 3y ago
  Earlier in the 20th century, there was a lot of interest in promoting community while integrating with automotive transportation. Here are a few interesting things to read on the topic of community design that promotes social interaction and cohesion: The Making of Columbia, MD and Reston, VA (https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2020/q2-3/economic_history https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...) Jane Jacob’s on the importance of neighborhoods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs) (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-death-and-life-of-great-american-cities-jane-jacobs/1116756508 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-death-and-life-of-great...) Greenbelt, MD (https://www.greenbeltmuseum.org/greenbelt-history https://www.greenbeltmuseum.org/greenbelt-history)
  • acuozzo 3y ago
    I lived in Columbia, MD from 2010 to 2018 and from 2021 to present and I can state with confidence that our design does help to alleviate some of these issues. I wish our model would have caught on. We do a lot of things right here.
• lannisterstark 3y ago
  Because I don't want to. I value my privacy, I value my alone time. When we need to/want to get together, we do. We live 15 mins drive of each other, even in a sprawled city. It's fine. In fact, it's ideal.
• BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  It requires designing your life actively, which more people don't do. It's the same as people saying they need a car, they can't move because they bought a house, they don't have time because they have kids, they don't have money because their loan and alemony is taking everything. They prioritized some things without thinking about the consequences. Or they didn't even prioritized, they just stumble upon it and went with it. We have a group of friends in the city which for the last 10 years actively moved in the same district to stay close to each others. This has a price as well. But we decided on it, it didn't happen by mistake than 10 people rented, or even bought, in less a mile radius. Some have children, some are around 50, some travel, some are poor... There is always something. But they designed their life.
• badpun 3y ago
  I've organised my life around moving very close to my best friend. It makes me live in a somewhat crappy city and I can only work remotely, but the fun we have together is more than worth it.
• shadowofneptune 3y ago
  A citation in this article can shed some light on how it is for gay people: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-who-prioritize-friendship-over-romance/616779/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-wh... > In LGBTQ circles, placing a high value on friendship has long been common. Carroll, Rivera, and several other people I interviewed for this story, absorbed the idea of “chosen family”—that those besides blood can decide to become kin—from this community. Though he and Rivera never considered dating, Carroll had already learned to be at ease with nonsexual intimate relationships with men. In other words, he had come to appreciate something that was once widely understood—as Godbeer, the historian, puts it, that “we can love without lusting.” In my own experience as part of one, these relationships can have a sexual character, but usually only as a part of it, not the core. I myself plan to move closer to my friends once the opportunity is available.
  • subtra3t 3y ago
    I would think that most members of the LGBTQ+ community in most parts of the world are shunned out of their traditional familial and friend circles (neighbous, classmates) due to their perceived abnormalities. This would force them to actively seek out friends (perhaps facing a similar situation to them) and value them more due to them already knowing what it is like to be without them.
    • dougmwne 3y ago
      Even when being queer is accepted, your life path is very different from your straight friends and family.
• jeffrallen 3y ago
  Here's another, not very practical or scalable solution: live in a small, healthy European village in the 200 to 1000 population range. I have a grocery store, a hair stylist, a kindergarten and my firewood guy within walking distance. And 499 neighbors, some of whom have become friends. What I'm saying is that it goes the other direction sometimes: physical proximity can create friendship when you make a commitment to a place and make a concerted effort to take care of your neighbors.
• neals 3y ago
  I live in a small European town. Lived in bigger cities for a while. Not for me. I can just walk into the pub and have a pint and a conversation, with a friend or a stranger. Good times.
• blodkorv 3y ago
  Because friends more often than not, comes and goes.
• cykros 3y ago
  Commoditization of "home" is probably the number one culprit. Nobody wants to make a decision with the largest investment they have based around where their friends live right now (especially when they might react to market conditions and move in 1-2 years afterward). And I'm not sure it's THAT new -- seems more like in the past, people befriended those they lived near, rather than necessarily moving near people they were already friends with. Institutions like churches and other community programs facilitated this. Meanwhile, a crumbling or defunding of such programs or just lack of interest (thinking "community house" activities from my youth), coupled with the divisive effect of social media, seem to have had a real chilling effect on this community building. That, and sheer density. Anyone that went from a small school to a big school knows that sometimes it's easier to feel all alone on a campus of 40,000 than it is on a campus of 300 (unless you're just totally ostracized at the small school).
• konart 3y ago
  All my friends have moved to different countries long ago.
• mickotron 3y ago
  We live in the intersection of where we can afford to rent or buy, and where we like. Sometimes that isn’t near friends.
• steveBK123 3y ago
  Sometimes I think NYC is the worst of both worlds. Urbanist density, with surrounding sprawl and decaying transit with congested streets. It has large areas without good greenspace, while also being a good 60min by car / 90min by train from escaping the city to get to some nature. The best parks you get are Central Park in Manhattan, or Prospect Park in Brooklyn, but they get pretty busy in the summer.. SNL had a pretty on-the-nose skit about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZhjIyGmrRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZhjIyGmrRQ By contrast, European cities seem to have farms/parks/countryside much more in reach. Further, in terms of "living near friends", spending almost 2 decades in NYC.. it's no more true than in the suburbs I grew up or the countryside I escape to on weekends. NYC is so sprawling, expensive, and transit so commute-oriented.. that outside a few years in your 20s.. your friends end up 30-90min away in all directions. My wife's best friend lives in the same borough, and is a 40min drive from us. Worse by train, as we have to go back into Manhattan and transfer trains to get to her. The closest any of our friends lived was 10 years ago when we were a 20min walk in UWS from my wife's other best friend. Even for friends we made in the city at say the gym, we'd all live 20 blocks apart. And of course work friends were commuting from all directions within and without the city.
• MengerSponge 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
• zemvpferreira 3y ago
  But if your hypothetical spouse has friends, you have to move near those friends as well. And if their hypothetical spouses also friends, those also have to be nearby. And let's not get into hypothetical children, their friends and the parents of those friends. I've tried but it's just impossible to make this sort of idea work unless you're terminally solipsistic or everyone you care about already comes from a very small social circle. The second-order effects kill it. In my view this illustrates one of the great advantages of pair bonding: You only have to coordinate your decisions with one person.
  • true_religion 3y ago
    Date your friends and marry them. Problem solved :) But in all seriousness, living near your friends isn’t a mathematical impossibility. People commonly did this simply out of virtue of never leaving the villages that they were born into.
• mcv 3y ago
  In my case, it's because all of my friends moved to the other side of the country. I stayed in the city where we met, but they didn't. (Possibly because it's too expensive.) At our previous house, we were also very good friends with our neighbours. Our kids played together a lot, we had dinner together frequently. But our house was getting too small, so we moved somewhere else in the same neighbourhood, and immediately after, they moved to a completely different town. I'd love to have my friends as neighbours. I'd love to become friends with my neighbours. I'd love to live in some sort of community group where we do lots of things together. But that's not a common thing apparently, and I'm way too introverted to make it happen.
• aaron695 3y ago
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• blitz_skull 3y ago
  Bit of a weird counter-argument: Just make friends wherever you live. Everywhere my wife and I have moved, we’ve just intentionally done things to meet people in our neighborhood. (I.e. Going for lots of walks in the evenings, attending community events, etc) We always manage to make a few good friends that we organically hang out with the way the author describes. I think living communally is cool, and if you can get that worked out, all the more power to you. But it’s very difficult to do for the most part due to the societal norms that dictate how most live their lives.
• meh8881 3y ago
  This article is explicitly wondering why people don’t live closer to friends, explicitly preferring friends over family. I don’t think it’s surprising personally.
• CalRobert 3y ago
  I often come back to this comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085 """ The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes for real human interaction. The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer. No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else. """
  • bheadmaster 3y ago
    We're slaves to the machine, it's a depressing thought. The whole consumer culture, especially with the digital entertainment nowdays, seems more like an opiate of the masses than religion ever was. Perhaps digital world is a new kind of quazi-religion?
  • nicbou 3y ago
    It's just so damn hard to get away from the Screen. Everything else has a start-up cost to it. The Screen keeps the dopamine trickling. I know there's something better out there, but I have to look things up, make plans, get dressed, get there. It will make me happier, but it's hard to beat instant gratification.
• danjoredd 3y ago
  After graduation I moved to a large city away from friends and got pretty sad. Got a job back where I knew people even though it is way smaller and I immediately felt much better
• prmoustache 3y ago
  I have friends in different countries, how could I possibly be closer to all of them?
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  I have a behaviour that some people have said is weird. I rarely hold on to friends when I change locales. Once in university, I had none of my high school friends within a year. Once I graduated, I had almost none of my university friends within a year. I just make friends with whoever is nearby. People I work with. Neighbours. People from the Curling club. I don't really feel anything about it, positive or negative. If someone puts effort into preserving the friendship, I commit equal effort... though as adults with kids, it rarely works out. I guess for me, the actual individuals I'm friends with is not the invariant.
  • dougmwne 3y ago
    I think the way you frame this is probably weird, but the actual behavior is completely normal. Most people would say that they care about their friends from previous phases of their life, but most social research says that friends rarely survive the transition from one stage or location to the next. For friends, proximity is king. I would frame this that I have much love for these people, but that we are on different paths for awhile. Several times our paths have come back together and I have cherished the renewed connection. Sometimes the paths never cross again. I recently learned of two mentors and friends who were very important to me passing away. Our time together was 10 and 20 years ago respectively and we hadn’t kept in touch. I have regretful feelings about this, but also acceptance that our lives were only going to be parallel for a limited time.
    • fortuna86 3y ago
      [dead]
• jcadam 3y ago
  I recently moved from a crowded suburb to a rural 2.5 acre lot up in Alaska. If I'm going to be isolated regardless, might as well have some space :)
• 71a54xd 3y ago
  Times change and friends change. As an adult, I also view ending friendships in a similar manner. Some friendships burn bright others simmer, but the latter group seems to always lead to more sustainable long-term friendships. Interestingly, college friends who I no longer live near are my most sustainable and closest friends. I still largely believe that the strength of a friendship is largely a function of how long you spent with that person, via your own volition involved in a mutual struggle. This is why IMO making friends as an adult is hard, because you're either forced to be around them at work (and work relationships are notoriously transactional / forced) or generally if you meet a mutual friend you're trading on some kind of mutual similarity in work / hobbies or because they offer you something in return. For now, I'll keep living where I want. Who ever wrote this seems to have never lived with a friend as a roommate only to realize that spending too much time with a friend can lead to resentment or the end of the friendship entirely.
• dathinab 3y ago
  > We Seek Solutions Within the Family Unit — Not Outside of It I think one problem is that in the recent 50-100 years (at least in the "west") we messed up what family means. In the past it was a non small support group, consisting of old and young people, people you are related to _and people you are not related to_ but which where "like family" for you and other family members. But today the picture of family (as a support net) is often parents + children, maybe grant parent/grant children if they exist and that's it. I have seen enough situations where even the long term spouse of a child wasn't seen anymore as part of the family. To make matters worse the internet is fully of people trying to spread hate and division, telling you to not accept at all anyone doing anything you don't agree with. But family isn't about accepting or finding it good what they do it's about being there to help them if they really need help, and in turn them being also there for you if needed.
• dionidium 3y ago
  > 5.) Many States Aren’t Safe — For So Many Reasons > I’m not talking about crime, don’t be ridiculous. I am talking about states that have criminalized or significantly curtailed gender-affirming care and body autonomy. This is an interesting question, but you're not going to get the answer from a terminally-online culture-war-addled substacker who thinks that gender-affirming care has a bigger impact on where "marginalized people" choose to live than crime. Worrying about crime is "ridiculous?" For marginalized people -- who are the principal victims of crime, who bear the brunt of criminality in the United States, who express in poll after poll that it's of primary concern to them? No, surely it is a lack of access to gender-affirming care that's motivating the black exodus from North St. Louis. This is simply not serious.
  • kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Crime is measured on the orders of magnitude of small tens to few hundreds per hundreds of thousands of people or so. On the otherhand, these laws affect these groups 100% of the time so long as they remain in these states where its clear their representatives don’t care about their concerns.
    • dionidium 3y ago
      Crime at the societal level is measured at those rates because most places have no murders for decades, whereas the most dangerous neighborhoods — basically all full of “marginalized people” — have staggering rates of violent crime. Violent crime affects 100% of the residents of North St. Louis, I assure you, and is constantly front of mind. And there are far more poor African Americans living in high-crime neighborhoods than there are people worried about gender-affirming care. Frankly, it’s not even close and it’s a sign of something very goofy and broken that this is even a question. And crucially, even if this weren’t true, it’s no justification for pooh-poohing concerns about crime. It’s evidence we’re dealing with a culture-war-poisoned weirdo who believes concern about crime is some kind of fake right-wing issue, when poll after poll show that it is a primary concern of marginalized people living in high-crime cities. It doesn’t mean those other things aren’t important; it just means that this was written by somebody who doesn’t understand the relative prevalence/importance of these issues within literally orders of magnitude. So how could they possibly make reasonable inferences about the causes of related social issues?
• TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  >Many States Aren’t Safe — For So Many Reasons ... places that are super oppressively white. What the _hell_ does that mean? That is extremely racist.
• amriksohata 3y ago
  0-5 Years: I depend on my parents 5-10 Years: I want to learn to be independent 11-20 Years: I want to be independent and free 20-40 Years: Oh crap I need a network of friends and our parents to depend on to help with our kids 40+ Years: Oh crap I'm dependent on the love from my children who moved out
• gumballindie 3y ago
  Because some of our coworkers have no friends and want us to socialise with them, and their insecure managers agree. Therefore some have work in offices and uproot their lives all the while employers have no issue serving remote customers.
• matchbox 3y ago
  I completely agree to this. We moved to TX from MN for the sake of being closer to friends. Within months I can see my social life is improved, I bump into friends casually while picking up kids & walking in the community. I read the Atomic Habits & Tiny Habits few years back and one thing I learned from there is to remove resistances from the habits that one would want to build. Distance is a resistance in building/maintaining relationships. If one want to build better relationships, reducing the physical distance between friends does help.
• xavor 3y ago
  I don't even live on the same continent as my best friends.
• jdkee 3y ago
  "The fetishization of the nuclear family, of course, as well as the building and zoning codes that facilitate that fetishization." Hard to take an author who states something like this as a serious commentator.
• fellowohboy 3y ago
  I was presented with the option to endure a unpromising job for 8+hr a day but be around great friends (hometown), or move to a completely unknown city for a better job but not be around friends. it wasn't an easy choice, but I considered the # of hours of suffering vs joy in either scenario, i went with moving for the job. pandemic and having kids really makes me reconsider whether i made the right choice. when I first moved out of my home town and was single, there would be stretches of days without seeing a smiling face or having a live conversation, but I have somehow gotten used to that - until a visited home when I saw my buddies smile it suddenly reminded me how sad my life was in the new city. but when I live close by to my friends, we wouldn't get together often neither, despite the intense trust we have with each other. i think the alienation/loneliness is the result of being exposed to so much information; minute differences in a persons ability to absorb information (thus pick up new values/hobbies/interests) used to result in very little practical change in someone's day to day life. nowadays, time i spend with old friends (in whom i still place the greatest trust and care) often consist of reminiscing about the past. if I want to talk about new interest or hobbies of mine, I have to find new friends.