8 ms·

I've made more friends more easily in my 40s than any other time in my life, and I'm a relatively quiet and disagreeable person. Making connections with people

• PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Find a group. This is obviously great advice, but most groups don't organically sprout around interests. Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying. And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups? Your local library?
  • henry2023 2y ago
    Climbing gyms
    • dgfitz 2y ago
      Rarely have I met someone at a climbing gym who was a jerk. This is solid advice.
  • idontwantthis 2y ago
    > imagining enjoying Try it and find out if you really don’t like it. Maybe you’ll hear about something else you will like more.
    • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      Yup, this is great advice. Thank you.
  • elcomet 2y ago
    Book clubs, art clubs, movie club... Lot of options
  • f1shy 2y ago
    Specially having same sports interests, does not help in finding people with more or less same values/ world view. I cannot really make good friends with people on the opposite side of my thinking.
    • sandspar 2y ago
      There's lots of clubs that are politically aligned. Board games and Dungeons and Dragons and maker spaces tend to be progressive, certain types of volunteering lean conservative.
    • jsnsnd 2y ago
      [dead]
  • diggan 2y ago
    > Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying There is a wide range of sports :) My mom always tried to force me into team sports like football, hockey and alike, which never really was my thing. But as an adult, I enjoy things like skiing, water-sports, table-tennis and a bunch of other sports, that I see less like "sports" but more like "enjoyable activities", but also really makes it easy to meet people with similar interests :)
  • technothrasher 2y ago
    I’ve found most of my new friends in my 50’s by going to little local museums that interest me, such as a small clock museum and a military history museum, and inserting myself into them by volunteering to help out.
    • ghaff 2y ago
      Not really my thing--but maybe at some point--but there are a ton of volunteer docent tasks at museums, ushering/other tasks at local theater groups, etc. Should probably do more along those lines.
    • sdh9 2y ago
      I volunteered at a museum when I moved to a new city, thinking that I would meet people. I determined that exactly two types of people volunteer at museums: students/recent graduates that want to build a career in that field, or retired folk. I wasn’t in a phase where I desired meeting either of those groups, so while volunteering was a positive experience, the social aspect of it was not. I actually felt a little guilty volunteering-- the selection process was a little competitive and I didn't want somebody who wanted to get a start in their career turned away.
  • NordSteve 2y ago
    Go mentor a high school robotics team, or volunteer to help run events. It's 100% sports, minus the athletic dimension. I see tons of lifetime friendships being made.
  • gritspartan 2y ago
    Local library. Recreation centers. Local board game shops. Events and activities in the community. Volunteering. Religious groups. College campuses often host groups and events from the community. Art classes. Dance classes. Check the local newspaper as they often list events and activities.
    • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      I emphatically agree with this. I suppose I'm just frustrated it's so hard to figure out what your interests are without trying and failing. That's just life, I guess.
      • throw646577 2y ago
        If you don't have "interests" that is in its way a separate question, and it is one that is worth addressing on its own. It is shockingly common, in the modern world, to have only a job and watching-TV-while-doomscrolling-exhausted. But it is worth thinking about. Beyond planned activities, beyond hobbies: what appeals to you at all? Another way to look at it is outwards: what things do I know how to do that could be socially valuable and need an outlet? Like, do you know how to use a 3D printer, do you still vaguely remember how to play a musical instrument from childhood, do you find gardening easy?
  • dorpstein 2y ago
    With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “<x thing you’re interested in> club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!
  • thrw42A8N 2y ago
    Make your own meetup. Honest advice, everybody sort of sees you as the guy to become friends with if you're the leader.
    • sandspar 2y ago
      This also works for hosting things in general, not just meetups. If you host something then everyone there will want to make friends with you.
  • doublepg23 2y ago
    Have you tried DnD? My father has a biweekly DnD session where he’s met a ton of people.
  • 1659447091 2y ago
    > but most groups don't organically sprout around interests. If you are only looking for people with the same niche interest, it will probably be more difficult to find local groups. But if you're open to meeting new people that are interested in social connectivity, local sports teams are the way to go. I've meet friends through co-ed sports that work in fields I would rather not come into much direct contact with: police officers, tsa, tax auditor, etc. People I never would have met otherwise (turns out they are just like other humans; who knew!) Seriously though, they don't all become best friends, but mostly social acquaintances and that works for me. I did get a couple best friends out of it some time ago. > Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying. Kickball. There are no high school/college/main pro leagues, so you avoid that one competitive team that all played on a school sports team. And get a bunch of people looking to socialize while playing a rather silly game no one is expected to excel at. To shore up that reality, join co-ed sports teams. I have witnessed games in both Mens and Womens leagues and they are much more about the competition.
  • cableshaft 2y ago
    > And with the slow enshittification of meetup, where do you find these groups? Meetup still works, although it is slowly enshittifying, I would agree. Taking away features that had always been there systematically so they can sell a subscription service to everyone. Ugh. But for now you can still see lists of meetup events and descriptions and sign up to attend those events without paying. If it weren't for Meetup I wouldn't have stumbled upon a local movies and dinner group last year that has quite a few people I really relate to and we now plan other activities outside of meetup as well. Trying out a few other new meetups next year as well that look maybe a bit promising.
• jokellum 2y ago
  I work as a remote software dev. Joining a volleyball league + run club definitely helped massively for me. > Again, making connections and friends is easy. Being around the same people regularly is difficult. Agreed, 90% of the difficulty making new friends is showing at the same place/event regularly. Remaining 10% is actually being someone people want to be friends with.
• CalChris 2y ago
  Depends on the sport. I used to play pickup basketball. Whereas I recognized the players week to week, I never knew any of them. I only accidentally ran into one of them outside the game once. BTW, I loved the game and remember the players well. They just weren't friends. Then I sailed, crewed raceboats. I got to know many people quite well. There's a lot of social coordination and communication in sailing. Just sitting on the rail on an upwind beat is a conversation, the same conversation every time but like chicken soup for the soul. Also a good crew is lot like a startup. Not easy to break into but worth it.
  • _yb2s 2y ago
    I agree, sailing is a particularly good sport for making friends… however it tends to be mostly older people. I just decided to make friends with people my parents age, and I’ve made a lot of good friends that way regardless.
• phil21 2y ago
  A lot of people will simply not do this, even if they know they should. For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two. Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance is utterly exhausting and incredibly anxiety inducing to me. If I didn't already have friends I could do spontaneous things with, I'm not sure how I'd be able to have any sort of social life at all. I certainly am not alone in this, even if I'm a minority.
  • dinosaurdynasty 2y ago
    > Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)
    • doubled112 2y ago
      It worked this way for me in the neighbourhood. Maybe it was pandemic, maybe it was all that free time, but suddenly we all noticed each other. I had never even spoken to some of these people before. Suddenly we were all spending time in the same place instead of waving as we drove by on our way to work and taking kids to activities. Now I have friends. I don’t go to work then come home and stay inside. Plus working from home I have time to get involved in some of the kid’s activities and made more friends.
    • droidist2 2y ago
      If you don't waste that time scrolling Instagram, Reddit, etc.
    • skeeter2020 2y ago
      If you are or know someone who uses the time savings from not commuting to persue anything outside the house, you are in the vast minority.
• cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  I’ve been cognizant of this for several years now, but almost immediately after I began to act on it, the pandemic hit and threw it all into disarray. Since then I’ve moved which has enabled a massive CoL reduction which is great, but at the same time I’m not sure this is where I want to be for even the next 5-10 years and so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots. Needing to drive to do anything also doesn’t help, as I find driving on anything but practically empty roads unpleasant. There may be a pedestrian/cyclist-friendly city with great public transportation in my future, and so if I make a point to go out and do things consistently it’ll probably be there.
  • qaboutthat 2y ago
    > so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there? (I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really the question is even more pointed!)
    • jsnsnd 2y ago
      [dead]
    • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      Mostly, it boils down to how I’ve traditionally been terrible at maintaining connections to people who aren’t in my immediate vicinity (and conversely, most people I’ve met have also not been great at this). I can count the number of post-move non-immediate-family that I either stay connected to or don’t need to stay constantly connected to because picking up where we left off years ago is effortless on a single hand. It feels bad to make a bunch of friends that I probably won’t be able to keep if I move. Other than that, if it’s likely that I’ll want/need to move some time in the near-ish future, it doesn’t make sense to build a situation that would make that future move more difficult (emotionally or otherwise) than it needs to be. Having a sizable social circle established prior to moving introduces room for messy hesitance and regret.
• moribvndvs 2y ago
  I don’t think it matters that it’s sports specifically, but I agree that the secret ingredient is showing up and putting in the effort consistently and frequently. It’s easier to do that when friendship is a byproduct of something you are interested in or need to do. Another factor that is important is being open-minded, whether that means being a little more willing to explore things that aren’t your wheelhouse or being tolerant of behaviors or lines of thinking that aren’t natural to you. That doesn’t mean you need to pretend to be someone you loathe or surround yourself with insufferable people, but instead find a way to deal with averse concepts in a constructive way, to be just flexible enough to find an enjoyable common ground. Walk away if there isn’t any, or it isn’t worth the effort you have to put in. I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same, and it happens magically and effortlessly. Friendship is work, always. Some people are just less work or pay higher dividends than others. You need patience and the ability to know when a friendship costs more than it’s worth. I think we just tend to have less patience, energy, and flexibility as we get older, but some of that is a choice.
  • droidist2 2y ago
    > I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same This is so true. Just think, why is it that as children we often become friends with the kid who lives next door or across the street? Is it that we magically have the same tastes? Or is it just that we see them all the time?
• PicassoCTs 2y ago
  You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them? That the processes we are part of have one purpose and one purpose only when it comes to social life, to force everyone to invest there whole social life into a company ? That half the apps written here, are to divide and conquer society and use the created misery and loneliness for additional upsales of the withheld happiness? That companies are actively antagonistic to anybody having friends and friendships?
  • OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
    > You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them? As Pat Paulsen might have said, "Picky, picky, picky." Threads about social disconnection come up pretty often on the front page for all that. I don't think the people being ground into dust (and I agree with you that there are an increasing number of them) are on HN. People posting here seem to have the financial wherewithal to break the bonds of work at least occasionally and often more than that.
  • lentil_soup 2y ago
    That's a very big generalisation. While people here will tend to be in tech we all come from different places, have different experiences and work in vastly different things
  • 65 2y ago
    Sheesh. A little nihilist much? Yes, modern capitalist society is really great at making human needs scarce (friends, relationships) and human wants abundant (junk food, video games). But I don't think there's really a point in stewing too much about the society we live in, it's easier to accept that this is our reality, and that we have to work extra hard for the things in life that matter. Giving up only creates a much worse situation for yourself. People back in the day had to do extremely difficult manual labor all day long, think of it as though the "extremely difficult labor" has changed into social labor - from making friends to dating to maintaining relationships. And you know you don't have to be a workaholic, right? I work 9-5, I have time for other things in life. I have a few friends at the office but I'm not thinking "work is life" ever.
• jvm___ 2y ago
  A regular running group probably exists in your area, either on meetup or Facebook. "Meet Saturday morning 6:30am" is the group you want. Show up, run, be friendly. 6 months from now you'll have 10-50 friends.
• eximius 2y ago
  My problem is that I don't want to play sports or doing a running club or any thing like that. And it isn't that I'm not willing to put in some work, it's that I want to make friends who want to do _other things_. I'm not sure how to find good public groups for people like me with the intent of finding friends for less public interests like video games, board games, books, etc.
  • wakawaka28 2y ago
    For games stuff, you can go to game stores and competitions. There are book clubs too. The trouble with a lot of these things is that most people don't actually want to make friends who are all about either of those things. They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. If you're single and want to date out of your friend group, you might have to broaden your horizons to include stuff that the opposite sex tends to like. You won't be welcome in many of those contexts either.
    • pavel_lishin 2y ago
      > They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. Sure, but why is it a given that the game group is all the same age? The groups I'm in vary from somewhere below the drinking age (never asked), to people in their 60s and above. Now, granted, I'm 40 - I'm more likely to build a long-term friendship with the older folks than the 20 year olds - but so far, everyone seems to be getting along fairly well, and I've had these people over at my house.
      • wakawaka28 2y ago
        Board games tend to attract young people. I know there can be a few oddballs who make the group technically appear to range from 12 to 80 or something, and like one or two girls who make it technically have women there. But if 90% of the group is 12-25 year old boys and young men, this seems like an inefficient way to meet people you can really hang with as an older guy, and also an extremely inefficient way to get dates. As long as you enjoy it and know what you're getting into I guess it's fine. Sometimes being the old man with a few extra resources can be beneficial. But I'm not looking for more work than I already have.
• xmprt 2y ago
  > I have found that people generally understand the value of friendship and are welcoming to newcomers I feel like there's a curve where in college people are super open to making friends until mid-late 20s where friend groups are well established/people are focused on their careers and then people are more open to making friends again in mid 30s where people lose touch with old friends and are looking to make new ones (either through kids or other shared activities).
• aqme28 2y ago
  Agreed. I built a big friend group in a short time in my city just by going to the same club every weekend. There’s a second part to this though. You have to put in some effort to break people out of “club friend” into “real life friend.” Make plans and invite them.
• downut 2y ago
  [flagged]
• tiffanyh 2y ago
  Are you a parent? I ask because your friend group will radically be shaped by who you’d kids friends are.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    This was true for people I know who had kids 20 years ago, but not so much today. When I became a parent, I thought I’d be meeting and hanging around with all the other parents, but so far (kid is now 12), this didn’t end up happening. Kids all hang out online now. Nobody wants to get together in person. My kid has had some friends for years, where I still have not even met the friends’ parents. In the rare event one of them wants to come over to our home to visit, the parent quietly drops the kid off at the end of our driveway and speeds away like a ninja.
    • tiffanyh 2y ago
      Must be age dependent. I have a 4-year old, it’s 100% whoever my kids friends = my friends.
• SergeAx 2y ago
  > You just gotta show up and see the same people every week over and over. I second that. I started dancing social Argentinian tango at about 35, first just visiting classes, then practicas, then milongas. I now have more friends from there than from my school and university years.
• __rito__ 2y ago
  I definitely agree with this. Also know that things outside of sports work great too, like amateur chess/photography club, local library reading groups, local hackers' club, voluntary organisations, etc. I am saying this from experience. And will recommend.
• kwar13 2y ago
  Well said. I have had the exact same experience. As I have gotten older I have made more friends. More importantly, more meaningful connections that are by choice and not by circumstances.
• nullderef 2y ago
  I agree with this completely. My issue with sport clubs was that as an adult I felt I joined too late. They all were already friends for some time, and although not impossible, it's harder to fit in.