I fortunately have close friends, but not through any of my own doing. Over the years, there were a lot of friendly extroverts that encouraged me to hang out and join them for burger night, or they’d message me when they were in town. Everyone I dated took the initiative to ask me out, including my wife. I always feel awkward when I reach out to people, as though I’m bothering them somehow, so I tend to avoid doing so. Once someone is a close friend, I go out of my way to maintain the connection, but it’s that in-between stage of “acquaintance” where I have a hard time.
I had a bit of a revelation when I left my last job. There were very few comments from coworkers when I left. I don’t think I was disliked (hopefully?), but I don’t think anyone really considered me their friend either. Looking back I think I came across as somewhat of a NPC to coworkers. I preferred to eat lunch by myself and I only discussed the business topic at hand during meetings unless someone else brought up a personal discussion.
I wouldn’t mind to start more personal discussions, but I’m always concerned it might come across the wrong way, so the furthest I seem to get is “how was your weekend?”
Something that's hard for me to explain is that "making friends is so hard it's easy"
What I mean by that is, social anxiety is so high, population-level self-absorption is so high, people are so lonely... that for the most part if you just approach someone and behave as if you're friends... they'll go for it.
There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster)
> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster)
This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years. Back then, you are constantly meeting new people, and seeing them regularly in class and on campus. People that age don't have a "max occupancy" number when it comes to making friends. As an adult in the working world, the opposite is true.
Outside of that uni environment, a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again. Most people cannot make a first impression that good.
Outside of school/uni, people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers. Friendship groups begin to quickly narrow around this time as well, as people get married, go to professional schooling of some kind, and start hanging out mostly with people that are very similar to them.
I can't say that you're wrong, because everyone's environment/experience is different.
But this is so outside my perception of the world and that of everyone I've ever spoken to (across a swatch of demographics across North America and Europe).
Friendship groups narrow because it isn't EASY anymore (you're not all on campus).
Nobody actually desires for them to narrow.
If you can make it *easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days
>If you can make it easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days*
That's definitely not true, or at least not my experience. Everyone I ask out to join me for various activities, has an excuse, usually busy or other plans with someone else, and they never follow up for a rain check.
People over 30, even single/child-free, seem to be very busy with their established routines, hobbies, and narrow circle of long term friends, that they just aren't open to new people anymore or at least making time for them, no matter how cool or sociable you are.
Seems like time is the main cuprit, or lack thereof. If you already have things to do and enough friends that occupy all your free time, or barley have enough time to meet the friends you already have, then when are you gonna meet new people?
Making friends is a two way street. You could be the coolest, funniest, most sociable guy ever, but if everyone you meet already had enough friends or feels they don't need you in their life then ....
The only shot to make this easy for you is meeting other loners.
In my experience, and everyone's is different, the key is to find a common activity/interest. I do consulting work, so I often change teams and walk in knowing no one. I've been complimented multiple times about noticeably increasing team cohesion. You know what I do? I start regular/consistent activities with the team. "Tuesday is my go out to lunch day, everyone is invited." I mean I literally just stand up in the middle of work and say that loud enough for surrounding people to hear. Sometimes I go alone, especially at first. But eventually people trickle in and then it doesn't take long before a group of 4-5 people are going to lunch every Tuesday. You can similarly start a regular happy hour if one is not already going on. People join who aren't even on my team, because they heard me invite everyone.
Outside of work, the path is to join a hobby. Find a softball league or something like that. This has built in consistent interaction and fosters expansion into happy hours after the games or other activities.
If there's anyone in your circle of acquaintances that has a birthday, tell them you'd really like to buy them a beer to celebrate their birthday. Ask open ended, "Hey, is there a day this week you're free? I owe you a birthday beer." Most adults no longer get real celebrations for their birthdays and will appreciate it if there's not some other social hurdle (actually busy, afraid you are trying to date them, etc). Some of those social hurdles (like afraid it's a date) can be overcome by suggesting it's a group thing. To use the work example again, "Hey team, it's Susan's birthday this week. I think it would be cool if we took her to lunch or something. Anyone else in?"
To put context on this, I am introverted and autistic (very low social needs). I do these behaviors explicitly for outcome oriented purposes (bring people joy, grow career).
In my experience both of you are right. There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships, especially if they have not lived in the same place for 20+ years. On the other hand there are a bunch of people who are so much in their routines they are not open to do anything out of the ordinary. The ironic thing is that even those are often desperate for friends, they just struggle to break their routines (something you definitely must do to make friends IMO).
Which leads me to a point that is missing in the post, if you want to get to know new people, be open to new things. Just say yes if somebody asks you to go to the arcade, if you really can't but want to do something, follow up on the rain check.
>There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships
Being desperate for friendships, in my experience, usually has the opposite effect of making people avoid you even more. Especially if you're over 30. People seem to be wired to think that "if you're a grown adult and have no friends by now, then it's probably because there's something wrong with you, and is risky for me to be the first one to take a leap of faith in you if nobody has done it so far". Usually people who already have many friends easily attract more, as it signals you're already a sociable and valuable "tribe member". Same with romantic relationships.
>Just say yes if somebody asks you to go to the arcade
That assumes there are people who ask you. If nobody asks you, then what? In my experience after I moved abroad, almost nobody asked me anywhere despite me learning the local language, making efforts to socialize, strike up conversations and exchange phone numbers. Even when I was the one initiating asking people to go places rarely end in a positive response. I think it's a cultural thing. The country I live now, people are very cold, distanced and keep to themselves, and meeting and engaging people you don't know very well is not really something wildly accepted.
Perhaps you can consider moving to a country other than the UK?
Just kidding, I've met plenty of wonderful and sociable UK people, and the joke could work (or not work, depending on what you make of my lousy humour) on almost any country.
Edit: seeing your other comment about "German speaking parts of Europe", my next guess to use in a joke would be Germany, but similarly, I've met a ton of very sociable Germans.
>or i'm at coffee shop now, want to stop by and catch up. this is how you can turn casual associates into friends.
This is not my experience at all in my new host country. I tried this a lot and never got anyone to join. People here seem to have their schedule pre-planned, and expect you to schedule meetups in advance if you want them to join you. Sending texts like "I'm having a coffee in town, join me if you want" to people I just met always left me alone, with replies coming after 2+ hours or the next day like "sorry, I was busy/got other plans/saw your text too late".
It's how I spent my 30th birthday alone. I texted a bunch of people 10h in advance if they want join me later that Friday/Saturday night for birthday drinks and maybe going out dancing later. Out of about 12 people, nobody came. :(
It's a cultural issue I think in the German speaking part of Europe. Brazilians told me spontaneous meetings with people are completely normal there, but here people don't spontaneously join invites from people they aren't very close with and expect you to schedule these well in advance.
As a Brazilian living in a Nordic country and working in a different Nordic country, I can corroborate that the expectation from the locals here is that everything in planned in advance (with plenty of notice: 1 week or more); I can also corroborate that Brazilians in general do things spontaneously.
No disrespect, but I’m guessing you’re not married with kids. That phase is very busy and focused and people have dramatically less time compared to uni days.
> This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years
I'll happily state the contrary:
Supply easily saturates demand at the university but after that most are on their own. So, demand stays the same but supply drops off (because you have much less available time).
So this is where you can shine.
> knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again
No, I talk to people while waiting for the train or during my commute. I don't ask them to see them again, I just see them again because they have the same commute as me.
Always say hi but never give them the feeling that you expect them to spend time talking with you. This is also why it's easier to talk while waiting for the train, it's a limited time and they feel easier knowing that you won't be potentially annoying them during the whole train ride.
From there on it's easier, you slowly get to know a handful of acquaintances and you can easily "escalate" with the people you like.
> This is also why it's easier to talk while waiting for the train,
> it's a limited time and they feel easier knowing that you won't
> be potentially annoying them during the whole train ride.
Wait, how does that work? If you're waiting at the same stop, you'll board the same train, right? Unless they wait for the next one to avoid you? Wouldn't they be concerned that you'll board together and continue making conversation for the entire commute?
The bus arriving is a natural break point for ending the conversation, I'd say. There's no social obligation to keep talking once you are both are busy boarding the bus and finding a seat, so it's a good time to say farewell.
> a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again
I’ve had serendipitous conversations which were just fun. Nothing knocking my socks off. Just good conversation; we share numbers and I try to remember when we’re in the same area again.
> people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers
Couldn’t disagree more. Not everyone wants to chat all the time. But I’ve had loads of interesting conversations with strangers at bars and restaurants, coffee shop lines, airport terminals, sports-gear shops and of course holiday destinations.
This is a big part of my "So hard it's easy" philosophy.
Most people are so bad at conversation (waiting patiently for their turn to tell a completely unrelated anecdote), that just being able to have an organic chat is pretty "knock your socks off behavior"
You’re right but you’re also wrong. I know of social circles in middle age that have largely locked down. People have their routines and responsibilities and loved ones, and that’s that. They make little effort to clear space for new relationships. I also know other circles, also middle aged, where people have made it a priority to not do that. There is still flux and change in these circles.
Its a choice, basically. Not an easy one and there is no right or wrong here, but it’s not inevitable that midlife is characterised by social lockdown.
Location matters. In Silicon Valley, many people you meet are not locals, they come and they go. Like the tide. Other places this is different, like small towns where everyone knows everyone else. Some places people are more defensive, less friendly. Being an extrovert in a city where everyone is a visitor doesn’t help form lasting friendships and a faux pas in a small town can become a scarlet letter that follows you forever.
As others have noted, age matters. That’s well documented in the research from what I can tell but it’s also just a simple consequence of having marriages, raising children, etc… Coincidently that’s another set of life outcomes that are very impacted by place. Silicon Valley is known for that. “Man Jose” is not a great place to start a family, and career driven men from widely diverse ethnic and socio-cultural groups don’t form much of a community.
"Man Jose" is characterized by endless sprawl of modest single-family housing and is full of ethnic communities (South Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese) and families raising young children. It has more small neighborhood churches than almost anywhere else I have lived. Describing San Jose as a land of antisocial young men strikes me as frankly bizarre.
by that metric, most people's lives are nothing but failure. Everybody has a human need for companionship and to feel like they belong. That's hard to accomplish when juxtaposed against an economic system pushes people to work first and live second.
BTW Bezos is about as poor an example as you could pick. He absolutely has more free time than I do, unless by some miracle he cooks, cleans and drives himself everywhere. "Free time" here means he can choose the exact parameters of how to spend his day and not worry about paying the mortgage or tuition ̶o̶r̶ ̶r̶i̶s̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶r̶i̶a̶g̶e̶.
2. you just demonstrated that even Bezos is definitely not free from obligations and time commitments, such as his marriage, running a huge company, etc. The fact that he can afford to do anything in the world money-wise does not relieve even him from having to make "free time" to spend on family or else it will fail, etc. So, totally a matter of priorities.
Maybe. I happened to be in Thailand right now hanging out with expats. It's not really my cup of tea, but many of them hang out at the beach all day every day for months and even years, and pay next to nothing. They have no personal shoppers or money concerns, and infinite amounts of "free time". I couldn't live like that and I choose to invest such "free time" into work (currently) and I'm fine with that. But if you want to optimize specifically for free time, this is certainly doable without being Bezos, some people here worked washing dishes in the US.
It sounds like a paradox that there would be simultaneous epidemics of loneliness and and standoffishness but they cause each other. In one direction the cause is obvious, in the other lack of socialization causes people's "calibration" to go off as their learned tolerance to unexpected things fades. Real social interactions involve a lot of imperfection and what you sometimes see is that without being desensitized, lonely people's standards can be unreachable. (Other commenters have alluded to this being a result of hyper stimulation on TikTok but it predates it.)
Yes, because adults in general have less time to spend with friends than someone who's younger, more mobile (live downtown vs the suburbs) and has fewer responsibilities.
But loneliness is up among all generations, including those who are in the right time and right place (post-secondary). Many reasons for this as well, including the impact of internet and social media. People are less willing to give others a chance because Tinder/Tiktok/IG has trained them to think that another more interesting experience could be right around the corner.
Do you mind sharing your nationality? This rings true of the opinions of many people I know in Europe but I would be very surprised if any Americans felt this way. Genuinely curious.
I don't know, I have made friends well into my adult life, including after having kids. Granted it is not in the same frequency as in the uni days but still during the years I have found some. Mostly people I have bumped into at work but were not directly above or below me or via other friends who introduced me to their friends. I am not an extrovert or too introvert and I don't know why it seems like everyone here must declare themselves as if they are in the extreme of this bell curve, probably they are somewhere in the middle, like the rest of us.
I think this is highly dependent on luck. If you're friendly and happen to live near other, outgoing, friendly families, then the odds of befriending them are higher. It also helps to have a friendly spouse (it helps a LOT).
I met someone at Strangeloop because they were a doppelganger of an acquaintance from some years previously. I now realize that I had this attitude like we already friends because of that unrealized similarity. Attitude and any alignment in interests is more than enough, or alphabetical. :)
There was a girl who I couldn't stand in high school... but we bumped into each other in a train station on the opposite side of the country... and hung out all afternoon.
Just being from the same small town made an immediate (but brief) connection
I had the same experience in 6th grade with a friend who moved to Michigan from Iowa. Last names "M" and "O" put us next to each other in class and the rest is history I suppose.
It feels corny to say, but you really can't make old friends.
I don't disagree with your post, but this only works in communities where:
1. Trust hasn't been eroded (i.e. fraudsters/salesmen do not predominate)
2. There is an external stimuli towards making friends (i.e. socializing is being perceived as a good thing)
3. There is an internal stimuli towards making friends (i.e. disregarding #2 and all other personal needs met, one still feels the need to connect with others)
The fact that you've got the results you mention here shows that you live in a community with mentally healthy, although isolated, individuals. You'll find drastically different results in other parts of the world (third-world, for instance). Plenty of people wouldn't talk to you if they see no financial benefit in doing it (even a measly amount can have a profound effect). I used to make fun of this but it's not an easy thing to swallow and can get you quite depressed.
The "loneliness epidemic" is just a reflection of the eroded values and misplaced goals that are now commonplace around the world.
>1. Trust hasn't been eroded (i.e. fraudsters/salesmen do not predominate)
I have become much more guarded and cynical in the past few years after a handful of interactions like this. At a bar or restaurant, and strike up a conversation with someone, only to have them, 15-30 minutes later, introduce me to their MLM, FX, Trading Mentor, House Flipping, etc. scam, and then swiftly disengage when I am uninterested.
I'm not a good looking dude, nor am I an extrovert. So I now just assume anyone approaching me in public is trying to scam me.
I feel similar, but mostly from leftover baggage from working retail. If someone says something nice to you when you're working a cash register, 9 times out of 10 they want you to do something for them and you're about 10 seconds away from them flipping over to a verbal abuse strategy to get what they want
Makes me even more convinced that I should go out of my way being nice to people working retail it. I do not think I ever get anything "out of it" except feeling a bit more positive in my outlook on life. Then at the local store we have the extremes where people call the cashiers by name, sharing personal stories etc. That makes me feel like I am part of a community, even if it is not a type of relationship I can nourish in the same way..
> At a bar or restaurant, and strike up a conversation with someone, only to have them, 15-30 minutes later, introduce me to their MLM, FX, Trading Mentor, House Flipping, etc. scam, and then swiftly disengage when I am uninterested.
Fuck me. I can't even imagine this is a thing in the real world. It sounds like trying to make friends in the YouTube comments section.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I’ve seen too many people get exploited and shit on by people behind their backs while they keep the nicest demeanor face to face. Grown adults at that. Some of these people were well into their 30s.
Places where it can be assumed people are comfortable with an approach:
- A public place/destination (bar is okay, bus isn't)
- They are not in the middle of speaking (lulls in conversations are fine)
- They are not blocking sensory inputs (don't approach if you see headphones)
This also isn't magic. My success isn't 100%. It's about 30%
Which means that 7/10 people don't want to talk to me (which is fine).
But it also means that I can pretty reliably make a friend/day if I were so inclined
A bit about me, I'm a short man (5'3") with pretty solid facial symmetry and good grooming but I'm NOT particularly attractive.
I'm putting that context because it is important:
- Because of maleness I'm automatically safer in most situations (as in, I can approach someone, go off solo w/them and be confident I won't be assaulted)
- I'm short, so I'm not REALLY a physical threat to people
- Hygiene implies social consideration/health
- Facial symmetry automatically encourages trust
- Being TOO attractive (and I'm nowhere close) can be intimidating to some people
Getting a stranger to have a conversation with you doesn’t mean you made a friend that day, at least not by and definition that’s valuable to me. It’s the first step, but what’s the conversion rate here? Most you probably never speak to again, a small number may reach acquaintance level, and even fewer end up as a friends. We probably have a different idea of what a friend is.
My definition of a friend is defined in another comment response. Basically, "will hang 50%+ of the time an invitation is issued (schedule permitting), and both of us would enjoy ourselves).
> You'll find drastically different results in other parts of the world (third-world, for instance). Plenty of people wouldn't talk to you if they see no financial benefit in doing it (even a measly amount can have a profound effect).
I live in Ecuador, so third-world. The people here are not really after money, unless it's very easy to get. I mean, 30% of the "economy" here involves standing in the road with a mango, hoping someone gives you some coin for it (literally). Those same people could go get a real job and do some real hard work if they wanted actual cash. They don't. They like doing basically nothing and getting along okay from it. Not saying you're wrong, but latin america doesn't work this way.
I'm not sure this has the effect you are suggesting but it did make me laugh. Makes you wonder who decides what is a first world country and what is a third world country. In some ways the existence of a significant portion of American's (those unfortunate enough to be poor) is worse than a third world existence.
Clear cut according to a definition absolutely nobody uses any more. There's no longer a Soviet sphere even if you wanted to use that definition and the post-soviet sphere has diverged dramatically.
If you're a legal citizen, and in one of the states that opted in to Medicade expansion (many states, all "red" states did not, despite it being literally free money from their prospective.)
A bigger problem is that the limits are quite low (Max income limit will be exceeded by someone making minimum wage in a lot of states. It's only $18k if single, going up to $36k for a family of 4.
That means there's a HUGE donut hole problem of making too much for Medicade, but not nearly enough to actually afford healthcare - or they maybe have some crappy employer plan that has a high deductible that would bankrupt them to even approach.
Making friends is not hard in the way that general relativity is hard, it's hard in the way that digging a trench is hard. You have to do a lot of grunt work for a very long time in order to see results. And there are no shortcuts, you have to do it all "by hand" or it doesn't work.
I have a rather tighter notion of a "good friend". It includes things like "will not steal from me", "won't betray my confidences", "will be straight with me". Otherwise they're just mates; people I feel OK hanging out with.
I have no good friends just now, and I haven't had good friends for quite a few years. I don't think my standards are exacting; I have mates, but I just wouldn't rely on them. I'd be quite surprised to learn that they were relying on me.
A good friend is a scarce treasure. If you're lucky enough to have one, hang on tight.
[Edit] I don't think you can plan to make a "good friend". It involves trust, which involves time. You can make friends with someone in an evening, but I've never had a "good friend" that I've known for less than a few months. All of my good friends were people I'd known for several years, but it doesn't need to take that long.
We're quibbling over terminology. To me, a "good friend" is a relationship that lasts for a long time, maybe a lifetime, and survives significant challenges. It doesn't have to be a kidney, but I think a friendship should survive, for example, a relocation. Otherwise I would call it an acquaintance, not a friend.
Acquaintances are indeed easy to make. The problem is, that kind of relationship is fragile and transient and superficial. I think most people want more. I know I do.
The relocation point is interesting. I have a lot of friendships that are in 'good friend' territory when we're in the same place, but otherwise go dormant for long periods. I'm ok with this and generally don't feel a need to try to change this dynamic with people. I guess they aren't close friends in exactly the way that you're describing, but they are definitely a lot more than acquaintances.
In a strange way I even feel that it can be a testament to the strength of the underlying friendship that we can pick up where we left off after years of minimal contact. I'm actually grateful for these kinds of relationships. I really don't have the time, energy, or desire to keep up ongoing text/email/social media conversations with all these people, but when we are able to meet up I have a great time and find it hugely valuable.
> we can pick up where we left off after years of minimal contact
Sure, but you have to actually do that from time to time.
I've lost count of the number of people I thought I was really close with who moved away insisting that they would keep in touch, and then I never hear from them again, ever after reaching out.
(Having kids is another reliable "friendship"-killer.)
Yes, I've never had a friendship survive a relocation. Not to say that I dislike or resent any of these people at all; we simply never talk anymore.
Kids could possibly do the same especially if your friends are not also having kids at the same time. Kids can also easily contribute to the making of new acquaintances (parents of other kids) as well. These might turn into friendships, or might fade out quickly once the kids' interests diverge (or they grow up and leave the nest).
I think I'd count those "dormant but not dead" relationships as good friends, myself, provided that we end up seeing each other semi-regularly (say, minimum every couple years or so).
+1 to this. I have a lot of problems maintaining relationships of any sort once the "proximity effect" no longer applies. I suspect many people do, which is why most people lose all their school friends after they leave school, for instance.
I like the straightforward, logical approach -- it's helpful for me to think about the process in those terms. Thank you.
However, thinking about the process this way makes it really apparent that I've got no desire in trying to make friends -- each of those steps individually feels like a nearly insurmountable nightmare for me... much less doing all of them (and more than once!).
The little bit you know about me from this thread... would you want to grab a beer if all you had to do was read the text and confirm you were available?
These steps ARE scary for some people... and that's okay... I'm happy to do it. I just want to get to you know you!
I'd probably choose not to grab a beer -- unless the social cost/effort in saying no was higher than saying yes. Quite likely I'd feel put upon with having to respond in a way that I thought didn't offend you...and all by pithy text messages. What a hassle!
Totally get that's a me problem though and I'd fall into your 70%.
Thanks for the insights though -- I find the concept of friendship fascinating (if perplexing).
To add to this, there is also no guarantee that all that trench digging will yield anything substantial. Relationships often evolve in ways that both parties least expect. It can be a dice roll whether the final outcome is good or bad.
I found positive social interaction as a baseline really rings true - a smile and the nod type thing - post-lockdown in Texas. Great to practice manners again and laugh at mixing up direction of traffic in the grocery store. Bumbling around in a mask in a hurry was not pleasant, this is nicer so I behave the same!
> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it
This is true, but only if you're attractive and somewhat charismatic. I would say that means it doesn't apply to the majority of people (who are plain or ugly and not particularly charismatic or actively repulsive).
It's not only social anxiety that forbids people. It's also failed relationships that bruise your desire to try again. In my case I failed people enough time not to want to bother someone else :)
> I always feel awkward when I reach out to people, as though I’m bothering them somehow, so I tend to avoid doing so.
Sometime around 30 it hit me like a swinging log to my introverted face that the reason I felt that way was because that's how I felt when people reached out to me.
It really shook my perspective to realize that many people like having someone reaching out to them and they are not annoyed by it.
Math makes this part of the human condition. I honestly think that the solution for the shy (like you and I) is to value the relationships that these extroverts offer. At least a couple of the extroverts will think you're wonderful, and the other people that they will accidentally bring into your life through their gregariousness will cover the range from extreme introvert to extreme extrovert and everything in between. You will be meeting those introverts through a person who they trust, which is your best opportunity for successfully connecting with other shy people.
The only caveats are that you can't focus on one extrovert; get to know more than one, they're happy to talk. Focusing your explorations on one extrovert puts too much burden on the extrovert, and they want to share their time with a lot of people. The second caveat is to not let the extrovert take advantage of you, because a lot of extroverts are con-men/sales-types.
edit: 97% of the good friends I have had in my adult life were the result of a single extrovert talking to me out of the blue in my high school cafeteria. Through her, I met my first real girlfriend, and met two of the members of the band I'd end up singing in and touring with in my 20s. Still friends 30 years later, so I guess she liked me.
If people are going out of their way to approach you (especially women), then it's probably down to you being attractive or at the very least above average.
Something happened within the last year, either to the general social environment around me or my own demeanor. I used to be able to go out and speak to people, have convos, people would even approach me.
This year has been much different though. When I go out no one wants to talk, except for straight lunatics. At the bar the other night the only guy who wanted to talk went on a tirade about “the Jews” and kept asking if I was a Jew. A couple years ago I could have had a nice conversation with someone who had just sat next to me.
Concerningly, this seems to be a self-reinforcing situation. If everyone willing to have a conversation is a lunatic, of course you wouldn't want to talk to anybody.
Surely a coincidence, but one of the last people I spontaneously socialized with seemed completely coherent and present, yet spent the better part of an hour warning me that jews are building a moon base to control the world from (with the help of Elon Musk of course).
I was left completely flabbergasted. He had a job, a good one, he was somewhat articulate, very friendly, and yet… Fully bought into the Jewish conspiracy, reptilian agenda type stuff. I couldn’t help but wonder if mild schizophrenia was involved.
At any rate, I’m content to keep to myself for longer than usual.
It could also be that the OP possesses traits which are notable and desirable to the right people.
I've barely exchanged a few sentences with someone before and they immediately stick out to me; not because they are attractive physically, but I notice something about their character that is desirable or rare.
On the other hand, attractive women sometimes get harassed. If you are an attractive man, many people will just generally
automatically be nice but also respectful toward you. Then you could end up with a cheery disposition because from your point of view the world is just a friendly, respectful place, and people are even nicer to you (or you could turn into a spoiled jerk, there are lots of paths).
> had a bit of a revelation when I left my last job. There were very few comments from coworkers when I left
Can't remember who said this to me, but it stuck: nobody remembers congratulatory calls for a new job. But you never forget each person who reached out when you were fired or let go.
It's fun but ephemeral to celebrate. It hurts to share pain, but it’s rewarding. When I find people my gut wants to share burdens with, I listen: they became close friends.
> the furthest I seem to get is “how was your weekend?”
Not a social expert here, but that isn't a bad start! Sure, it's a bit small-talk-y, but it can open up more interesting conversation topics. Assuming the person you're talking to give you more than just "oh, it was fine", anyway.
You can also modify it to "did you do anything interesting over the weekend?" And then if they say something specific, you can follow up with deeper questions about what they tell you they did, and go from there.
I get that it's hard, though. I considered myself an "extroverted introvert" (and even an "introverted extrovert", on my more socially-energetic days), though pandemic isolation has weakened the extrovert part. I often feel like asking deeper follow-up questions is intrusive and somehow bothersome, but I think the first step is to just make yourself not care, and ask anyway. Listen to how the person responds, and you should be able to get an idea if they do want to talk more about it, or if they'd rather not. If not, you can slow down and disengage. But if they do, then that's a good sign to continue.
«[…] slang used by millenials to denote people who act as if they are being told by someone to act in a specific manner, although that may not be the case. Using this abbreviation, the commentator or the creator is poking fun at the other person for acting in a certain manner.»
Right word, wrong meaning. In the result you quoted, a person's intelligence is being compared to that of a NPC, implying that the person can't think for themselves and does whatever they're told like how NPCs in games act. The gp seems to imply a slightly different meaning, where a person is thought of as being not being a real person, and is only someone you go to for transactional work related stuff.
Whichever meaning, NPC is a recent insidious method of dehumanizing people that ranks right up there with labels like "pigs," "rats," and "cockroaches."
This tactic is essentially a first prerequisite for mass violence. It's sure to increase incidences of mentally ill shooters viewing everyone around them as bots in a video game. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26330024209169...
I was extremely disheartened to hear my son describe someone as an NPC the other day. It really only functions to belittle and negatively categorize people. Worse still is that if someone truly does lack cognitive ability such that they do “follow the script”, the last thing they need is someone perhaps only marginally more intelligent to identify and discriminate their deficits.
It’s just a miserable lens to view others through. It’s quite popular with the kids, though.
Perhaps it’s better than what I grew up with, which was calling anything you didn’t like “gay” or “faggy”. Ugh. Sometimes we set a low bar.
It is really popular, and when I point out the problems with it, they say I'm overreacting and that they obviously don't mean it in a dehumanising way, but then lo and behold immediately after someone will come and say they actually do believe that some people are robots or somehow less human than others, confirming my suspicion that this is a genuine problem
It's also one of the things, along with other things, that signals to me that intelligence and specifically mental health ableism are going to be the huge dividing problem coming up. Specifically, do we know how to function as a society without being able to discriminate based on mental qualities?
Do you see the irony in having the meaning of words being completely preprogrammed by what someone else want you to think and feel in a discussion about the word NPC? You know, context matters.
NPC has always meant a non-human in a video game. What's new is applying it to people in the real world; it's textbook dehumanization. This is literally how many people use the word, as another commenter below experienced multiple times. It serves zero purpose for me to go around thinking "NPC means X", when everyone else is "NPC means Y."
My first instinct was to say this seems like an overreaction to a joke, but this is a meme that originated from 4chan and the worst parts of reddit, so you might not be far off, given the track records for violence there.
Whenever I say it's a problem people are there to say I'm overreacting, but literally every time someone pops up out of the woodwork and confirms that they genuinely believe that some people are really NPCs, i.e. that they have no "soul" or self and are internally autonomous, like a computer.
Origin predates computer RPG's. It's from tabletop role playing games, and stands for "non player characters".
NPCs are the characters that the Dungeon Master (DM) creates to guide and influence the story, but the player characters (PCs) are the focus of the story. It's collaborative storytelling about the PCs adventure. An NPC is, by definition, not the hero.
Another meaning that has started to become prevalent is the conspiracy theory that some people don't experience qualia and have no internal "souls", i.e. they don't actually exist they are just robots. See twitter every time someone points out that some people don't have an internal voice or can't see images in their mind. There will be a chorus of people who are genuinely horrified and claim that this means that the person is not a real human but actually a robot. It sounds dramatic and I think people might even downvote me for this comment, but I've seen it quite a lot and increasingly often
NPC has, for some, become a term to completely dehumanise, in an almost moral panic kind of way. In a way that's like "what if the people I know are actually NPCs?"
NPC as in someone who is unremarkable, is basic and the same as everyone else, hence the name a non-playable character (moreso referring to a background characater).
> I preferred to eat lunch by myself and I only discussed the business topic at hand during meetings unless someone else brought up a personal discussion.
Probably, they thought that you did not like them.
Very brief summary: a personal anecdote about forming good friends followed up by advice for how to have better conversions (vulnerability, curiosity) and how to meet more people who will become friends (meet people but filter out most of them, take initiative with following up), and lastly how to deepen friendships.
As someone who has a fair number of close friends, I think this is a good post with lots of solid advice. And it's written well! Personally I've been lucky to just naturally meet and form my best friends over time, but I definitely think taking initiative and following up are important to maintaining a close friendship.
A general point in this post I also like is that making and keeping close friends may require work and energy, rather than being something that life just throws your way. I intentionally try to periodically message friends, come out to places they live, just generally keep in touch; as one gets older people move about and it's harder to maintain your closest friendships, but it is possible!
Last comment: this is a very pragmatic and analytical post with a lot of discussions of things you can do, and not much discussion of how you should feel. I'd add this - just CARE. Appreciate the people in your life and let that appreciation guide you.
Great article, though it does give a sort of programmy-algorithmic answer to one of life's great questions. Not saying that's bad, just unexpected.
I was actually thinking about it today. Here's an awkward truth about friendships that everyone needs to get comfortable with: often one of you is more interested in the relationship than the other. You know what I mean. For instance, I was invited to a wedding a few weeks ago. It never occurred to me to write to this buddy in many years, I didn't invite him to my wedding, but he invited me to his. I had a great time, we caught up and had a good talk. The same has happened the other way round, I'm sure. People I like a lot and contact, but they don't contact me. Yet when we hang out, everyone has a good time.
If you act weird about these relationships, you lose them. You don't want to do that, because marginal relationships are maybe the most rewarding to maintain, IME. People doing different things to you in different places bring a lot more into your mix than the ones you see every day. There also tend to be many of these relationship-seeds, so your close friends will grow from some of them.
I think that’s any close relationship: the internets like to say if you don’t get 50/50 - hit the lawyer, but reality is it is never 50/50. You won’t be in any long term relationship if you don’t accept that.
Michelle Obama posted this recently (that I agree with very much)
‘’’
michelleobama
Verified
As an adult, I’ve lived in a number of places, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve only ever had one real home. My home is my family. My home is Barack.
But here’s the thing—our marriage has never been perfectly 50-50. One of us is always needing more or giving more. We have to be willing to listen to each other, honestly and without defensiveness. Only then, can we evolve together.
Over the years, a lot of young people have asked me about marriage. And my response usually goes something like this: You have to prepare yourself for long stretches of discord and discomfort. You have to learn how to make real compromises in the way you’ve lived as an individual. Glamorizing a relationship while you’re dating will lead you straight to difficulty once you’re married. You can’t paper over problems when you’re living with someone day in and day out.
So you’ve got to ask yourself: What are you trying to get out of this relationship? Have you truly thought it through? Do you want a wedding or do you want a lifelong partnership? Those are two very different things. Together, you are answering the question: Who are we and who do we want to be?
I want to take a step back and generalize a little here, because I think there are a huge number of hypothetical "ideals" we tell ourselves friendships (and families and relationships) are "supposed" to be, but in reality basically never are - and when we hold ourselves to these ridiculously high standards literally we just end up isolating.
For example I think a lot of people act like lying is a huge betrayal of trust, but white lies are more-or-less a social lubricant (even comfort-lies that might prevent the person from growing, like "Yeah it was him/her, not you.").
Another example is romantic idea that we're 100% into 1 person romantically and 0% into anybody else until the moment we break up.
"Traditions are solutions for which we have forgotten the problems" - I think this quote fits to so many more situations as I get older. Relationships (w/ friends and family) are easily strengthened by traditions.
Traditions are very algorithmic. Traditions sometimes force us to connect/meet people and resolve conflicts if you follow the "rules". Traditions can be hard to follow (as in overcoming some inertia or discomfort).
PS: Don't have to think of just cultural traditions. A gang of college friends can have their own silly but decades long traditions and inside-jokes.
It's a good point, but I would say it's not awkward, just expected unless exceptional circumstances (for example two single persons sharing a flat and having similar interests at that time). Like any relationships, friendships evolve with time, you might get close at some point but things change and you are not in touch much for the next few years, and then the situation changes again and you are back closer. Don't you think?
I see this happening especially when people get in and out of intimate relationships. I think it's just life...
I'm in my 40's and I have a lot of close friends, both in my city (mostly newer friends) and around the country/world (mostly older friendships).
My trick is, I cheat. I'm happily single, live alone and have no children. That gives me the luxury of doing the heavy lifting in my friendships. I travel a lot and most of those trips are to stay with friends in their homes or to meet them at a third destination. That's been the most effective way to stay very close to my friends, as well as to become close to their spouses and kids. I understand most people can't do this because of their own family obligations. But maybe it's something people with families could do just once or twice a year to visit people important to them?
Beyond that, I'm usually the one to start group chats or send memes on social media or schedule video chats. Sometimes it's a chore, but usually it's effortless for me. And the close friends I've maintained to this point are with people who are usually very eager and able to stay in touch on their end. The others have fell by the wayside over the years. And some I have consciously excluded from my life when I realized they were bad friends.
I'd also add that, as a man, I find that women make better friends then men, especially past our 20's, and I'd encourage all men to consider finding and building more non-romantic relationships with women.
> building more non-romantic relationships with women.
I completely agree; I've always preferred being friends with women, but in my opinion it's not easy to do.
Things sometimes get complicated quickly if there's attraction on either side which often happens to at least one side if you're close friends. Even without romantic feelings, things get weird/awkward if either party is in a relationship or married.
I wonder if we can learn something from homosexual people in this. I don't often see gay guys cutting off their straight friendships because they're one-sidedly attracted for example in the same way straight men swear off any woman.
I think the crux there is that there isn't the potential mutual attraction.
For me, it would be much harder to develop feelings if I knew that there couldn't be attraction.
For a straight man it is probably just as easy being friends with a gay woman as it is a straight man, because in both cases there won't be mutual attraction. Conversely as a gay male it would be easy being friends with straight women or straight men -- I think that's where you see the stereotype of gay men with many friends who are straight women.
Well that's the thing, I don't generally see lesbians claiming they can have no lesbian friends, or gay people claiming they can have no gay friends, either. They seem to be able to be more emotionally mature about managing their attraction such that they don't need to cut themselves off from their attracted gender like some kind of addict.
Complicated doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm in this situation now and it's basically ruining my life. Or maybe it's ruined already, because I see no possible way out -- not even just ending the friendship.
Not only is the friendship very close, but inextricably linked with far and away my favorite activity in the world. One that has brought by far the most joy to my life, and one that I have given up a lot to pursue.
I don't even know how I could have predicted or avoided it, either. At first glance, I never would have guessed I would end up feeling any attraction to her at all. In actual fact, what I ended up with are feelings I could have never even imagined I was capable of feeling for someone (I'm 40).
The only thing I could have done differently, I'm afraid, would have been to make damn sure to never get so close to any woman at all.
As much as you can, relax. These things go 100x better when you’re relaxed. Whatever method you use to destress, do it. A lot. I’ve found that all social/romantic situations will flow better if I can build some mental “distance”.
I agree with a lot of this comment, but honestly having kids is just another connection point with other people - another reason to form a friendship.
A few months ago I organized a Dad's Drinks at a local bar. I walked there with a neighbor and realized that on every block there was at least one dad chilling in his house that wanted to come out. Having kids builds a habit to stay home, but isn't always a necessity - especially once the kids are 3 years old or older.
I'm old(er) mid-40's, single, no kids, and never married. I don't have much family or close friends. Hookup culture is de rigueur but it doesn't interest me. Where I'm at, there isn't a context to meet people and most random people in public around keep to themselves and treat me like I'm invisible. I do volunteering but that also doesn't go anywhere.
If you have to constantly take the social initiative, then you're carrying the relationship. Sometimes absence is better. Instead of dwelling on loneliness or self-pity, keeping productively busy seems a better alternative.
I'd like to have a family and kids, but an inability to find and make friends precludes that. The thought of getting old alone, having no one to check-in on me, no one to bury me, no one to care that I'm gone, and no one at a funeral seems depressing. I don't see how I won't end up in a "potter's field" somewhere.
It breaks my heart to see Western people living such lives. I love the West for so many reasons, but the social construction is a complete broken mess. Family and community is completely destroyed. People live and work only for themselves. The amount of loneliness and isolation is just mind blowing and unbearable. IMO, it's a selfish lifestyle. People who manage to make great success (due to a combination of lack, intelligence, hard work and sometimes just beauty) can live very good lives but the rest are doomed to live miserable, lonely lives and no gives a shit about them until they die. Very sad. I wish you happiness and fulfillment (whatever they are for you).
What are you contrasting the "West" with? As a person who lived most of his life in an Asian country with a very strong familial and social construct, I can say that there were no shortage of lonely, broken people there - we as a society just did a better job of hiding it. Perhaps the sense of failure and isolation may have slightly different causes, but that is not to say that Western society is somehow uniquely broken.
I would never say it's uniquely broken. Loneliness and isolation probably exist in every corner of the world. The thing is that the West gets almost everything done right IMHO. It's an amazing place to be. However, the connection and social part of it is not going anywhere. Families are one of the best constructs to build life-long fullfilling relationships, but everyone is giving up on them now. People are not getting married and are not having children, and if they do, it likely ends up in a divorce. As OP said, it's all hookup culture now. How many people will end up single and lonely after a certain age? Lots and lots and lots ... It's a serious epedimic.
I have to agree with the sibling commentator - the freedom to choose the level of engagement with family and society in the West is what drives many of us from the East to leave our homes. I also do not think the Eastern way is a good default for most people. It clearly works for lots of people, but it also comes at a great price for a lot of people. There are aspects of any traditional culture that can be stifling, especially if you don't happen to be at the top of your specific privilege pyramid. Rigid social hierarchy, lack of upward mobility, and discrimination are also deeply ingrained within traditional strong social constructs. Yes, the sense of belonging to the family & society is strong, but it's only a positive if your family values you - which isn't always a given. Yes, the Western social construct as it exists now is prone to certain weaknesses, but I don't think we can make value judgements on which is objectively better for most people. I have siblings who are very happy to remain in your homeland, and I have siblings who left - both would likely be unhappy if circumstances were reversed.
As someone who moved from SE Asia awhile ago, agree 100%:
- Parents can't wait to kick their kids out once they're college age
- A societal sense of embarressment if you're *still* living with your parents
- No night-time social options to speak of unless you want to drink/party (everything closes early - no midnight cafes or the like)
- Macho and bully culture all the way through high school leading to polar extremes in kids' social circles
- Everything has been financialized. There is no community to help out with _anything_. You have to pay for _everything_
- Suburbia abound, both kids and parents can't walk anywhere – kids are trapped in their homes and parents become defacto Uber drivers
- There's this weird sense of "keeping boundaries", making it hard to make friends with your neighbors etc
- Domestic help (eg live-in maids) are very expensive relative to cost-of-living and relative to some Asian countries, and kindof culturally taboo – parents are expected to parent completely on their own
Eh, I don't think family ties are "completely destroyed" in the West, we're just not as into our family as some "Eastern" cultures (I'm thinking of India in particular) can be.
Remember, a lot of the "West" (at least my exposure to it, the USA) is a conglomeration of other cultures; we have many Eastern cultures here as well!
Many of my friends have large families that they're much more entangled with than I'd opt into with my own family.
I could not live with my mother again, though I love her very much. I imagine many Indian men would love to have that option, all else being equal, though realistically they simply don't.
The freedom to choose is nice, but a great many of us "Westerners" choose to stay close to our families. That's what freedom is; the ability to opt into culture, rather than be forced into it.
I am from North Africa, from a socio-economic background that's somehow the middle ground between the West and the East. I do agree with the concept of freedom of choice. I always thought about it in such terms. In the West, you have total freedom in whether to keep close to family or not, but it comes with the risk of isolation and loneliness. On the other hand, in the East, lonliness and isolation is pretty much gauranteed to never happen and there is always a large social network to fallback to when life gets hard, for emotional and material support. However, you need to first be loyal to the community and never leave them or disappoint them to be granted such a privelege, which contradicts the freedom of choice. IMHO, the West is better if you manage to succeed and build you own fullfilling social network, but if you fail, you're doomed to love a miserable lonely life. The East is a good default option for most people but it holds back people a bit.
> IMHO, the West is better if you manage to succeed and build you own fullfilling social network, but if you fail, you're doomed to love a miserable lonely life. The East is a good default option for most people but it holds back people a bit.
Very well put. But I also posit that it’s getting harder and harder to build a fulfilling social network in the west
Some people are too, too risk averse. They subconsciously avoid, not just pain, but the possibility of discomfort. It's not just one or two actions - it's their filter that they see the world through.
Pain avoidance is often disguised as disinterest, but really it's just a cost function to minimize the possibility of feeling embarrassment, awkwardness, discomfort, heated discussion, or emotional distress. Sometimes this is personality related; other times, this is a result of an aggressive, hurtful, or manipulative upbringing.
I have a friend like this and he is very hard to be friends with. He hit this point where he was stuck in an unhappy life situation (have few good friends, can't find love, etc) but vehemently opposed anything slightly uncomfortable that will move him from his unhappy cage.
What's happening subconsciously is a deep seated trauma/fear freezing him in place. For my friend, he was bullied as a kid, and his parents also were emotionally angry and abusive. He grew up with the fear that out of nowhere, a seemingly trivial sentence or action could send him into a world of confusion and hurt.
Today, meeting new people and sharing emotions is a giant minefield to him. But most people just see him as stubborn, whiny, hard to socialize with and doesn't listen to advice.
But it's hard to be his friend not because of his awkward socials but because he complains about his distress so much but doesn't do anything about it... for years. As someone who wants to solve problems and make progress, it is very frustrating to see him move so slowly.
He is very, very slow to go out from his comfort zone, even just a little bit.
You obviously care about your friend, but I do not think you really understand his position.
For some people company is "nice to have", something like owning a sports car. Maintaining friendship costs energy and has real risks (being used, emotional blackmail...). And benefits for short, obese, bald guy are really not that great.
Hook up culture is made up of lots of woman and a few men.
The women are desperately searching for a relationship. The few men involved with hook up culture have too many options are unwilling to commit due to overwhelming supply.
There are two reasons for why it's like this. The first reason is dating apps. Dating apps make it very easy for women to be even more selective then they already are.
The second reason is technology. The rise of technology including tampons and birth control has allowed women to fight for additional rights and come onto equal standing with men. For most of human history women depended on men for financial well being and survival in general. This is no longer the case.
Thus when being in a LT relationship isn't a survival requirement, women upgrade their selectivity.
The experience for the majority of men really just ends up being a lack of matches. The experience for women is a lack of men willing to commit. And for a few men (you most likely) hooking up is just "comfortable."
I'm not making this up. There is very real data about this.
You forget that this cuts both ways. Men, too, no longer need a wife. No need to cook. No need to mend clothes. No need for heirs. So little patience for compromise. And focus on superficialities and short term benefits rather than team building.
men never needed this. The things you describe are luxuries that a man can do without. Men would like to have this but this is not something needed.
In the past women, NEEDED men to survive. For women it was a choice about survival. It was always men who went out to hunt for food, farm for food, make the money and build the house. All the technology, all the machinery, all the science you see around you today, most of it was built, designed and envisioned by men.
In general human civilization and societies functioned in a way where men and women worked together but make no doubt about it. For the majority of human history (99%) men did built and maintained the infrastructure for survival. Men worked in partnership with women for betterment and higher productivity; women however worked with men because they needed to survive. A woman without a man in the past had few options to support herself.
This is no longer the case, so we'll see how it plays out, but modern society is at odds with the biology millions of years of evolution has designed us for. Likely there will be a culling. A natural selection process where a huge portion of the genetic pool will fail to reproduce.
To be frank I think a lot of men will just end up being lonely and single until they're dead. Polygamy will become more and more normalized and women will have a lot more power over society and societal norms in general.
I don’t think that women in general give up on a relationship any faster or easier than men do. In fact, I would probably say that it’s men who give up first when things get tough. (It’s only that women notice problems sooner, while men often are still in denial and think all is fine.)
Saying that technology is the reason why relationships no longer work sounds like a big fat excuse to me. The facts are certainly true. But the conclusion is, in my opinion, a convenient tale to avoid responsibility.
Everything I'm saying is common knowledge if you are an average (key word) man on dating apps OR if you're well versed in academic anthropology or evolutionary psychology (NOT gender studies). As an average male, we live this life anecdotally. The imbalance of power in the dating market invades every facet of what we feel and see. It is part of our logical reality. If you are not an average single man, it is very likely this reality is completely foreign to you; and when presented with this new angle you will likely not accept it.
Our culture paints a picture of inequality. The equation speaks to one side of of the story. The story of female empowerment; The rise of of the underdog. The other side of the equation, the male side, is invisible, especially if you are not a male.
The evidence extends beyond dating app statistics (which all categorically point to the same conclusion) to biology and anthropology:
https://slate.com/technology/2012/10/are-humans-monogamous-o...
In anthropology Monogamy is considered to be a mating strategy that guarantee a single mate for all men. It is advantageous to men and in many societies it is artificially enforced. Polygamy is more advantageous to females and the likely natural outcome when females are more empowered in society. It guarantees the best mate for females.
Of course women would prefer to be in a monogamous relationship with an alpha male. But given the choice between monogamy with a beta male or polygamy with an alpha they choose the later.
:Not advice, but many questions and some sharing my experience:
Feel free to answer or not as you like.
> I'm old(er) mid-40's
I was in my early 40s when I found a lovely mate, married, and reproduced.
> Hookup culture is de rigueur
What makes you say that? What geographic region is that? Is that just the kids or those in your demographic?
> Where I'm at, there isn't a context to meet people
Are you in a place without personal ads?
> I do volunteering but that also doesn't go anywhere.
Is that volunteering at the same place or different ones? What kind of volunteering?
> I'd like to have a family and kids,
Do you want to make your own kids? Are you willing to be a step parent?
> but an inability to find and make friends precludes that.
That's not my experience. There's popular advice that one should marry one's friend. But in my experience one can just look for a marriage partner and leap frog that nonsense.
> The thought of getting old alone
Ah, so essentially human, thank you for sharing. I too have that at my core.
This line of thinking seems pretty prevalent but the way I see it, there's no such thing as carrying the relationship. If you're the one with the social need, the onus is on you to get that need filled. This generally means doing more work than others but it's not on behalf of them. It would be nice if other people filled our needs for us, but that's generally just wishful thinking.
Apologies if this is in the category of unsolicited advice. I noticed that you had a submission describing a similar problem set in the work setting, so I am seeing a theme. It sounds like you are in a lonely place and are hoping for something better.
There's no magic to it but I can recommend some things that work very well for me.
First, do you have a curiosity about people? The folks you're working with, or folks at your volunteering events - do you strike up a conversation? Do you know where people are from, what their families are like, what their hobbies are, what they think and worry about? I don't mean to encourage you to engage in robotic small talk, but asking you whether these things are actually of interest to you? Wanting to know someone is the first step of a relationship.
Assuming you have the interest, ask whether you've done anything to learn these things? If you realize that there are 30 people you could have known these things about but don't - why not? Are you very shy? Do you think people will think you're rude? Do you not know how to chat? Answer this for yourself and seek resources on-line for how to close those gaps. I went from a shy mush-mouth to a pretty good shmoozer in a few years, it's possible.
If you decide that you actually don't have an interest in people (like, you genuinely don't care what anyone's life is like) then there's a strong disconnect between than and the desire to have a family/kids/friendship. If you have the ability to, seek some sort of talk therapy to explore this question. Chances are there's some "wound" that's blocking your ability to want to connect with people if this is the case.
Finally, you sound like someone who closes doors before they are even open. I suspect when you say "hookup culture..." what you are really saying is "I have a reason for why I am not on dating apps." When you say "people treat me like I am invisible" - you are writing off an entire town as not being interested in you, which gives you an excuse to not try to connect with them (yet, somehow they had all met each other - so it's probably your vibes - and that's in your control to change). If you really believe that your location is a problem that's preventing you from having relationships, then move. If you have a desire for family and kids and you think that's not possible in your location, why are you there? (and, if you are about to give yourself an excuse as to why that's impossible, pay attention to that too)
Solid "unsolicited" (odd thing to say) advice here, especially in the third paragraph. Another description for this I think is simply being genuine. Being genuinely interested in other people's lives, their families, and the stuff they like to do goes a long way and will tear the layers off people. In my experience, learning this combined with listening will have you quite possibly wanting less friends.
> If you have to constantly take the social initiative, then you're carrying the relationship.
I don't think that's true, and the article does talk about this a bit. Relationships are never actually 50/50. If you're expecting that, you're gonna have a bad time.
But really, think about outcomes more than trivial details: if you are the one who always has to be the one to reach out, but you end up having a good time when you talk or meet up with the person, then isn't that still a good outcome?
But ultimately everyone gets to make their own choice, of course. Would you rather have no friends or family, or would you rather have to put in more effort than the other person at some aspects of maintaining a friendship/relationship? Ideally it shouldn't be this stark dichotomy, but if it is, you gotta make your choice.
(Also, "no unsolicited advice please" is a weird thing to say when you're posting about a personal situation on a public forum. If you don't want to take this as advice, then take this as disagreement with what you're saying, and my expression of frustration that your choice seems to be "be alone and sad" when the alternative is "put in a little more effort than the other person".)
Our neighbor is in his 70s. No kids, no wife, no family. Spends his time watching crypto videos on YouTube and gardening in summer. He is polite and helpful, but we try to avoid getting into conversations with him because those end up becoming monologues of him telling us about the apocalypse.
Living alone today is easy. It’s also comfortable, because you save yourself all the drama and overhead of having to deal with another irrational human being. It’s also easy to feel superior for living this way, telling yourself that you are rejecting a sick society. The thing is, with nobody knowing you intimately and giving you feedback, you can end up being totally delusional and not ever realize it.
I don't think that's generally true, especially if you're looking to date around your own age. Some in the age bracket may be averse to marriage, but not a relationship in general.
It's a great article, but is not the way that I have worked.
I'm a bit "spectrumish." I'd make a great hermit. I don't really find a need to have close relationships.
One thing that I've found in any relationship, is that a "power dynamic" changes things a lot. Most romantic or working relationships have a "power dynamic," where one party has some kind of leverage over the other, or that one party gets more from the the relationship, than the other.
This isn't necessarily bad (after all, we get married and have families all the time), but I feel that it adds a different "color" to the relationship.
Most of my closest (male) friends are ones that I don't have a "power dynamic" with. We usually have drastically different vocations, and don't really need each other. We generally have common interests (I suggest that volunteer work is a great thing), but find each other's company enriching and interesting.
// Most romantic or working relationships have a "power dynamic," where one party has some kind of leverage over the other,
This is a very weird way to think about it. Something I realized after I got married and bought a house and had kids, is that I love it and none of it would be possible without my wife. Likewise, she couldn't have any of this without me. We are partners.
If we wanted to look for power imbalances, we could find them. Like, we could obsess over who makes more money, or does more child care, or who had a greater impact on our selection of where we live etc, but that would be a very weird thing to put front and center. Much more importantly is that both of us are willing to put a lot into the relationship and consistently get even more out of it, enabling us to lead deeply meaningful lives together.
Got it in one. I’m pretty weird. I assume that my friends, acquaintances, and others, are also weird, as I read about that, in some book (can’t remember which one). It was one of those “Things that make you go ‘hmmm…’.” things.
But if it makes you feel better to call me “weird,” knock yourself out.
Maybe I'm just weird in the same way as GP on this, but I think power imbalances are important to be aware of in friendships, and it's tricky to be friends with someone who's far above or below in a hierarchy that is a very important part of your life.
Making friends is easy, keeping friends and growing the relationships are difficult. I am mostly introverted but have periods of extreme extroversion. I'm 34 but all of my best friends have passed away from various accidents over the past decade.
I feel like a shell of my former self where all I do or have a desire to do is work. The only person I consider my friend is my former boss who, after losing his wife to ALS, I did everything I could to be there and support him because he took a chance on me by offering me a job that ultimately has led to a great career in the tech field.
I've noticed my personality has slipped away, I no longer have hobbies or anything of real passion in my life anymore and thus there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
It's incredibly lonely and a poor place to be yet I really don't know how to escape it. Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy.
There's still a bit of hope deep down that all isn't over yet and a ray of sunshine can still propagate itself somewhere, sometime.
> there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
I think that the most valuable (and appreciated) thing you have to offer are your atttentive ears and your time. That's what many people are looking for in a true, deep friendship.
The real frienship isn't about super-intresting hobbies or flashy personality but really basic things like listening each other, supporting i small or large difficulties etc.
Yup, exactly like the article mentions emotional support and debugging.
Listening with your whole attention and authentically sharing your experiences is a massive component of any strong friendship.
This is something I've only understood in the last year or two. It took me ~40 years to understand because I was very emotionally neglected as a child, so I never processed my emotions or helped others do the same. From my mid-teens through 35, I thought I didn't have the same emotions as other people.
First, let me say this sounds like the first stages of depression. It is VERY difficult to break out of yourself because by this point or a bit further; you start having trouble figuring out why you do anything, so you stop doing almost everything. Once you reach that point, it is very rare to be able to self-diagnose and get on a path to recovery.
This was me a few years ago. At some point, I stopped being authentic and sharing my experience with others (just saying what I was feeling, dis/liked, wanted/didn't want, etc).
There is likely an emotional block or a few in your past that you feel you shouldn't/can't/won't talk about to others (because it will bother them).
"Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy." <- this is a symptom of an emotional block.
You are saying No to yourself without considering options or asking people for ideas. There are an unlimited number of ways to adjust those situations to work.
This has been true in my personal life since I was about 13, but when it happened in my professional life too, I became very isolated and it wasn't until I read waaaay too much psychology that I started understanding that other people have had the same feelings (nothing I felt/feel is unique; what makes me unique is the combinations of those things) and then telling people bits of it, then more.
To continue that last two weeks ago I forced myself to cry for the first time since I was around 13. Then on Friday, I wanted to cry in the car during a sad song and I let myself. Then Sunday, I felt my sadness damn crumble and I was really sad about random things for a few hours.
It's a long process, but being able to feel sad again will let me WANT help from other people again and WANT to connect with them. It will let me feel lonely, which will motivate me to go find people to be around. Soon, this process will lead to more friends.
In many ways we've forgotten how to be human (as a culture) which actively prevents from connecting with other people in one way or another. I'm on an active journey to learn all the things I didn't learn as a child and I'm still pretty lonely, only one close friend, but I've already gotten past feeling empty inside and not interested in doing things.
Make two lists. One, an activities list. Every time you hear something fun to do, put it on the list. Eventually, after a couple years, you'll have nearly everything. If it's on the cheap side it's a good sign, although expensive things can be fun too.
The second list, is a content consumption list. Basically, building a twitter, but without the timeline. Write down categories you like, and people you like, and get a YouTube subscription so you don't have to have adds. After around 2 years, you should be rarely adding people & content to the list.
My advice: have a separate categories for movies to watch & tv shows to watch & only do so with friends & loved ones. Never watch tv or movies by yourself, would be my advice.
Sorry to hear that. Recommend you try an activity that involves physical activity and other people. Kayaking, capoeira, rock climbing, whatever feels interesting to you.
> I was trapped in a ‘normal’ mode of conversation - making small talk, being inoffensive, feeling aversion to being weird, respecting where I thought other people’s boundaries were.
If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow! Everyone's life is different and has differently shaped spaces for relationships, interaction, etc. It's very common for people to be open to growing closer to some of their social circle, but be unsure about who to focus on. It can be you if you simply indicate you are also interested!
On the other hand, I think this is more wrong than right:
> A point I’ve made throughout is that this is a skill.
Calling "Growing closer" a skill suggests it is a craft that 'you should' practice - but it's not. Growing closer requires work and attention and you will get better at it over time - but to think of it as a skill "you are doing" instead of a mutual process that advances only at the shared pace you are getting into manipulation. "Growing closer" is measured by the combined 'distance' by which you and the other person have adjusted your lives to be closer to one another.
Maybe OP means that having deep and vulnerable conversations is a skill - and THAT I would agree with, but it has nothing to do with growing closer! You can have deep conversations with strangers (in fact it's often easier to have them with strangers).
People who discover the power of intimacy in our atomized world risk accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.
> to think of it as a skill "you are doing" instead of a mutual process that advances only at the shared pace you are getting into manipulation.
A mutual process needs some coordinated actions from both sides. If I'm unable to play my part, then there will be no mutual process. I believe I understand what you are trying to say, but it is the next stage of education on "how to make friends". When you have skill to make friends, then you can think of how to apply it mutually. If you have no such skill, then all your argument about manipulation just doesn't apply.
> If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow!
There is a question of how to do it. I do not know, for example. Have no idea. Several times different people tried to make friends with me, I tried to be open for it, and it didn't work out.
I don't know if I quite said it before - but I don't think a relationship just "succeeds" or "fails." A good relationship occupies the "right" amount of space in each person's life for that pair of people and also is, for each person, part of a larger healthier whole. There are many variables in this balancing act and we are all getting it at least a little 'wrong' all of the time.
Generally, you can make any relationship closer by investing more time into it. But that means you risk getting stuck in trying to make a relationship fill a spot it won't ever fill. Often, that relationship will be "better" if you can accept less intimacy and hold it less tightly. There are people who can be extremely important to us, even if we can't take too much intimacy.
> Several times different people tried to make friends with me, I tried to be open for it, and it didn't work out.
Yah! Of course! This is always possible. Sometimes relationships just don't work for either person, despite everyone's best efforts. In those situations, the kindest thing we can do is gently invest less energy into the dynamic. Sometimes you can find an unexpected new relationship that's less than 'friendship' but still valuable and compelling. If you think about it like someone did something wrong, it's becomes more discouraging than it has to be.
> Sometimes relationships just don't work for either person, despite everyone's best efforts.
This "sometimes" works for me every single time. I'm 40+ and never had any friends.
> Sometimes you can find an unexpected new relationship that's less than 'friendship' but still valuable and compelling.
I never experienced this as like. All my relationships end when we stop meeting each other at work.
> If you think about it like someone did something wrong
Oh... I do not think that I did something wrong. I think I didn't do something. Systematically. I'm not sure what exactly. The article gives some hints, but I need to think it through, to be sure.
I spend my teens to figure out how to not do something wrong. I'm very good at it, I even do not need to think about it, I just do not do anything wrong. It became ingrained to such an extent, that I cannot even imagine what I can do wrong, because my mind suggests only "right" options.
> Generally, you can make any relationship closer by investing more time into it. But that means you risk getting stuck in trying to make a relationship fill a spot it won't ever fill.
Your wisdom probably very wise and useful, but only for people who already have some relationships and need to decide what to do with them next. I have no relationships and I do not believe I will, so all your advice is wasted on me.
At the same time the article we discuss gives me something to think about. Yeah, I'm vulnerable and I'm not going to risk being hurt by a careless person only to get some intimacy. I'm not going to ask people weird questions, because they can ask them back. I mean, I can deal with it, I can wriggle out of any uncomfortable question, but it is kinda unfair to them if I ask but do not answer.
I'm really sorry to hear about how hard a time you've had forming friendships. I think you're right that I'm talking about how to invest energy and focus once you've found something that's stable and natural on some level.
I do think the article presents a lot of sensible and well-framed approaches. They talks sensibly and systematically about systemic concerns around friendship. I hope you find companionship.
I think the "this is a skill" just refers to the various things needed to form and maintain friendships (being good at conversations, taking social initiative, following up, etc.) More of a set of skills. And to be fair, my interpretation is that it is a set of skills both people in the process of friendship possess and need to practice to make things work (it is possible after all to be a bad friend or a bad partner due to your own lack of effort or skill with eg communication or vulnerability).
> * it is a set of skills both people in the process of friendship possess and need to practice to make things work*
I think this is another example of the idea I am trying to critique (and warn against). This suggests that "the process of friendship" is a singular, universal thing that will look the same for all of us (or for all of our friendships). Or that friendship "working" is a straightforward series of opportunities for both people to "say yes" to something. I think that is wrong.
Instead, I would say that over time a friendship is best understood as a series of opportunities to become more or less central to each other. Closeness and stability do not need to be linked! My oldest friend and I are extremely stable and comfortable with each other - but I would not say we are close. That we aren't close isn't a failure. It's a recognition that our lives have gone in different directions and that we most comfortably experience intimacy with other people. It's not a failure! Both our lives would be more frustrating if we relied on each other, with our divergent social worlds and approaches to life, for mutual understanding.
> it is possible after all to be a bad friend or a bad partner due to your own lack of effort
This is true, after a way, but I think it mis-orders things in a way that will lead to confusion. You are only a bad friend or partner if you don't make the effort that you agreed to make. If you are frustrated that you friend or partner isn't showing up in a way that you want them to show up in a way they have never said they will - you are the one who is doing "badly" in the relationship! Obviously, the reverse can also be true - people can promise things and not deliver, but the gap is between commitment and behavior. There is no bad or good level of energy to put into a relationship as long as you aren't deceptive about it.
Basically, you aren't a bad friend or partner because of 'your own lack of effort' - putting more effort into engaging a way your significant other doesn't want would make things worse. It's the lack of alignment that causes the problem and, until that alignment is corrected, you can't know if more effort is actually what the other person would like.
My take on it that the skill isn't the act of growing closer itself, but the actions you can take to elevate conversation above small talk and see if there could be greater compatibility there for a closer relationship. And that latter part is maybe a big part of the skill: I agree that just having a deep/vulnerable conversation isn't going to give you a close friendship, but I think that's a necessary step on the path. Determining whether or not -- from those deeper conversations -- whether or not a deeper friendship is going to develop is also a skill worth mastering.
(Maybe the author did actually mean what you thought, in which case I agree with you... and so I like my explanation better.)
Attention is such a good choice of word. Attention with memory is key.
I feel memory/remembering is the work, because we are constantly flooded with new things all day. Otherwise, once I am out of a conversation, I am into another app or meeting.
> accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.
Damn that's true. Though I think our instinct is to try to connect on a deeper level, and with just good intentions. We can be good friends with a lot of people. And be close to very few. That's ok, and better to be clear.
Every few years I get this urge to “start over” somewhere new where I’m going to turn everything about my life around. Whenever I’ve tried to make friends or be social, it seems to fall into this almost cyclical pattern.
I’ll find a group of people who hang out and join that. Tend to make pretty good inroads early, and people seem to like me.
Then over time the group slowly starts to fracture into “cliques” none of which I eventually fall into. It starts to feel at some point that I’m no more than a court jester, there to make opportune jokes to entertain the other cliques. People care less about what I have to say and I guess any eccentricities about me that intrigue people get old quick.
Sooner or later there’s a big drama caused by some petty disagreement and the group fractures along those cliques. Sometimes reconciliation is tried, but by that point no one’s schedules line up, or half the people are always sick, etc.
I've seen this happen but it's really interesting that you say this is cyclic/it always falls into this pattern for you.
Have you found that reaching out to individual people in the group to be worthwhile?
I often find it hard to make/maintain meaningful connections in these groups (and the "people care less about what I have to say" etc feels relatable), but I've had great success with just asking individuals like "wanna grab coffee/lunch sometime" either 1 on 1 or in a group of 3. It can be kind of awkward, and there's always a sense of "Oh you guys were hanging out? Why didn't you let me/XYZ know!" but I just embrace that and it's been a much better way for me I think to make close friends.
The number of people I have tried to be friends with, but who not treated me like one -- I think it sounds catchy, but is not true at all, at least in my circles.
We often don't consider the impact our current age has on our experience.
Making close friends is easier the younger we are. When we are young we have fewer responsibilities, and we have fewer hangups.
As we get older, we have old life experiences which stand out and leave lasting behavioral impacts. Plus, we have real and immediate responsibilities which have priority - but which we may not announce all the time. The other party may not know the circumstances; they merely don't get especially magnetic interactions from us.
My caution to those of us who are analytical and want to understand how life works is that we do not discount the significance of age and circumstance on matters of friendship and human connection.
Many people make close friends at university, even without intentionally doing so. There's a common, yet erroneous, pattern of thinking in many "successful" people where they attribute their actions to their success without considering that they may have still been successful had they chosen different actions. In this case, the author may have still formed closed friendships had they not chosen to do so intentionally, as many other students do. The only way to really know would be to have the author clone themselves twice and have each clone go through school with one intentionally seeking out close friends and the other not.
Perhaps I'm an outlier, but having to sit around making small talk and sharing personal life experiences with a like-minded cohort is literally a nightmare scenario for me. On the other hand, I love working with people on collaborative effort-intensive projects, working toward shared goals and so on (but I don't have much interest in getting involved in their personal or family lives afterwards). Also, I may be unusual in that I don't suffer from loneliness, there's always something interesting to get involved in or work on. Is this a very uncommon type, I wonder?
Additionally, financial restrictions on activities are a reality for many people these days, ruling out a large number of extracurricular activities that would be fun and interesting to share with others. When one's economic future is on the line, things like friendships become luxuries that might have to fall by the wayside, as people have to move in search of employment, and budgets get tighter. People in a college environment are often not under such immediate pressures.
"making small talk and sharing personal life experiences"
It sounds odd to me to combine these concepts in the same sentence. Sharing personal life experiences is arguable a necessary part of building deep friendships, and it's often a vulnerable and intimate act. Small talk is none of that, if not the opposite.
I'm 23 and have lived most of my life without having close friends. I'd say I'm very extroverted and can strike up engaging conversations with most people I meet. I'm easy going and don't really have a fear of talking to new people.
The problem is that I end up with dozens of friends that I regularly have good banter with, but it just never feels like one of those "best friend" or "close friend" situationships. Most of my own problems or vulnerabilities are dealt with by myself, internally, perhaps with some advice from others if I discuss it. It feels like you need to lean on people emotionally in order to actually become closer.
What OP has mentioned does actually work and I have used some similar approaches, without knowing it, to improve my friendships. But you also need to attach a high value to regular conversation and communications. If you don't keep in contact on a regular basis, the friendship will diminish, regardless of the closeness.
> It feels like you need to lean on people emotionally in order to actually become closer.
I do feel like a lot of friendship comes down to interdependence, which I see as a good thing. But it's not always emotional, it could be that he helps you fix your motorcycle and you let him rant about his ex-wife. Or maybe you rely on this person's great taste in video games.
But yeah in general I think being open enough to gently "ask for help" in one form or another from people helps them grow close to you.
For those who have had close friends in their late teens to mid 20s, do you still have close friends after a significant life event like getting a job, getting married, moving to a new city, having a baby, etc?
I relate with the author of this article in my 20s, but cannot relate at all in my 30s because my life has significantly changed (for the better).
Nope. I had plenty of close friends through my mid-20s, but now at 42, after moving away to another state, I still believe we have enough accumulated trust and love that I'd give those people just about about anything, and feel comfortable sharing anything, and I'm reasonably sure they all feel the same way, but we haven't kept in regular contact. I'm not a phone conversation person and never have been, and quit all social media years ago to preserve my sanity. Regular visits aren't feasible because of the distance and the visits I can manage are ones in which I prioritize seeing my family over anyone else.
I don't have any serious complaints. I'm not lonely and people aren't super-important to me. I've got my wife and my cats and that's enough. I have no idea what I'd do today to make new friends that would ever be anywhere near what my old friends were. Those were people I saw day-in and day-out for years since we were in school together, we shared major life events and formative experiences that can't ever be repeated, and spent a level of time together that simply isn't feasible for so many reasons, from having a full-time job to having to prioritize time with my wife to no longer having the capacity and energy to go out and stay up late on any kind of regular basis.
Again, I have no complaints, but I don't see how it's realistic or possible in most cases to ever make friends as an adult that are as close as the friends you make and maintain throughout childhood and teenage years, other than a life partner or partners you actually live with.
No, but a better answer is probably that the relationships are different. As with most HN advice it's completely contextual.
Close friends from before the transitionary period are still people I can connect with to a large extent. Not all are people I'd now want to spend a lot of time with because time is so limited.
Making new close friends is something I've somewhat given up on based on the fact that I've moved so far away, now have had to prioritize work and family, etc. I suspect there will be fleeting opportunities as the kids create introductions and I perhaps get more time for hobbies/volunteering.
I think things are very dependent on circumstances. People commenting and giving advice only have knowledge of X circumstances, but there are really Y or X number of them out there. This means that I get left feeling like I'm doing something wrong, missing out, etc. based on how others describe life. Anxiety and other mental challenges affect how I feel too. Things aren't that bad when I actually take a big step back and think about life though.
Wait, you're saying you can't relate anymore because you don't have close friends anymore and don't want any? Or because you have close friends naturally so don't need to analyze how to do it?
I am older than my 20s, and have moved jobs and cities a couple times, but I don't have a spouse or kids. I still have some close friends (including one or two i've had since my 20s and one or two i've met subsequently), but would personally like more and closer. I'm not sure if that answers your questions!
My guess is a lot of people in our particular society in the
USA stop having close friends when they have a spouse and kids... but I don't this this is true in all places and times, and I personally suspect it's not very healthy and people would be doing so much better in many ways, including unexpected ones in ways people don't realize would be affected by this, if they had more non-family intimacy. But whatever works!
That I had close friends until I got older and had more responsibilities in life. That I relate with how to do it, but I don't have time to do it because it is not as important to me at this stage in my life.
Nope. I had my closest friendships in high school and college. I haven't talked to any of those people in 30+ years (nor have any of them reached out to me). Careers, relocations, families happened. Life has forks like this where paths separate and never rejoin.
And no, I didn't make new friends in the same way. Being young with a lot of time and no responsibilities doesn't ever come back.
I've kept 3 very close friends (they don't know each other), and now we live in 3 different continents. One I met in my teens, another in my early twenties, and another when I was almost 30. We're all almost 40 now and keep daily contact via text and have a call once every 2 months or so. They're the people I ask advice to and share good and bad news.
There's no secret to it, we're just on eachother's minds and ping one another frequently.
For me the only close friends I have kept through my 20's and many life-changing events are ones I made in high school, and mostly because of Discord. Being able to virtually hang out has made it possible for me to maintain relationships after a move which I wouldn't have been able to keep up before.
Friends become harder to make (mostly for men) as you get older and have children. It simply takes more effort and you'll have less time, but having friends that you see regularly is probably more important when you are 40+. It's worth the effort and easier to systemize.
Following up & reaching out can be a big blocker. I just decided that I'm always the one to reach out and I even built myself an Airtable tracker to do this.
Vulnerability is trending up (for lack of a better description). Writing this post was vulnerable and it's #1 on HN. Finding the right way to open up, make it interesting and not seem needy is an very valuable skill.
Excellent article, but don't make having close friends part of your main goal. Once you are comfortable with who you are, do things on your own, work on new hobbies and interests, then you will attract the right people. Being confident and positive are a people magnet.
I strongly disagree, or at least don't think that's Universal. There's more to meeting and making friends then simply being yourself. There's taking risks and putting yourself out there. There is making time and priority for them. Maybe this works for someone who is naturally an extrovert and naturally makes friends, but that isn't everyone. Not everyone can or should try to take a wait for them to come to me approach
> don't make having close friends part of your main goal
Why not? If that's what you want, then, by definition, that is your goal. Sure, you might be falling prey to the XY problem, where your actual problem is that you're feeling emotionally unfulfilled, but erroneously believe that having close friendships (when you currently have few or none) will help solve that problem. But... I kinda think that's likely to be a pretty good solution.
Screw vulnerability. Of course, I have problems like everyone else. But I have given each one a lot of thought and decided what's the best thing I can do right now, or that there is nothing further than I can do. I don't really need advice or practical help, it's a matter of me allocating my limited energy and willpower. On giving side, there is also so much I can offer to someone outside my immediate family. And the last thing I want to do is to pay MORE attention to downsides of my life by talking about them to others.
What I really wish I could have is camaraderie in personal growth, which for some reason seems to be impossible in Silicon Valley. For example, I have been taking photography classes, but when I ask other students if they want to go on a hike, shoot pictures together and improve our technique, nobody is ever interested. I can understand that women might think I am hitting on them, even after I mentioned I am married and have kids, but not even old guys? I don't know if it's something about my appearance or mannerisms or if people only live through organized events and have no interest in just hanging out with others based on mutual interests. Maybe they also outsource their vulnerabilities to professional therapy? :-)
Now of course nothing is black and white. Being able to give someone an unfiltered account of one's day is a testament of quality of the relationship and reassurance that if I faced a truly overwhelming disaster in future I might have some help handling it. But overall, I would rather expand my life than dwell on aspects of it that either can not be changed or are already being worked on.
I wonder if "Dividera et Impera" has something to do with workplace relationships and the society at large? In autocratic systems it is not in the interests of the ruling class that people would be friends with each other.
This is way too complicated. All you have do is show up to the same place regularly to places where other people also show up regularly. School, work, dog park, gym, etc.
That's quite obviously not true, because almost everyone shows up to places regularly, and some people fail to make friends. Unless you assume that all the people who are having trouble making friends are jobless independently-wealthy agoraphobic shut-ins.
Showing up isn't enough. You have to engage with people, and push past mundane surface-level topics of conversation. And after that, you have to follow up and schedule time outside of whatever place/activity where you met.
I know plenty of people who go to work or a gym or whatever every day, but don't come away from it with close friendships.
I agree with this. From my experience, people who feel lonely (and feel saddened by that) tend to become overly worried about what others think of them and obsessed on making an impression. That usually leads to them becoming an echo chamber of themselves and starting to act "artificially", which is noticed by others as not being authentic.
I'd say that sharing, which arises from mutual interest, is the cornerstone. So being in places where people authentically share mutual interests and cooperate is a great place to make friends. Sports associations (team sports, climbing, hiking, with the added bonus of physical activity being awesome for mental health) community centers with activities (chess, musical groups, dancing)...
I think so. Seems so many people want a "how to" on every aspect of their lives. Friendship should not be something you try to design or have a strategy for, I can think of nothing that would drive me away faster.
Friendship happens, if through shared experience, interest or just chance. True friendship doesn't happen because you woke up one morning and "Make a Friend" was at the top of your todo list for the day.
I think for many, perhaps even most people, you're right and friendship happens organically without deliberate intent.
Some people just do not work this way - maybe it's being somewhere on the autism spectrum, but whatever the cause, some people need to take a more methodical approach to do this.
I think what this blog post shows is that such an approach really can result in true friendships.
It's a bit like online dating I suppose. That idea is abhorrent to some (or used to be - the stigma has reduced considerably over time), but when it works, there's nothing preventing the resulting relationship from being as genuine as one that started any other way.
Showing up definitely helps but in my experience the transition from acquaintance to friend comes through a bonding moment where there was an emotional connection - either struggling through or achieving something together or vulnerability from one or both of you.
There are a lot of bad things about drugs and alcohol but one of the reasons I like them is they tend to enable/accelerate these moments.
I’ve only really intentionally made a close friend one time. However, my longest closest friend was not that way. Him and I bonded pretty much immediately after getting into a fist fight on a high school wrestling mat during practice and our coach had to separate us. Now he’s been there through most of my achievements and I his. Good guy, doing a PhD in chemical engineering at Case Western now.
The systems angle mentioned later in the article may seem a bit …engineered, but it works!
I’ve moved a ton in my life, and I have an annoying habit of losing touch with friends when I move away. Out of sight, out of mind, ya know?
Anyway, to combat this annoying habit, I started scheduling monthly phone/video calls with each of those friends. It’s been a game changer, especially as folks have kids and busy lives.
Think we have been forgetting the necessity of relationships in a post-internet society. It can be a good thing to be intentional about relationships. The benefits don't only apply to introverts, it can also be important for extroverts to cut off harmful people from their lives and deepen connections with those they need most.
Plus one for intentional relationships. I've become much more careful about who I form bonds with as I've grown older, and I've left a handful of long-term friendships behind when I realize I didn't want those people in my life. I'm not an extrovert, but I do make friends easily and I learned the hard way that if you just make friends with everyone who comes your way, you'll end up with some bad friends.
Appreciate the note on making friends - I’m also not exactly an extrovert and I also make friends easily. I wish I would have known this sooner that it’s not as difficult to make lasting friendships as it may seem.
> A key mindset I use when forming connections via conversation is: “If we aren’t both excited about this conversation, do something differently”
This is my problem. Friendship seems to be a series of entertaining experiences. People seem to value others based on their entertainment value, but then when discussed it's always about some other warm, fuzzy feeling. The best friendships seem to happen as a kid, when you hold no judgements, and also outside forces out of your control decide who you are exposed to (i.e. where you go to school). As an adult, the judgement list is way too long for people to commit their time any longer than a short conversation. It's no longer about being yourself, being accepted, and going with flow. Instead friendship as an adult is a chore, with responsibilities and expectations, which unlike a job are all implicit and hard to navigate.
For some people this kind of thing comes naturally/intuitively without necessarily being explicit about it; and for some people being explicit about it won't actually work anyway.
But for those like me who like and find helpful analyzing it and being explicit about it, this is very well-done!
I've always assumed it was the lack of BIG things happening that limits the depth of friendships. With my childhood friends, we went through so much growing up together (family deaths, relationships, breakups, make ups, divorces, death of classmate, arguments, school, sitting around together for hours just hanging out, etc.)
Those sorts of events really deepen a friendship. I don't experience anything like that with my adult "friends". That limits how friendly we can realistically be. Sure, I've made friends as an adult, but they're just people I know and enjoy seeing once in a while.
Maybe having really deep relationships as a child makes it that much harder to make friends as an adult as they suffer by comparison.
"What's fascinating is why that disconnect happens. Since the 1950s, sociologists have identified three factors that need to be in place for friendships to take hold.
They are:
• Proximity: You're around each other regularly.
• Unplanned interactions: You see each other even without putting an appointment on a calendar.
• Privacy: You're in a space where you can exchange confidences."
I love the article, and the experiment. He is clearly way ahead at 17 than I am at > 40, which amazes me. I have had a lot of bad experience with friends, so that has hampered me since and put me off and made me weary of having friends. I also don't do friend things well - I don't find the energy to reply to messages and emails. I do like "going out for a drink / coffee" type things, as well as doing something together, like going to he gym. I might try this out though, as it sounds good.
This is interesting because I have a handful of close friends, but I've never made a close friend intentionally. I suspect that even "naturally social" people might benefit from thinking about their social lives and relationships with more intention, especially as we/they get older and opportunities for random friendship development tend to wane, especially in highly-individualized Western society where people spend most of their time focused on themselves and their nuclear families.
It is my experience that the most "naturally social" individuals ARE operating with a lot more intention if they let you really pick their brain, or you watch them interact with disparate groups of new people in different settings.
Maybe it depends on what we mean by "naturally social".
I tend to be gregarious and outgoing in most situations, but I also am very much an introvert in that I find it tiring to keep up for a long period of time. I find that I lack the social stamina to maintain and tighten connections with new people I meet. So my natural tendency is to have a large number of loose acquaintances and a very small number of close friends.
This was a great article. I've been doing this for quite a while now, coincidentally. I just noticed that I can get my needs met if I open myself up (I feel lonely all the time). I actually got the feedback quite a lot from a bunch of people/new friends that myself opening up very soon is what drew them and immediately lifted the relationship past the awkward acquaintance-phase, they really dig that. They've been more open as well.
The comments have great advice as well, my key take-aways:
- more female friends as a dude (on that, sometimes takes a bit of work if you're interested in each other beforehand, that's where I'm at right now. a break of two weeks should work magic)
- be more initiative, be a friend to other people
- show up and stay connected, even if it's not 50:50, which is unlikely anyway
I have social anxiety/depression and have lived most of my life in the basement (literally and figuratively). But since last year or so I'm very extraverted. Not sure how this works, but it does and it's awesome. I just chat to random people (being German!).
The only thing I'm still struggling with is friends who behaved in a way that I didn't like. Instead of talking about it I withdraw from the relationship. But one step after another.
>I find it hard to introspect on exactly what the internal experience of past Neel was like, but I think the core was that trying wasn’t available as a possible action. That I spent much of my life doing what felt socially conventional, normal and expected, for the role I saw myself in. And ‘go out of your way to form emotional connections’ wasn’t part of that.
The whole intro part of the post sounds a lot like ASD 1 musings, including the approach regarding the solution...
I always considered myself someone who made friends easily. In fact when my partner and I met she found it hard to keep track of my various social circles. Friends from school, friends from my first stint at university, friends from my second stint at university, friends from places I used to work etc. She on the other hand had one or two close friends.
Since having kids I've found it much more difficult. It's literally a once a month thing to get a couple of hours to go out for a beer. I enjoy meeting up with a couple of guys I meet through prenatal classes but they are all in the same boat and making time for a new friend when their free time is so limited is challenging.
I also had the profoundly upsetting situation of losing touch with one of my closest friends due to some poorly chosen words while I was in a poor mental state following some stressful experiences after our first was born. Interestingly, this also meant I lost touch with many of the people I had friends in common with on his side.
Weirdly, for my partner her social circles have exploded. She now is very close with a small group from her prenatal classes, she's also converted a couple of her ex-work colleagues into actual friends, many of them by them having similar aged children.
I feel it is relatively easy to make friends during engineering (under grad) when there is no financial responsibilities and you have lot of patience, high level of tolerance. When compared to age where you have more financial responsibility and certain age where you no longer have patience to let go some of things which you do not like in other person. It comes to point where I feel why do I need to compromise on so many things to make friends.
This is kind of sad. It just feels like OP has built this enormous apparatus over some emotional void they've picked up in their development. Making friends just isn't that hard for the vast majority of people.
If you're having to use reverse engineering and problem solving to form emotional connections, then you might want to spend the time in therapy and working through what caused you to be emotionally stunted.
> Making friends just isn't that hard for the vast majority of people.
Is that actually true? Things I've read seem to suggest that, at least for men, forming close friendships is hard, especially as we get older.
I'm feeling it, too. I'm 41, and with the exception of my partner, I don't think I've made a close friend in nearly a decade.
(Also, note that this is talking about close friendships, not just people to hang out with.)
But really, this "apparatus" seems to work for this person, and he seems to be happy with the results, so who are we to criticize? If others who also have trouble making friends can find this useful, all the better. If not, that's fine too.
I'm not sure how I'm making an assumption. They admit they were unable to form emotional connections prior to this convoluted methodology they've developed.
Convoluted? There are a lot of words in that post, but most of it is about the author's personal journey.
The methodology boils down to:
1. Push past mundane small talk and ask deeper questions. Follow up with more questions.
2. Be willing and able to open up when asked questions (or even when not asked, as a follow-on to what the other person is saying).
3. Don't be afraid to be the one to reach out to try to set up more meetings.
4. Put yourself in situations where you are likely to interact with people, especially situations where those people are likely to have similar interests.
Therapy can literally just be talking through the same kinds of mechanisms as described here (with the plan to apply them to real life). Source: it was for me. How are they going to become second nature if you don't practice?
I used to have tiers of friends in HS and a lot in college. I put a lot of effort into it being a glue between people. Overtime I tried less and less to do that. Even pulling inwards like hiding in my room during parties. Now I have 3 close friends. Real friends. Crazy how you change over time.
I had a best friend but one day we just split. My current friends I do most of the engaging. Since I'm always online/wfh. I'm also a loner/not an extrovert. So yeah... I know you could try to change but I am the looks down at the ground, shy person now. Before I was a jackass which could be good because I was not as limited. Now I just have this constant questioning if I did something cringe.
There is a messed up thought. Pretty much all of our interaction is a chat/text. Since we all live in different states/but we were around each other during childhood. Aside from occasional photos... It's almost like you could replace them with bots since the medium is electronic.
If it you makes feel better, at the age of 34 my therapist handed me a "feelings wheel" as a way to help me name my emotions[1]. Prior to that, my emotional vocabulary essentially consisted of "anger" and "joy". This in turn lead me down a very deep and painful rabbit hole to figure out why I had so much trouble accessing my own emotions, opening up to people, and trusting others.
I have lots of friends at varying levels of closeness - from folks in a shared group chat to folks who helped clothe me when I couldn't. I find them easy to make, honestly.
But the most interesting relevant experience I had recently was when a friend of mine suggested using these couples' cards just to get to know each other, skipping the explicitly romantic ones. I barely knew her except as a sister of another friend of mine, but we did a couple of these every day for fun for a week and we ended up quite close at the end of it.
It's stuff like "what situations make you anxious?", "what is a time you were really happy?", "what things do you do for me which you wish I appreciated more?". This lends some credence to the idea that questions around vulnerability help quite a bit. I've always been quite intentional about making friends, but this rapid-bootstrap is literally the fastest it's happened to me.
I can relate to the author. When I was ~28yo, I used to do similar things and experimenting socially. The best way to get to know guys is by doing shared activities - basketball, hikes, going to sauna, gym. But it only makes acquaintances. The vulnerability and honesty part can only be achieved 1-on-1 and some people don't like those talks. But it really makes true friends. It can cut through the polite-social-minimizing-risk-bullshit-talk like a knife. It's really hard to have very close friends and having at least one is a true blessing... I never had the fortune of meeting great female friends though. Even though I like talking to them and doing activities that involve many females (dancing salsa, bachata, kizomba).
I often find myself in a situation where someone is monologuing and I'm listening but I'm not very interested and I don't know how to pull out. I wonder if anyone can offer advice.
(I haven't finished reading the article yet; if I find an interesting answer from the article, I'll reply to my own post)
I skimmed through and the article looks a lot like what I think as well. One bonus point I didn't see is that the more people take the intentional-based approach the easier it is to befriend each other. My best friendship was formed and is sustained through intentional effort we share to keep it this way.
This guy should move to scandinavia, he'd learn that conversation is cheap. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to a scandie for literally hours just to have it come to nothing. No new friend, not really even an acquaintance, it was all just talk and meant nothing at all.
Scandinavians are very friendly and pleasant people on the surface, but it's hard to penetrate that surface into deeper friendship. To really get into someone's inner circle of close friends you pretty much have to have grown up with them or known them for years.
Same with the Dutch and Belgians. The countries are so small and families rarely move very far from each other. This makes it very hard as an outsider to break into friendship circles as often they've known each other since pre-school.
> One of the greatest sources of joy in my life are my close friends. People who bring excitement and novelty into my life. Who expose me to new experiences, and ways of seeing the world. Who help me learn, point out my blind spots, and correct me when I am wrong. Who I can lean on when I need support, and who lean on me in turn. Friends who help me grow more into the kind of person I want to be.
This depicts people who provide functions for the author - entertainment, mentoring, advice - not people who share mutual love. Friends can and do provide some functions, but that's not necessary, sufficient, or the point. Love can be and is transformational, but that's not the point.
This is a structural problem made worse by individualistic social norms. Once you’re out of college, or contexts where there’s “hanging out” that happens without intention, you’re in a situation where you have to do several things: meet people you like, put effort into making plans, and have time together frequently enough to become friends, not just people who like each other. I work on this problem as a builder and I’ll observe that most of the cultural scaffolding that used to support this has deteriorated, see Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam or The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz for good research on this.
Making close friends is a big reason why I'm building FourHere (https://www.fourhere.com). After working in Silicon Valley for years, the only people I've been able to somewhat connect with are co-workers. Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc doesn't actually help you build friendships -- it's a bunch of people you know about, but don't actually meet. And I think that's unhealthy. There are studies that show close friendships, can help us live up to 20 years longer.
I don't really understand this tendency to create these artificial systems for having friends. To me it's in the same category as dating apps, or weird exercise routines.
The best way to have deep friendships is to live a social life. Engage in the community you livee in, take on responsibility, be politically active, start a business, become an open source maintainer, if you're religious go to church/mosque/etc. If you're active and engaged with the people around you'll basically have no choice but to have deep friendships. We're social animals by nature, there's no need for a ten step program.
I'm not talking about 'networking' which is a grift in the same category as all the other artificial crap, I'm talking about sitting in the same awful office, fixing bugs till midnight, eating crappy pizza and putting your blood and sweat into something that's meaningful to you. You do that with people for several years, they're not just friends but pretty much family.
And being involved in an OSS community around a shared project, particularly long lived ones offers the same opportunities especially for people who are physically in a place that's isolated. I know a non-trivial amount of people who found their spouse through academic and OSS communities. Work connects people.
> sitting in the same awful office, fixing bugs till midnight, eating crappy pizza and putting your blood and sweat into something that's meaningful to you.
Sure, I've done that. And yes it creates a connection of sorts, I got to know my co-workers pretty well at least in that context. It's a social situation. Demented and sad, but social.
But did it ever lead to meeting up to do anything outside of work? Not once. Did I keep up with any of those people after job changes? Not even for a day.
You are describing ways of getting acquaintances/just friends, the article describes ways of deepening those friendships such as paying more attention to questions that lets you better know people, I found it very helpful, it may come 100% naturally to you, but not to all of us
We're bipedal animals by nature, but not every individual is able to walk. Likewise, although we're social animal by nature, not every individual can easily form close social ties.
There are many reasons a person might struggle to make friends. For instance, some people were poorly socialized, or have some kind of early-childhood developmental trauma that makes it difficult to feel the appropriate emotions when talking to people. Others naturally have trouble with empathy and so are unable to smoothly navigate social interactions. And some just naturally aren't interested in learning about other people's lives, or in telling others about themselves. So they have to force themselves somehow.
I agree with you: these artificial systems are pathological and unpleasant. But sometimes it can seem like the only option.
My impression is that you've never struggled with any of these very basic aspects of life. Consider that not everybody's experience is the same.
I don't think your experience translates well to everyone, hence the need for different methods.
I'm active in my community, politically active, have started and sold a business in the past, etc... and all I have are acquaintances. I don't think anyone outside of my immediate family even knows when my birthday is or how old I am.
This really isn't true. I lived a pretty active life for a decade or so, as a drummer in various drum groups (samba, etc). I was well-liked, people knew my name and seemed to enjoy hanging out with me, and I had some decent conversations. But I didn't really have any people I'd be super comfortable chatting with 1-1, and nobody I'd call up and specifically hang out with.
It was only when the pandemic hit that I realised that, without the regular group socials I was used to, I literally had nobody to chat to. At that point I started doing more or less exactly what this article said, and deliberately trying to make closer friends. I'm happy to say that the strategy worked pretty well.
Perhaps you are naturally good at making deep friendships in these circumstances, but I think a lot of people are not.
I think the approach in this article is great… for some people.
It really doesn’t apply once you have a lot of responsibilities and limited time. Commitments can quickly eat up your time, whether it’s caring for elderly, kids, a family or all of the above, on top of career.
As the author mentioned, most of these techniques don’t apply to people you need to be around fairly regularly, which tends to be almost all the people you meet once said responsibilities are established.
Location makes a big difference too. I've always lived in big cities in areas with lots of expats and transient people. Its very easy to make friends. In suburbs its tougher, especially in areas where people grew up still know neighbors from elementary school.
The other thing is I've always had room mates - its a lot cheaper and more social. I never really wanted to live by myself.
It's good to keep in practice with making friends -- close or otherwise -- as an adult. Most of us are pretty bad at it, and on average we got worse at it during Covid. I appreciate the spirit of the post and applaud the author on seeking it out and writing about it.
tbh I feel like it's much easier for me to make friends when I was younger (5-10 years ago). Many of my high school friends are still in touch right now back in my home country. It is quite hard though when you're an immigrant in a foreign country, I don't feel like I have close friends here although I have decided to settle in this country.
The author is a child. The core of his anecdote is "I dated a girl and then I went to a summer camp and got my camp mates to do that '36 questions' exercise the New York Times popularized several years ago." I think this advice would be useful to socially awkward college students who need explicit instruction for talking to classmates.
Yeah, I was so ready to agree with this article at the beginning, but then got to the 36 questions part and felt queasy reading it. Imagining a friend coming up to me and reading off some script about "who is your ideal dinner guest" makes me depressed.
I do think there are some decent observations in the beginning of this article that a lot of people take too long to realize.
1) There comes a time in most people's lives where making friends won't come without a lot of effort. You will have to go out of your way to create situations where you can get to know people.
2) Asking probing, slightly uncomfortable questions can lead to deeper friendships. If you're the type of person who doesn't feel comfortable digging into people's feelings, it's worth it to force it.
That being said, you need to treat your friends like they're unique people. You can't read questions off a script and expect them to feel good about it.
The author's primary advice for making more friends is that you will have conversations with lots of people and you should iterate through them quickly by making more intimate conversation and revealing something about yourself to deepen the relationship.
This makes sense if the author is a student at a school of any meaningful size in a popular major. But it doesn't make sense for adults struggling to make connections outside of school. Assuming you work in an office, would you serially go from desk to desk asking coworkers out to 1:1 lunches? I'm a member of over a hundred groups on Meetup and I manage to find in-person events maybe every couple of weeks or so. And I talk to maybe 1-2 people at each one: everyone else mostly brings coworkers and talks to them instead. When I go work on a laptop at a cafe, I try making some kind of conversation with someone who is also there alone, but that's also usually 1-2 people a week and that's a sentence or two back and forth, not even a conversation.
I get the sense that even lonely people looking for more chances to connect with others have few promising encounters with strangers and can't apply that "filter fast" mindset.
I am 41 and it's certainly more difficult at this age because people my age are busy with family and work. Friendships ebb and flow based on external factors. Having realistic expectations is important.
I work for myself and generally with my work I am not interacting with people on a daily basis. I also got divorced two years ago and since then, I've made a concerted effort to be more social and do a better job keeping up with friends. I've made quite a few new friends since then, and several that I see at least a few times a month.
My take-away from this article mainly was that making yourself vulnerable makes someone else willing to share too. It's valuable to get to know someone better. I don't think it has to be done in a scripted fashion. For me, the opportunities tend to present themselves organically.
I've had some deep conversations taking a ski lift up a mountain, walking around on the street knocking on doors during a campaign, waiting around to launch at a flying site and on a long drive in a car. You'll probably learn that you have a few shared interests with that person. When you do, it makes finding opportunities to get together and do stuff easy.
> Assuming you work in an office, would you serially go from desk to desk asking coworkers out to 1:1 lunches?
I disagree with the author on a lot, but this is not a bad idea, at least for people you work closely with. I probably wouldn't take them to a sit-down place 1:1 unless you're already comfortable with them but grabbing coffee or a fast-casual lunch that you take back to the office is a good idea
Sure! I do that with my immediate teammates at places I've worked. Outside of that, I'd have to go knocking desk to desk with no pre-existing reason to.
You captured two of the author's points well: 1) more vulnerable, intimate conversations that eschew social norms can lead to more and deeper friendships; and 2) to grow deeper connections you should cast a wide net and filter down based upon compatibility. The author makes other points about taking initiative and following up as well.
Your critique of point #2 is that a middle-aged adult has less opportunities for casual conversations with a stranger than a university student?
Maybe. Off the top of my head, here's a list of places a middle-aged adult can find casual conversations that may lead to friendships: gym, grocery shopping, volunteer work, hikes, walking in the park, sports, library, cafe, public events, bar, club, mall, in the checkout line at any store... I can go on. If you consider all these different avenues, you encounter 100+ strangers every day.
I'm a middle-aged adult that had no problem making friends throughout school. It was easy, almost the default. I lost most of them to time and distance. And now, I find myself with little to no close friends, outside of my family and significant other, because making friends isn't the default as an adult. Making friends takes work!
The author correctly highlights that you must exercise intent to make friends. I've discovered some parts of this through trial-and-error over the past couple months as I've been intentionally putting myself out there, and have received promising results so far. I still have a ways to go.
I leave you with a recent experience of mine that touches upon a lot of the author's points.
I workout 5-6 days a week at the gym. Headphones in, don't bother me. I see this same guy every day I'm there. He's working out, but he's talking with people too. Half the people there know him. For weeks, we'd pass by each other and say nothing. Until one day, I passed him in the hallway and asked him "How often do you work out and for how long?" Such a random question, but I was curious because I see him every time I'm there no matter the time. He gave me a long detailed rundown, told me about his 165-day streak, why he does it, etc etc. We exchanged names and then went about our days. Since then, we've spoken to each other every time we see each other, and our conversations have gradually gone deeper and deeper. And there's something strange about him... he's present. He's not in a rush, he's fully engaged in the conversation, and he's not afraid to talk about anything. So when we talked about what we did for Thanksgiving, I shared a little bit of vulnerability about how most of my family and friends are spread out across the country in different locations. Well, he was familiar with one of them, and actually traveled there to propose and get engaged. Turns out we'd been to some of the same places off the beaten path and enjoy the same things. Then the next time we talked, I asked about his wedding, and he shared some vulnerability about how the woman left a year after the engagement, just before the wedding, so on and so on.
This experience isn't unique. Since becoming intentional, open, and willing to share my actual self, I've had this same experience many times over the past couple months. Once with the cashier who was checking me out at a sporting goods store. Our conversation twisted and turned into her sharing vulnerability about growing older, with her birthday just a week away. Now, when I see her, we have real meaningful conversations without feeling like we have to be "normal".
Yet still, after these positive experiences, I don't exchange information, follow up, or take initiative. And that's what I need to improve upon. Because why wouldn't I do that after having a few good conversations? Well because I'm scared, I don't want to feel like I'm imposing, and what happens if we don't actually get along. Oh well... just have to dive in. :)
I also work out at a gym 5-6 days a week, but without headphones, because I want to be able to hear people reaching out to me.
There are definitely gym regulars (the guy wearing Top Gun shades indoors who uses 14 plates for his leg press and never puts them back). The extent of my socializing at that gym, over the course of two years, has been "sorry, are you still using that."
Exactly, the opportunities for you to converse are there. You can act upon the author's advice. I suspect you're choosing not to in your daily life.
You can talk to anyone, not just the regulars, with a little bit of observation. Most people are happy to talk about their lives because we all go through life with little to no people showing an interest, not even people close to us.
Another example from just the other night, I see a person with an amazingly low percentage of body fat and muscle tone. That's a feat that takes dedication! So, I ask them if they strength train and run... how are you able to stay healthy without injuring yourself with that training volume... oh you run trails, do you have any good recommendations for someone just starting out (because I want to get into trail running), so on and so forth.
There's a wealth of opportunities for conversation out there my friend. Be proactive, give it a go!
My point is that I, apparently, am more open to others than you, and make more effort to address them than you, but don't have accidental results as good as yours. I suspect that you understood what I meant, but decided to post a critical and accusatory note nevertheless.
In my experience, there are only two reasons why a middle-aged adult would approach someone in 80% of those scenarios. One is that they're trying to sell me something or solicit donations to some cause, and the other is that they're literally insane and are about to start telling me why 5G towers shoot mind-control rays.
> I...was too anxious to try...a non-standard action
That's a really familiar type of anxiety.
We tend to put a lot of human interaction into a shared narrative. That's pretty useful, so long as there is a role in that narrative that we can fill, that will bring us to a desired outcome.
As soon as it doesn't, we suddenly become personality responsible for writing the narrative. To become the writer is intensely liberating, but the pen feels heavy and sharp to an unpracticed hand.
And we have a lot of social boundaries that make it feel wrong to be the writer. Who are you to dictate this interaction? Isn't that selfish or greedy? Playing God? Blasphemy!
Social interaction can feel a lot like chess. After years of practice playing the roles of each piece, being a pawn, a bishop, a rook, the queen, all you have left is a king. 50 more moves and you lose! What do you do? Cheat?
But cheating is wrong! It's an unfair advantage! It breaks the rules!
Breaking the rules is actually fine. The rules are nothing more than structure for the game. We don't have to keep playing. The only rules we can't break are thermodynamics.
My first instinct is to make a new game. Better yet, an expansion! I can just put all my desired functionality into an abstraction, and share that with everyone! That's collaboration, right? I have another word: boilerplate.
The scary thing about playing God isn't rejection: it's faith. If someone puts their faith in my narrative, then suddenly I'm responsible for their needs, too.
I don't want the responsibility. I don't want to pay God. But that's selfish in it's own way: someone has to fill the role. If I'm the one putting faith in others, then I'm dumping my own responsibility onto them.
So there is no way around this anxiety. I can't factor it out and abstract it away. I can't place the burden on someone else and expect them to succeed for me. I can't analyze and predict potential outcomes.
There are only two moves left:
1. Wait
2. Act
Option #1 is just what we call the time leading up to Option #2, so the choice has already been made. The only question left is, "When?" "Now" is as good as answer as any other.
---
The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that "yes" is a valid option. It's important to respect "no" when you hear it, but to expect "no" takes all the power and potential out of "yes".
People like questions. It allows them to talk about their favorite topic: themselves.
Don't read that as selfish, it isn't. It's just the realization that any interest beyond the superficial is surprising to people. It's sadly very unusual.
I really like reading this article and I think it's a good start to get rid of a loner lifestyle.
There's however one caveat... making close friends is quite a culture dependent topic in my opinion. Making close friends requires differerent approaches depending on the culture you're living in. Strategies that work in San Francisco may not work in Miami, Buenos Aires or Trondheim.
In some cultures and sub-cultures "opening up" is closely tied to the consumption of inappropriate levels of alcohol, while in others you can go without and still build a good connection to other people.
I fortunately have close friends, but not through any of my own doing. Over the years, there were a lot of friendly extroverts that encouraged me to hang out and join them for burger night, or they’d message me when they were in town. Everyone I dated took the initiative to ask me out, including my wife. I always feel awkward when I reach out to people, as though I’m bothering them somehow, so I tend to avoid doing so. Once someone is a close friend, I go out of my way to maintain the connection, but it’s that in-between stage of “acquaintance” where I have a hard time.
I had a bit of a revelation when I left my last job. There were very few comments from coworkers when I left. I don’t think I was disliked (hopefully?), but I don’t think anyone really considered me their friend either. Looking back I think I came across as somewhat of a NPC to coworkers. I preferred to eat lunch by myself and I only discussed the business topic at hand during meetings unless someone else brought up a personal discussion.
I wouldn’t mind to start more personal discussions, but I’m always concerned it might come across the wrong way, so the furthest I seem to get is “how was your weekend?”
I am one of these friendly extroverts.
Something that's hard for me to explain is that "making friends is so hard it's easy"
What I mean by that is, social anxiety is so high, population-level self-absorption is so high, people are so lonely... that for the most part if you just approach someone and behave as if you're friends... they'll go for it.
There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster)
> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it (so long as you're not a total monster)
This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years. Back then, you are constantly meeting new people, and seeing them regularly in class and on campus. People that age don't have a "max occupancy" number when it comes to making friends. As an adult in the working world, the opposite is true.
Outside of that uni environment, a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again. Most people cannot make a first impression that good.
Outside of school/uni, people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers. Friendship groups begin to quickly narrow around this time as well, as people get married, go to professional schooling of some kind, and start hanging out mostly with people that are very similar to them.
I can't say that you're wrong, because everyone's environment/experience is different.
But this is so outside my perception of the world and that of everyone I've ever spoken to (across a swatch of demographics across North America and Europe).
Friendship groups narrow because it isn't EASY anymore (you're not all on campus).
Nobody actually desires for them to narrow.
If you can make it *easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days
>If you can make it easy* for the other person (by handling the approach, scheduling, etc). They'll be as willing as in uni days*
That's definitely not true, or at least not my experience. Everyone I ask out to join me for various activities, has an excuse, usually busy or other plans with someone else, and they never follow up for a rain check.
People over 30, even single/child-free, seem to be very busy with their established routines, hobbies, and narrow circle of long term friends, that they just aren't open to new people anymore or at least making time for them, no matter how cool or sociable you are.
Seems like time is the main cuprit, or lack thereof. If you already have things to do and enough friends that occupy all your free time, or barley have enough time to meet the friends you already have, then when are you gonna meet new people?
Making friends is a two way street. You could be the coolest, funniest, most sociable guy ever, but if everyone you meet already had enough friends or feels they don't need you in their life then ....
The only shot to make this easy for you is meeting other loners.
In my experience, and everyone's is different, the key is to find a common activity/interest. I do consulting work, so I often change teams and walk in knowing no one. I've been complimented multiple times about noticeably increasing team cohesion. You know what I do? I start regular/consistent activities with the team. "Tuesday is my go out to lunch day, everyone is invited." I mean I literally just stand up in the middle of work and say that loud enough for surrounding people to hear. Sometimes I go alone, especially at first. But eventually people trickle in and then it doesn't take long before a group of 4-5 people are going to lunch every Tuesday. You can similarly start a regular happy hour if one is not already going on. People join who aren't even on my team, because they heard me invite everyone.
Outside of work, the path is to join a hobby. Find a softball league or something like that. This has built in consistent interaction and fosters expansion into happy hours after the games or other activities.
If there's anyone in your circle of acquaintances that has a birthday, tell them you'd really like to buy them a beer to celebrate their birthday. Ask open ended, "Hey, is there a day this week you're free? I owe you a birthday beer." Most adults no longer get real celebrations for their birthdays and will appreciate it if there's not some other social hurdle (actually busy, afraid you are trying to date them, etc). Some of those social hurdles (like afraid it's a date) can be overcome by suggesting it's a group thing. To use the work example again, "Hey team, it's Susan's birthday this week. I think it would be cool if we took her to lunch or something. Anyone else in?"
To put context on this, I am introverted and autistic (very low social needs). I do these behaviors explicitly for outcome oriented purposes (bring people joy, grow career).
In my experience both of you are right. There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships, especially if they have not lived in the same place for 20+ years. On the other hand there are a bunch of people who are so much in their routines they are not open to do anything out of the ordinary. The ironic thing is that even those are often desperate for friends, they just struggle to break their routines (something you definitely must do to make friends IMO).
Which leads me to a point that is missing in the post, if you want to get to know new people, be open to new things. Just say yes if somebody asks you to go to the arcade, if you really can't but want to do something, follow up on the rain check.
>There are many people who are very "desperate" for friendships
Being desperate for friendships, in my experience, usually has the opposite effect of making people avoid you even more. Especially if you're over 30. People seem to be wired to think that "if you're a grown adult and have no friends by now, then it's probably because there's something wrong with you, and is risky for me to be the first one to take a leap of faith in you if nobody has done it so far". Usually people who already have many friends easily attract more, as it signals you're already a sociable and valuable "tribe member". Same with romantic relationships.
>Just say yes if somebody asks you to go to the arcade
That assumes there are people who ask you. If nobody asks you, then what? In my experience after I moved abroad, almost nobody asked me anywhere despite me learning the local language, making efforts to socialize, strike up conversations and exchange phone numbers. Even when I was the one initiating asking people to go places rarely end in a positive response. I think it's a cultural thing. The country I live now, people are very cold, distanced and keep to themselves, and meeting and engaging people you don't know very well is not really something wildly accepted.
Perhaps you can consider moving to a country other than the UK?
Just kidding, I've met plenty of wonderful and sociable UK people, and the joke could work (or not work, depending on what you make of my lousy humour) on almost any country.
Edit: seeing your other comment about "German speaking parts of Europe", my next guess to use in a joke would be Germany, but similarly, I've met a ton of very sociable Germans.
new relationships = low commitment
never ask a new friend to hang in X, where X is days away.
instead just do, i'm heading to this arcade want to join?
or i'm at coffee shop now, want to stop by and catch up.
this is how you can turn casual associates into friends.
if someone cool i knew asked me to spend 2 hours with them i'd get nervous.
plus, if they know that you are cool even without them they are far more likely to join you.
>or i'm at coffee shop now, want to stop by and catch up. this is how you can turn casual associates into friends.
This is not my experience at all in my new host country. I tried this a lot and never got anyone to join. People here seem to have their schedule pre-planned, and expect you to schedule meetups in advance if you want them to join you. Sending texts like "I'm having a coffee in town, join me if you want" to people I just met always left me alone, with replies coming after 2+ hours or the next day like "sorry, I was busy/got other plans/saw your text too late".
It's how I spent my 30th birthday alone. I texted a bunch of people 10h in advance if they want join me later that Friday/Saturday night for birthday drinks and maybe going out dancing later. Out of about 12 people, nobody came. :(
It's a cultural issue I think in the German speaking part of Europe. Brazilians told me spontaneous meetings with people are completely normal there, but here people don't spontaneously join invites from people they aren't very close with and expect you to schedule these well in advance.
I've heard the same about Nordic countries, and to be perfectly honest, it would be similar in many North American cities as well.
As a Brazilian living in a Nordic country and working in a different Nordic country, I can corroborate that the expectation from the locals here is that everything in planned in advance (with plenty of notice: 1 week or more); I can also corroborate that Brazilians in general do things spontaneously.
10 hours in advance is not enough time for the weekends, people plan there weekends days in advance and sometimes weeks. A weekday is a lot easier
Bingo
No disrespect, but I’m guessing you’re not married with kids. That phase is very busy and focused and people have dramatically less time compared to uni days.
> This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years
I'll happily state the contrary:
Supply easily saturates demand at the university but after that most are on their own. So, demand stays the same but supply drops off (because you have much less available time).
So this is where you can shine.
> knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again
No, I talk to people while waiting for the train or during my commute. I don't ask them to see them again, I just see them again because they have the same commute as me.
Always say hi but never give them the feeling that you expect them to spend time talking with you. This is also why it's easier to talk while waiting for the train, it's a limited time and they feel easier knowing that you won't be potentially annoying them during the whole train ride.
From there on it's easier, you slowly get to know a handful of acquaintances and you can easily "escalate" with the people you like.
The bus arriving is a natural break point for ending the conversation, I'd say. There's no social obligation to keep talking once you are both are busy boarding the bus and finding a seat, so it's a good time to say farewell.
> a new person is going to have to knock your socks off with their personality, for you to even consider meeting up with them again
I’ve had serendipitous conversations which were just fun. Nothing knocking my socks off. Just good conversation; we share numbers and I try to remember when we’re in the same area again.
> people are busy with daily life, and far less likely to chat with strangers
Couldn’t disagree more. Not everyone wants to chat all the time. But I’ve had loads of interesting conversations with strangers at bars and restaurants, coffee shop lines, airport terminals, sports-gear shops and of course holiday destinations.
This is a big part of my "So hard it's easy" philosophy.
Most people are so bad at conversation (waiting patiently for their turn to tell a completely unrelated anecdote), that just being able to have an organic chat is pretty "knock your socks off behavior"
You’re right but you’re also wrong. I know of social circles in middle age that have largely locked down. People have their routines and responsibilities and loved ones, and that’s that. They make little effort to clear space for new relationships. I also know other circles, also middle aged, where people have made it a priority to not do that. There is still flux and change in these circles.
Its a choice, basically. Not an easy one and there is no right or wrong here, but it’s not inevitable that midlife is characterised by social lockdown.
Location matters. In Silicon Valley, many people you meet are not locals, they come and they go. Like the tide. Other places this is different, like small towns where everyone knows everyone else. Some places people are more defensive, less friendly. Being an extrovert in a city where everyone is a visitor doesn’t help form lasting friendships and a faux pas in a small town can become a scarlet letter that follows you forever.
As others have noted, age matters. That’s well documented in the research from what I can tell but it’s also just a simple consequence of having marriages, raising children, etc… Coincidently that’s another set of life outcomes that are very impacted by place. Silicon Valley is known for that. “Man Jose” is not a great place to start a family, and career driven men from widely diverse ethnic and socio-cultural groups don’t form much of a community.
"Man Jose" is characterized by endless sprawl of modest single-family housing and is full of ethnic communities (South Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese) and families raising young children. It has more small neighborhood churches than almost anywhere else I have lived. Describing San Jose as a land of antisocial young men strikes me as frankly bizarre.
"This really doesn't ring true outside of school/university years."
I agree. At this point in life, I just want people to leave me alone. It seems like there isn't any time to make friends anyways.
> it's just a matter of priorities.
by that metric, most people's lives are nothing but failure. Everybody has a human need for companionship and to feel like they belong. That's hard to accomplish when juxtaposed against an economic system pushes people to work first and live second.
BTW Bezos is about as poor an example as you could pick. He absolutely has more free time than I do, unless by some miracle he cooks, cleans and drives himself everywhere. "Free time" here means he can choose the exact parameters of how to spend his day and not worry about paying the mortgage or tuition ̶o̶r̶ ̶r̶i̶s̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶r̶i̶a̶g̶e̶.
this actually sounds to me in agreement
1. yes, the priorities might be skewed
2. you just demonstrated that even Bezos is definitely not free from obligations and time commitments, such as his marriage, running a huge company, etc. The fact that he can afford to do anything in the world money-wise does not relieve even him from having to make "free time" to spend on family or else it will fail, etc. So, totally a matter of priorities.
What he’s saying is that money can buy time.
Like, imagine having a personal shopper who buys you stylish, perfectly fitting new clothes regularly, that just show up in your closet like magic.
Maybe. I happened to be in Thailand right now hanging out with expats. It's not really my cup of tea, but many of them hang out at the beach all day every day for months and even years, and pay next to nothing. They have no personal shoppers or money concerns, and infinite amounts of "free time". I couldn't live like that and I choose to invest such "free time" into work (currently) and I'm fine with that. But if you want to optimize specifically for free time, this is certainly doable without being Bezos, some people here worked washing dishes in the US.
Isn't there supposed to be an epidemic of loneliness amongst many adults?
It sounds like a paradox that there would be simultaneous epidemics of loneliness and and standoffishness but they cause each other. In one direction the cause is obvious, in the other lack of socialization causes people's "calibration" to go off as their learned tolerance to unexpected things fades. Real social interactions involve a lot of imperfection and what you sometimes see is that without being desensitized, lonely people's standards can be unreachable. (Other commenters have alluded to this being a result of hyper stimulation on TikTok but it predates it.)
Yes, because adults in general have less time to spend with friends than someone who's younger, more mobile (live downtown vs the suburbs) and has fewer responsibilities.
But loneliness is up among all generations, including those who are in the right time and right place (post-secondary). Many reasons for this as well, including the impact of internet and social media. People are less willing to give others a chance because Tinder/Tiktok/IG has trained them to think that another more interesting experience could be right around the corner.
Do you mind sharing your nationality? This rings true of the opinions of many people I know in Europe but I would be very surprised if any Americans felt this way. Genuinely curious.
I don't know, I have made friends well into my adult life, including after having kids. Granted it is not in the same frequency as in the uni days but still during the years I have found some. Mostly people I have bumped into at work but were not directly above or below me or via other friends who introduced me to their friends. I am not an extrovert or too introvert and I don't know why it seems like everyone here must declare themselves as if they are in the extreme of this bell curve, probably they are somewhere in the middle, like the rest of us.
I think this is highly dependent on luck. If you're friendly and happen to live near other, outgoing, friendly families, then the odds of befriending them are higher. It also helps to have a friendly spouse (it helps a LOT).
Luck is an interesting element.
My best friend for 20 years (we've since fallen out of touch), was someone I met in kindergarten?
How did we become friends?
My surname starts with a "G" and his starts with an "H" so we were seated next to each other
I met someone at Strangeloop because they were a doppelganger of an acquaintance from some years previously. I now realize that I had this attitude like we already friends because of that unrealized similarity. Attitude and any alignment in interests is more than enough, or alphabetical. :)
"Uncommon Commonalities" are wild.
There was a girl who I couldn't stand in high school... but we bumped into each other in a train station on the opposite side of the country... and hung out all afternoon.
Just being from the same small town made an immediate (but brief) connection
I had the same experience in 6th grade with a friend who moved to Michigan from Iowa. Last names "M" and "O" put us next to each other in class and the rest is history I suppose.
It feels corny to say, but you really can't make old friends.
I don't disagree with your post, but this only works in communities where:
1. Trust hasn't been eroded (i.e. fraudsters/salesmen do not predominate)
2. There is an external stimuli towards making friends (i.e. socializing is being perceived as a good thing)
3. There is an internal stimuli towards making friends (i.e. disregarding #2 and all other personal needs met, one still feels the need to connect with others)
The fact that you've got the results you mention here shows that you live in a community with mentally healthy, although isolated, individuals. You'll find drastically different results in other parts of the world (third-world, for instance). Plenty of people wouldn't talk to you if they see no financial benefit in doing it (even a measly amount can have a profound effect). I used to make fun of this but it's not an easy thing to swallow and can get you quite depressed.
The "loneliness epidemic" is just a reflection of the eroded values and misplaced goals that are now commonplace around the world.
>1. Trust hasn't been eroded (i.e. fraudsters/salesmen do not predominate)
I have become much more guarded and cynical in the past few years after a handful of interactions like this. At a bar or restaurant, and strike up a conversation with someone, only to have them, 15-30 minutes later, introduce me to their MLM, FX, Trading Mentor, House Flipping, etc. scam, and then swiftly disengage when I am uninterested.
I'm not a good looking dude, nor am I an extrovert. So I now just assume anyone approaching me in public is trying to scam me.
I feel similar, but mostly from leftover baggage from working retail. If someone says something nice to you when you're working a cash register, 9 times out of 10 they want you to do something for them and you're about 10 seconds away from them flipping over to a verbal abuse strategy to get what they want
Makes me even more convinced that I should go out of my way being nice to people working retail it. I do not think I ever get anything "out of it" except feeling a bit more positive in my outlook on life. Then at the local store we have the extremes where people call the cashiers by name, sharing personal stories etc. That makes me feel like I am part of a community, even if it is not a type of relationship I can nourish in the same way..
> At a bar or restaurant, and strike up a conversation with someone, only to have them, 15-30 minutes later, introduce me to their MLM, FX, Trading Mentor, House Flipping, etc. scam, and then swiftly disengage when I am uninterested.
Fuck me. I can't even imagine this is a thing in the real world. It sounds like trying to make friends in the YouTube comments section.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I’ve seen too many people get exploited and shit on by people behind their backs while they keep the nicest demeanor face to face. Grown adults at that. Some of these people were well into their 30s.
For me it is usually religion that someone is pushing.
Edited to include some more context.
These are great points.
Places where it can be assumed people are comfortable with an approach:
- A public place/destination (bar is okay, bus isn't)
- They are not in the middle of speaking (lulls in conversations are fine)
- They are not blocking sensory inputs (don't approach if you see headphones)
This also isn't magic. My success isn't 100%. It's about 30%
Which means that 7/10 people don't want to talk to me (which is fine).
But it also means that I can pretty reliably make a friend/day if I were so inclined
A bit about me, I'm a short man (5'3") with pretty solid facial symmetry and good grooming but I'm NOT particularly attractive.
I'm putting that context because it is important:
- Because of maleness I'm automatically safer in most situations (as in, I can approach someone, go off solo w/them and be confident I won't be assaulted)
- I'm short, so I'm not REALLY a physical threat to people - Hygiene implies social consideration/health
- Facial symmetry automatically encourages trust
- Being TOO attractive (and I'm nowhere close) can be intimidating to some people
Getting a stranger to have a conversation with you doesn’t mean you made a friend that day, at least not by and definition that’s valuable to me. It’s the first step, but what’s the conversion rate here? Most you probably never speak to again, a small number may reach acquaintance level, and even fewer end up as a friends. We probably have a different idea of what a friend is.
My definition of a friend is defined in another comment response. Basically, "will hang 50%+ of the time an invitation is issued (schedule permitting), and both of us would enjoy ourselves).
Typically takes about 3-5 meets to get there
> You'll find drastically different results in other parts of the world (third-world, for instance). Plenty of people wouldn't talk to you if they see no financial benefit in doing it (even a measly amount can have a profound effect).
I live in Ecuador, so third-world. The people here are not really after money, unless it's very easy to get. I mean, 30% of the "economy" here involves standing in the road with a mango, hoping someone gives you some coin for it (literally). Those same people could go get a real job and do some real hard work if they wanted actual cash. They don't. They like doing basically nothing and getting along okay from it. Not saying you're wrong, but latin america doesn't work this way.
Ecuador has no-cost public healthcare. The US does't. Not having money in the US will literally actively kill you.
I'm not sure this has the effect you are suggesting but it did make me laugh. Makes you wonder who decides what is a first world country and what is a third world country. In some ways the existence of a significant portion of American's (those unfortunate enough to be poor) is worse than a third world existence.
It’s actually quite clear cut.
1st world: NATO and allies 2nd world: The Soviet Sphere 3rd world: Everything else.
Clear cut according to a definition absolutely nobody uses any more. There's no longer a Soviet sphere even if you wanted to use that definition and the post-soviet sphere has diverged dramatically.
> Not having money in the US will literally actively kill you.
Doesn't it put you on Medicaid?
If you're a legal citizen, and in one of the states that opted in to Medicade expansion (many states, all "red" states did not, despite it being literally free money from their prospective.)
A bigger problem is that the limits are quite low (Max income limit will be exceeded by someone making minimum wage in a lot of states. It's only $18k if single, going up to $36k for a family of 4.
That means there's a HUGE donut hole problem of making too much for Medicade, but not nearly enough to actually afford healthcare - or they maybe have some crappy employer plan that has a high deductible that would bankrupt them to even approach.
Making friends is not hard in the way that general relativity is hard, it's hard in the way that digging a trench is hard. You have to do a lot of grunt work for a very long time in order to see results. And there are no shortcuts, you have to do it all "by hand" or it doesn't work.
I agree with your distinction, but not with your degree.
It's *hard* v. *complex*, but it doesn't take as long as you'd think.
- Approach
- Chatting for an hour
- 10 texts back and forth to coordinate a meet
- Meet for 90 minutes
(repeat the last two bullets 3-5 times)
Is a pretty reliable path to "good friend".
Good friend is defined as: "Will reliable hang with you, schedule permitting 60% of the time you ask... and you will both have a good time"
Good friend is not, "Will donate a kidney"
> Good friend is not, "Will donate a kidney"
I have a rather tighter notion of a "good friend". It includes things like "will not steal from me", "won't betray my confidences", "will be straight with me". Otherwise they're just mates; people I feel OK hanging out with.
I have no good friends just now, and I haven't had good friends for quite a few years. I don't think my standards are exacting; I have mates, but I just wouldn't rely on them. I'd be quite surprised to learn that they were relying on me.
A good friend is a scarce treasure. If you're lucky enough to have one, hang on tight.
[Edit] I don't think you can plan to make a "good friend". It involves trust, which involves time. You can make friends with someone in an evening, but I've never had a "good friend" that I've known for less than a few months. All of my good friends were people I'd known for several years, but it doesn't need to take that long.
I like your definitions. And I agree, good friends are rare. I haven't had one since high school, nearly 40 years ago.
I'd be willing to except that my definition of "friends" aligns with your definition of "mates".
Nothing too emotionally intense. Just a loneliness balm and reliable cool hangs
We're quibbling over terminology. To me, a "good friend" is a relationship that lasts for a long time, maybe a lifetime, and survives significant challenges. It doesn't have to be a kidney, but I think a friendship should survive, for example, a relocation. Otherwise I would call it an acquaintance, not a friend.
Acquaintances are indeed easy to make. The problem is, that kind of relationship is fragile and transient and superficial. I think most people want more. I know I do.
The relocation point is interesting. I have a lot of friendships that are in 'good friend' territory when we're in the same place, but otherwise go dormant for long periods. I'm ok with this and generally don't feel a need to try to change this dynamic with people. I guess they aren't close friends in exactly the way that you're describing, but they are definitely a lot more than acquaintances.
In a strange way I even feel that it can be a testament to the strength of the underlying friendship that we can pick up where we left off after years of minimal contact. I'm actually grateful for these kinds of relationships. I really don't have the time, energy, or desire to keep up ongoing text/email/social media conversations with all these people, but when we are able to meet up I have a great time and find it hugely valuable.
> we can pick up where we left off after years of minimal contact
Sure, but you have to actually do that from time to time.
I've lost count of the number of people I thought I was really close with who moved away insisting that they would keep in touch, and then I never hear from them again, ever after reaching out.
(Having kids is another reliable "friendship"-killer.)
Yes, I've never had a friendship survive a relocation. Not to say that I dislike or resent any of these people at all; we simply never talk anymore.
Kids could possibly do the same especially if your friends are not also having kids at the same time. Kids can also easily contribute to the making of new acquaintances (parents of other kids) as well. These might turn into friendships, or might fade out quickly once the kids' interests diverge (or they grow up and leave the nest).
I think I'd count those "dormant but not dead" relationships as good friends, myself, provided that we end up seeing each other semi-regularly (say, minimum every couple years or so).
+1 to this. I have a lot of problems maintaining relationships of any sort once the "proximity effect" no longer applies. I suspect many people do, which is why most people lose all their school friends after they leave school, for instance.
I like the straightforward, logical approach -- it's helpful for me to think about the process in those terms. Thank you.
However, thinking about the process this way makes it really apparent that I've got no desire in trying to make friends -- each of those steps individually feels like a nearly insurmountable nightmare for me... much less doing all of them (and more than once!).
And that's kind of my point.
The little bit you know about me from this thread... would you want to grab a beer if all you had to do was read the text and confirm you were available?
These steps ARE scary for some people... and that's okay... I'm happy to do it. I just want to get to you know you!
That makes sense and I appreciate the reply.
I'd probably choose not to grab a beer -- unless the social cost/effort in saying no was higher than saying yes. Quite likely I'd feel put upon with having to respond in a way that I thought didn't offend you...and all by pithy text messages. What a hassle!
Totally get that's a me problem though and I'd fall into your 70%.
Thanks for the insights though -- I find the concept of friendship fascinating (if perplexing).
In my mind this was was “best case engagement”
I told you what I’m about.
You told me your preferences.
They don’t mesh, so we both split after having spent a pleasant 90 seconds
To add to this, there is also no guarantee that all that trench digging will yield anything substantial. Relationships often evolve in ways that both parties least expect. It can be a dice roll whether the final outcome is good or bad.
Well nothing worth doing is easy
I found positive social interaction as a baseline really rings true - a smile and the nod type thing - post-lockdown in Texas. Great to practice manners again and laugh at mixing up direction of traffic in the grocery store. Bumbling around in a mask in a hurry was not pleasant, this is nicer so I behave the same!
> There's so much DEMAND for friends, that people will gobble up your supply if you offer it
This is true, but only if you're attractive and somewhat charismatic. I would say that means it doesn't apply to the majority of people (who are plain or ugly and not particularly charismatic or actively repulsive).
I'd say it's true if you're aren't unattractive (basically nail personal grooming), and are somewhat interested in someone else.
That is already far above most people, so I think I agree :)
It's not only social anxiety that forbids people. It's also failed relationships that bruise your desire to try again. In my case I failed people enough time not to want to bother someone else :)
It's interesting to me that you think you failed people.
I roll my eyes when I hear quotes like, "Judge a fish by it's ability to fly and you'll think it's a failure"... but there is something to that.
Maybe you're chocolate and those people just prefer vanilla?
> I always feel awkward when I reach out to people, as though I’m bothering them somehow, so I tend to avoid doing so.
Sometime around 30 it hit me like a swinging log to my introverted face that the reason I felt that way was because that's how I felt when people reached out to me.
It really shook my perspective to realize that many people like having someone reaching out to them and they are not annoyed by it.
Your Friends Have More Friends Than You
https://scribe.citizen4.eu/your-friends-have-more-friends-th...
Math makes this part of the human condition. I honestly think that the solution for the shy (like you and I) is to value the relationships that these extroverts offer. At least a couple of the extroverts will think you're wonderful, and the other people that they will accidentally bring into your life through their gregariousness will cover the range from extreme introvert to extreme extrovert and everything in between. You will be meeting those introverts through a person who they trust, which is your best opportunity for successfully connecting with other shy people.
The only caveats are that you can't focus on one extrovert; get to know more than one, they're happy to talk. Focusing your explorations on one extrovert puts too much burden on the extrovert, and they want to share their time with a lot of people. The second caveat is to not let the extrovert take advantage of you, because a lot of extroverts are con-men/sales-types.
edit: 97% of the good friends I have had in my adult life were the result of a single extrovert talking to me out of the blue in my high school cafeteria. Through her, I met my first real girlfriend, and met two of the members of the band I'd end up singing in and touring with in my 20s. Still friends 30 years later, so I guess she liked me.
If people are going out of their way to approach you (especially women), then it's probably down to you being attractive or at the very least above average.
Something happened within the last year, either to the general social environment around me or my own demeanor. I used to be able to go out and speak to people, have convos, people would even approach me.
This year has been much different though. When I go out no one wants to talk, except for straight lunatics. At the bar the other night the only guy who wanted to talk went on a tirade about “the Jews” and kept asking if I was a Jew. A couple years ago I could have had a nice conversation with someone who had just sat next to me.
Concerningly, this seems to be a self-reinforcing situation. If everyone willing to have a conversation is a lunatic, of course you wouldn't want to talk to anybody.
> Something happened within the last year, either to the general social environment around me or my own demeanor.
I think COVID made everyone forget how to socialize.
Surely a coincidence, but one of the last people I spontaneously socialized with seemed completely coherent and present, yet spent the better part of an hour warning me that jews are building a moon base to control the world from (with the help of Elon Musk of course).
I was left completely flabbergasted. He had a job, a good one, he was somewhat articulate, very friendly, and yet… Fully bought into the Jewish conspiracy, reptilian agenda type stuff. I couldn’t help but wonder if mild schizophrenia was involved.
At any rate, I’m content to keep to myself for longer than usual.
> I go out of my way to maintain the connection
It could also be that the OP possesses traits which are notable and desirable to the right people.
I've barely exchanged a few sentences with someone before and they immediately stick out to me; not because they are attractive physically, but I notice something about their character that is desirable or rare.
On the other hand, attractive women sometimes get harassed. If you are an attractive man, many people will just generally automatically be nice but also respectful toward you. Then you could end up with a cheery disposition because from your point of view the world is just a friendly, respectful place, and people are even nicer to you (or you could turn into a spoiled jerk, there are lots of paths).
> had a bit of a revelation when I left my last job. There were very few comments from coworkers when I left
Can't remember who said this to me, but it stuck: nobody remembers congratulatory calls for a new job. But you never forget each person who reached out when you were fired or let go.
It's fun but ephemeral to celebrate. It hurts to share pain, but it’s rewarding. When I find people my gut wants to share burdens with, I listen: they became close friends.
> the furthest I seem to get is “how was your weekend?”
Not a social expert here, but that isn't a bad start! Sure, it's a bit small-talk-y, but it can open up more interesting conversation topics. Assuming the person you're talking to give you more than just "oh, it was fine", anyway.
You can also modify it to "did you do anything interesting over the weekend?" And then if they say something specific, you can follow up with deeper questions about what they tell you they did, and go from there.
I get that it's hard, though. I considered myself an "extroverted introvert" (and even an "introverted extrovert", on my more socially-energetic days), though pandemic isolation has weakened the extrovert part. I often feel like asking deeper follow-up questions is intrusive and somehow bothersome, but I think the first step is to just make yourself not care, and ask anyway. Listen to how the person responds, and you should be able to get an idea if they do want to talk more about it, or if they'd rather not. If not, you can slow down and disengage. But if they do, then that's a good sign to continue.
Someone posted succeedsocially.com in another thread, and it's an excellent resource that might help you. I'm astonished by how on-point it is.
NPC as in non-playable character?
One of the first search results reads:
«[…] slang used by millenials to denote people who act as if they are being told by someone to act in a specific manner, although that may not be the case. Using this abbreviation, the commentator or the creator is poking fun at the other person for acting in a certain manner.»
Right word, wrong meaning. In the result you quoted, a person's intelligence is being compared to that of a NPC, implying that the person can't think for themselves and does whatever they're told like how NPCs in games act. The gp seems to imply a slightly different meaning, where a person is thought of as being not being a real person, and is only someone you go to for transactional work related stuff.
Whichever meaning, NPC is a recent insidious method of dehumanizing people that ranks right up there with labels like "pigs," "rats," and "cockroaches." This tactic is essentially a first prerequisite for mass violence. It's sure to increase incidences of mentally ill shooters viewing everyone around them as bots in a video game. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26330024209169...
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their...
I was extremely disheartened to hear my son describe someone as an NPC the other day. It really only functions to belittle and negatively categorize people. Worse still is that if someone truly does lack cognitive ability such that they do “follow the script”, the last thing they need is someone perhaps only marginally more intelligent to identify and discriminate their deficits.
It’s just a miserable lens to view others through. It’s quite popular with the kids, though.
Perhaps it’s better than what I grew up with, which was calling anything you didn’t like “gay” or “faggy”. Ugh. Sometimes we set a low bar.
It is really popular, and when I point out the problems with it, they say I'm overreacting and that they obviously don't mean it in a dehumanising way, but then lo and behold immediately after someone will come and say they actually do believe that some people are robots or somehow less human than others, confirming my suspicion that this is a genuine problem
It's also one of the things, along with other things, that signals to me that intelligence and specifically mental health ableism are going to be the huge dividing problem coming up. Specifically, do we know how to function as a society without being able to discriminate based on mental qualities?
Its no excuse, since kids in other countries seem to be better at this, but... "kids will be mean"
Do you see the irony in having the meaning of words being completely preprogrammed by what someone else want you to think and feel in a discussion about the word NPC? You know, context matters.
NPC has always meant a non-human in a video game. What's new is applying it to people in the real world; it's textbook dehumanization. This is literally how many people use the word, as another commenter below experienced multiple times. It serves zero purpose for me to go around thinking "NPC means X", when everyone else is "NPC means Y."
I've often heard that the term NPC is one of the primary causes of slippery-slope fallacy.
My first instinct was to say this seems like an overreaction to a joke, but this is a meme that originated from 4chan and the worst parts of reddit, so you might not be far off, given the track records for violence there.
Whenever I say it's a problem people are there to say I'm overreacting, but literally every time someone pops up out of the woodwork and confirms that they genuinely believe that some people are really NPCs, i.e. that they have no "soul" or self and are internally autonomous, like a computer.
Origin predates computer RPG's. It's from tabletop role playing games, and stands for "non player characters".
NPCs are the characters that the Dungeon Master (DM) creates to guide and influence the story, but the player characters (PCs) are the focus of the story. It's collaborative storytelling about the PCs adventure. An NPC is, by definition, not the hero.
Another meaning that has started to become prevalent is the conspiracy theory that some people don't experience qualia and have no internal "souls", i.e. they don't actually exist they are just robots. See twitter every time someone points out that some people don't have an internal voice or can't see images in their mind. There will be a chorus of people who are genuinely horrified and claim that this means that the person is not a real human but actually a robot. It sounds dramatic and I think people might even downvote me for this comment, but I've seen it quite a lot and increasingly often
NPC has, for some, become a term to completely dehumanise, in an almost moral panic kind of way. In a way that's like "what if the people I know are actually NPCs?"
We’re all NPCs for the ruling classes. That’s the big irony. It’s Elon’s simulation and we’re just living in it.
NPC as in someone who is unremarkable, is basic and the same as everyone else, hence the name a non-playable character (moreso referring to a background characater).
I am this exact same way.
-NPC Person
> I preferred to eat lunch by myself and I only discussed the business topic at hand during meetings unless someone else brought up a personal discussion.
Probably, they thought that you did not like them.
Very brief summary: a personal anecdote about forming good friends followed up by advice for how to have better conversions (vulnerability, curiosity) and how to meet more people who will become friends (meet people but filter out most of them, take initiative with following up), and lastly how to deepen friendships.
As someone who has a fair number of close friends, I think this is a good post with lots of solid advice. And it's written well! Personally I've been lucky to just naturally meet and form my best friends over time, but I definitely think taking initiative and following up are important to maintaining a close friendship.
A general point in this post I also like is that making and keeping close friends may require work and energy, rather than being something that life just throws your way. I intentionally try to periodically message friends, come out to places they live, just generally keep in touch; as one gets older people move about and it's harder to maintain your closest friendships, but it is possible!
Last comment: this is a very pragmatic and analytical post with a lot of discussions of things you can do, and not much discussion of how you should feel. I'd add this - just CARE. Appreciate the people in your life and let that appreciation guide you.
pro tip. Don't be a flake like me.
don't be a bummer
Great article, though it does give a sort of programmy-algorithmic answer to one of life's great questions. Not saying that's bad, just unexpected.
I was actually thinking about it today. Here's an awkward truth about friendships that everyone needs to get comfortable with: often one of you is more interested in the relationship than the other. You know what I mean. For instance, I was invited to a wedding a few weeks ago. It never occurred to me to write to this buddy in many years, I didn't invite him to my wedding, but he invited me to his. I had a great time, we caught up and had a good talk. The same has happened the other way round, I'm sure. People I like a lot and contact, but they don't contact me. Yet when we hang out, everyone has a good time.
If you act weird about these relationships, you lose them. You don't want to do that, because marginal relationships are maybe the most rewarding to maintain, IME. People doing different things to you in different places bring a lot more into your mix than the ones you see every day. There also tend to be many of these relationship-seeds, so your close friends will grow from some of them.
I think that’s any close relationship: the internets like to say if you don’t get 50/50 - hit the lawyer, but reality is it is never 50/50. You won’t be in any long term relationship if you don’t accept that.
Michelle Obama posted this recently (that I agree with very much)
‘’’
michelleobama
Verified
As an adult, I’ve lived in a number of places, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve only ever had one real home. My home is my family. My home is Barack.
But here’s the thing—our marriage has never been perfectly 50-50. One of us is always needing more or giving more. We have to be willing to listen to each other, honestly and without defensiveness. Only then, can we evolve together.
Over the years, a lot of young people have asked me about marriage. And my response usually goes something like this: You have to prepare yourself for long stretches of discord and discomfort. You have to learn how to make real compromises in the way you’ve lived as an individual. Glamorizing a relationship while you’re dating will lead you straight to difficulty once you’re married. You can’t paper over problems when you’re living with someone day in and day out.
So you’ve got to ask yourself: What are you trying to get out of this relationship? Have you truly thought it through? Do you want a wedding or do you want a lifelong partnership? Those are two very different things. Together, you are answering the question: Who are we and who do we want to be?
‘’’
I appreciate you calling this out.
I want to take a step back and generalize a little here, because I think there are a huge number of hypothetical "ideals" we tell ourselves friendships (and families and relationships) are "supposed" to be, but in reality basically never are - and when we hold ourselves to these ridiculously high standards literally we just end up isolating.
For example I think a lot of people act like lying is a huge betrayal of trust, but white lies are more-or-less a social lubricant (even comfort-lies that might prevent the person from growing, like "Yeah it was him/her, not you.").
Another example is romantic idea that we're 100% into 1 person romantically and 0% into anybody else until the moment we break up.
"Traditions are solutions for which we have forgotten the problems" - I think this quote fits to so many more situations as I get older. Relationships (w/ friends and family) are easily strengthened by traditions.
Traditions are very algorithmic. Traditions sometimes force us to connect/meet people and resolve conflicts if you follow the "rules". Traditions can be hard to follow (as in overcoming some inertia or discomfort).
PS: Don't have to think of just cultural traditions. A gang of college friends can have their own silly but decades long traditions and inside-jokes.
It's a good point, but I would say it's not awkward, just expected unless exceptional circumstances (for example two single persons sharing a flat and having similar interests at that time). Like any relationships, friendships evolve with time, you might get close at some point but things change and you are not in touch much for the next few years, and then the situation changes again and you are back closer. Don't you think?
I see this happening especially when people get in and out of intimate relationships. I think it's just life...
I'm in my 40's and I have a lot of close friends, both in my city (mostly newer friends) and around the country/world (mostly older friendships).
My trick is, I cheat. I'm happily single, live alone and have no children. That gives me the luxury of doing the heavy lifting in my friendships. I travel a lot and most of those trips are to stay with friends in their homes or to meet them at a third destination. That's been the most effective way to stay very close to my friends, as well as to become close to their spouses and kids. I understand most people can't do this because of their own family obligations. But maybe it's something people with families could do just once or twice a year to visit people important to them?
Beyond that, I'm usually the one to start group chats or send memes on social media or schedule video chats. Sometimes it's a chore, but usually it's effortless for me. And the close friends I've maintained to this point are with people who are usually very eager and able to stay in touch on their end. The others have fell by the wayside over the years. And some I have consciously excluded from my life when I realized they were bad friends.
I'd also add that, as a man, I find that women make better friends then men, especially past our 20's, and I'd encourage all men to consider finding and building more non-romantic relationships with women.
> building more non-romantic relationships with women.
I completely agree; I've always preferred being friends with women, but in my opinion it's not easy to do.
Things sometimes get complicated quickly if there's attraction on either side which often happens to at least one side if you're close friends. Even without romantic feelings, things get weird/awkward if either party is in a relationship or married.
I wonder if we can learn something from homosexual people in this. I don't often see gay guys cutting off their straight friendships because they're one-sidedly attracted for example in the same way straight men swear off any woman.
I think the crux there is that there isn't the potential mutual attraction.
For me, it would be much harder to develop feelings if I knew that there couldn't be attraction.
For a straight man it is probably just as easy being friends with a gay woman as it is a straight man, because in both cases there won't be mutual attraction. Conversely as a gay male it would be easy being friends with straight women or straight men -- I think that's where you see the stereotype of gay men with many friends who are straight women.
Well that's the thing, I don't generally see lesbians claiming they can have no lesbian friends, or gay people claiming they can have no gay friends, either. They seem to be able to be more emotionally mature about managing their attraction such that they don't need to cut themselves off from their attracted gender like some kind of addict.
That's something I didn't consider. I don't have many gay friends so I really don't have much context or understanding there.
Complicated doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm in this situation now and it's basically ruining my life. Or maybe it's ruined already, because I see no possible way out -- not even just ending the friendship.
Not only is the friendship very close, but inextricably linked with far and away my favorite activity in the world. One that has brought by far the most joy to my life, and one that I have given up a lot to pursue.
I don't even know how I could have predicted or avoided it, either. At first glance, I never would have guessed I would end up feeling any attraction to her at all. In actual fact, what I ended up with are feelings I could have never even imagined I was capable of feeling for someone (I'm 40).
The only thing I could have done differently, I'm afraid, would have been to make damn sure to never get so close to any woman at all.
As much as you can, relax. These things go 100x better when you’re relaxed. Whatever method you use to destress, do it. A lot. I’ve found that all social/romantic situations will flow better if I can build some mental “distance”.
You're 100% right of course, but the thing is that my favorite method, I can't even enjoy anymore, unless it's with her.
Uselessly vague.
I agree with a lot of this comment, but honestly having kids is just another connection point with other people - another reason to form a friendship.
A few months ago I organized a Dad's Drinks at a local bar. I walked there with a neighbor and realized that on every block there was at least one dad chilling in his house that wanted to come out. Having kids builds a habit to stay home, but isn't always a necessity - especially once the kids are 3 years old or older.
Disclaimer: no unsolicited advice please.
I'm old(er) mid-40's, single, no kids, and never married. I don't have much family or close friends. Hookup culture is de rigueur but it doesn't interest me. Where I'm at, there isn't a context to meet people and most random people in public around keep to themselves and treat me like I'm invisible. I do volunteering but that also doesn't go anywhere.
If you have to constantly take the social initiative, then you're carrying the relationship. Sometimes absence is better. Instead of dwelling on loneliness or self-pity, keeping productively busy seems a better alternative.
I'd like to have a family and kids, but an inability to find and make friends precludes that. The thought of getting old alone, having no one to check-in on me, no one to bury me, no one to care that I'm gone, and no one at a funeral seems depressing. I don't see how I won't end up in a "potter's field" somewhere.
It breaks my heart to see Western people living such lives. I love the West for so many reasons, but the social construction is a complete broken mess. Family and community is completely destroyed. People live and work only for themselves. The amount of loneliness and isolation is just mind blowing and unbearable. IMO, it's a selfish lifestyle. People who manage to make great success (due to a combination of lack, intelligence, hard work and sometimes just beauty) can live very good lives but the rest are doomed to live miserable, lonely lives and no gives a shit about them until they die. Very sad. I wish you happiness and fulfillment (whatever they are for you).
What are you contrasting the "West" with? As a person who lived most of his life in an Asian country with a very strong familial and social construct, I can say that there were no shortage of lonely, broken people there - we as a society just did a better job of hiding it. Perhaps the sense of failure and isolation may have slightly different causes, but that is not to say that Western society is somehow uniquely broken.
I would never say it's uniquely broken. Loneliness and isolation probably exist in every corner of the world. The thing is that the West gets almost everything done right IMHO. It's an amazing place to be. However, the connection and social part of it is not going anywhere. Families are one of the best constructs to build life-long fullfilling relationships, but everyone is giving up on them now. People are not getting married and are not having children, and if they do, it likely ends up in a divorce. As OP said, it's all hookup culture now. How many people will end up single and lonely after a certain age? Lots and lots and lots ... It's a serious epedimic.
I have to agree with the sibling commentator - the freedom to choose the level of engagement with family and society in the West is what drives many of us from the East to leave our homes. I also do not think the Eastern way is a good default for most people. It clearly works for lots of people, but it also comes at a great price for a lot of people. There are aspects of any traditional culture that can be stifling, especially if you don't happen to be at the top of your specific privilege pyramid. Rigid social hierarchy, lack of upward mobility, and discrimination are also deeply ingrained within traditional strong social constructs. Yes, the sense of belonging to the family & society is strong, but it's only a positive if your family values you - which isn't always a given. Yes, the Western social construct as it exists now is prone to certain weaknesses, but I don't think we can make value judgements on which is objectively better for most people. I have siblings who are very happy to remain in your homeland, and I have siblings who left - both would likely be unhappy if circumstances were reversed.
The divorce rates are in long term decline.
As someone who moved from SE Asia awhile ago, agree 100%:
Some (not all) of these strike me as not applying to all of the West, but being very American.
Eh, I don't think family ties are "completely destroyed" in the West, we're just not as into our family as some "Eastern" cultures (I'm thinking of India in particular) can be.
Remember, a lot of the "West" (at least my exposure to it, the USA) is a conglomeration of other cultures; we have many Eastern cultures here as well!
Many of my friends have large families that they're much more entangled with than I'd opt into with my own family.
I could not live with my mother again, though I love her very much. I imagine many Indian men would love to have that option, all else being equal, though realistically they simply don't.
The freedom to choose is nice, but a great many of us "Westerners" choose to stay close to our families. That's what freedom is; the ability to opt into culture, rather than be forced into it.
I am from North Africa, from a socio-economic background that's somehow the middle ground between the West and the East. I do agree with the concept of freedom of choice. I always thought about it in such terms. In the West, you have total freedom in whether to keep close to family or not, but it comes with the risk of isolation and loneliness. On the other hand, in the East, lonliness and isolation is pretty much gauranteed to never happen and there is always a large social network to fallback to when life gets hard, for emotional and material support. However, you need to first be loyal to the community and never leave them or disappoint them to be granted such a privelege, which contradicts the freedom of choice. IMHO, the West is better if you manage to succeed and build you own fullfilling social network, but if you fail, you're doomed to love a miserable lonely life. The East is a good default option for most people but it holds back people a bit.
> IMHO, the West is better if you manage to succeed and build you own fullfilling social network, but if you fail, you're doomed to love a miserable lonely life. The East is a good default option for most people but it holds back people a bit.
Very well put. But I also posit that it’s getting harder and harder to build a fulfilling social network in the west
Some people are too, too risk averse. They subconsciously avoid, not just pain, but the possibility of discomfort. It's not just one or two actions - it's their filter that they see the world through.
Pain avoidance is often disguised as disinterest, but really it's just a cost function to minimize the possibility of feeling embarrassment, awkwardness, discomfort, heated discussion, or emotional distress. Sometimes this is personality related; other times, this is a result of an aggressive, hurtful, or manipulative upbringing.
I have a friend like this and he is very hard to be friends with. He hit this point where he was stuck in an unhappy life situation (have few good friends, can't find love, etc) but vehemently opposed anything slightly uncomfortable that will move him from his unhappy cage.
What's happening subconsciously is a deep seated trauma/fear freezing him in place. For my friend, he was bullied as a kid, and his parents also were emotionally angry and abusive. He grew up with the fear that out of nowhere, a seemingly trivial sentence or action could send him into a world of confusion and hurt.
Today, meeting new people and sharing emotions is a giant minefield to him. But most people just see him as stubborn, whiny, hard to socialize with and doesn't listen to advice.
But it's hard to be his friend not because of his awkward socials but because he complains about his distress so much but doesn't do anything about it... for years. As someone who wants to solve problems and make progress, it is very frustrating to see him move so slowly.
He is very, very slow to go out from his comfort zone, even just a little bit.
You obviously care about your friend, but I do not think you really understand his position.
For some people company is "nice to have", something like owning a sports car. Maintaining friendship costs energy and has real risks (being used, emotional blackmail...). And benefits for short, obese, bald guy are really not that great.
"Hookup culture is de rigueur but it doesn't interest me."
That's media bullshit that people really like to believe. There is no shortage of people looking for relationships.
There is no shortage of people hoping and dreaming about relationships.
The number of people willing to move out of their comfort zone to make a good relationship possible - of any type - is much smaller.
That may be, but it has nothing to do with "hookup culture" which is just nonsense.
Hook up culture is made up of lots of woman and a few men.
The women are desperately searching for a relationship. The few men involved with hook up culture have too many options are unwilling to commit due to overwhelming supply.
There are two reasons for why it's like this. The first reason is dating apps. Dating apps make it very easy for women to be even more selective then they already are.
The second reason is technology. The rise of technology including tampons and birth control has allowed women to fight for additional rights and come onto equal standing with men. For most of human history women depended on men for financial well being and survival in general. This is no longer the case.
Thus when being in a LT relationship isn't a survival requirement, women upgrade their selectivity.
The experience for the majority of men really just ends up being a lack of matches. The experience for women is a lack of men willing to commit. And for a few men (you most likely) hooking up is just "comfortable."
I'm not making this up. There is very real data about this.
You forget that this cuts both ways. Men, too, no longer need a wife. No need to cook. No need to mend clothes. No need for heirs. So little patience for compromise. And focus on superficialities and short term benefits rather than team building.
men never needed this. The things you describe are luxuries that a man can do without. Men would like to have this but this is not something needed.
In the past women, NEEDED men to survive. For women it was a choice about survival. It was always men who went out to hunt for food, farm for food, make the money and build the house. All the technology, all the machinery, all the science you see around you today, most of it was built, designed and envisioned by men.
In general human civilization and societies functioned in a way where men and women worked together but make no doubt about it. For the majority of human history (99%) men did built and maintained the infrastructure for survival. Men worked in partnership with women for betterment and higher productivity; women however worked with men because they needed to survive. A woman without a man in the past had few options to support herself.
This is no longer the case, so we'll see how it plays out, but modern society is at odds with the biology millions of years of evolution has designed us for. Likely there will be a culling. A natural selection process where a huge portion of the genetic pool will fail to reproduce.
To be frank I think a lot of men will just end up being lonely and single until they're dead. Polygamy will become more and more normalized and women will have a lot more power over society and societal norms in general.
I don’t think that women in general give up on a relationship any faster or easier than men do. In fact, I would probably say that it’s men who give up first when things get tough. (It’s only that women notice problems sooner, while men often are still in denial and think all is fine.)
Saying that technology is the reason why relationships no longer work sounds like a big fat excuse to me. The facts are certainly true. But the conclusion is, in my opinion, a convenient tale to avoid responsibility.
Perhaps you can share the data?
https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAskReddit/comments/whpxuw/datin... This study had an unrelated purpose but nevertheless extracted the same data.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/the-m...
Everything I'm saying is common knowledge if you are an average (key word) man on dating apps OR if you're well versed in academic anthropology or evolutionary psychology (NOT gender studies). As an average male, we live this life anecdotally. The imbalance of power in the dating market invades every facet of what we feel and see. It is part of our logical reality. If you are not an average single man, it is very likely this reality is completely foreign to you; and when presented with this new angle you will likely not accept it.
Our culture paints a picture of inequality. The equation speaks to one side of of the story. The story of female empowerment; The rise of of the underdog. The other side of the equation, the male side, is invisible, especially if you are not a male.
The evidence extends beyond dating app statistics (which all categorically point to the same conclusion) to biology and anthropology:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/women-men-dn... The genetic diversity of female genes is greater than male genes.
https://slate.com/technology/2012/10/are-humans-monogamous-o... In anthropology Monogamy is considered to be a mating strategy that guarantee a single mate for all men. It is advantageous to men and in many societies it is artificially enforced. Polygamy is more advantageous to females and the likely natural outcome when females are more empowered in society. It guarantees the best mate for females.
Of course women would prefer to be in a monogamous relationship with an alpha male. But given the choice between monogamy with a beta male or polygamy with an alpha they choose the later.
More on that here: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a38dwj/monogamy-may-be-even-...
Given anthropological studies of human culture and genetic studies of female genetic diversity, the conclusion is inescapable:
Hookup culture is the natural outcome of human behavior. Dating apps only magnify this behavior and allow us to collect data on it.
:Not advice, but many questions and some sharing my experience:
Feel free to answer or not as you like.
> I'm old(er) mid-40's
I was in my early 40s when I found a lovely mate, married, and reproduced.
> Hookup culture is de rigueur
What makes you say that? What geographic region is that? Is that just the kids or those in your demographic?
> Where I'm at, there isn't a context to meet people
Are you in a place without personal ads?
> I do volunteering but that also doesn't go anywhere.
Is that volunteering at the same place or different ones? What kind of volunteering?
> I'd like to have a family and kids,
Do you want to make your own kids? Are you willing to be a step parent?
> but an inability to find and make friends precludes that.
That's not my experience. There's popular advice that one should marry one's friend. But in my experience one can just look for a marriage partner and leap frog that nonsense.
> The thought of getting old alone
Ah, so essentially human, thank you for sharing. I too have that at my core.
This line of thinking seems pretty prevalent but the way I see it, there's no such thing as carrying the relationship. If you're the one with the social need, the onus is on you to get that need filled. This generally means doing more work than others but it's not on behalf of them. It would be nice if other people filled our needs for us, but that's generally just wishful thinking.
Apologies if this is in the category of unsolicited advice. I noticed that you had a submission describing a similar problem set in the work setting, so I am seeing a theme. It sounds like you are in a lonely place and are hoping for something better.
There's no magic to it but I can recommend some things that work very well for me.
First, do you have a curiosity about people? The folks you're working with, or folks at your volunteering events - do you strike up a conversation? Do you know where people are from, what their families are like, what their hobbies are, what they think and worry about? I don't mean to encourage you to engage in robotic small talk, but asking you whether these things are actually of interest to you? Wanting to know someone is the first step of a relationship.
Assuming you have the interest, ask whether you've done anything to learn these things? If you realize that there are 30 people you could have known these things about but don't - why not? Are you very shy? Do you think people will think you're rude? Do you not know how to chat? Answer this for yourself and seek resources on-line for how to close those gaps. I went from a shy mush-mouth to a pretty good shmoozer in a few years, it's possible.
If you decide that you actually don't have an interest in people (like, you genuinely don't care what anyone's life is like) then there's a strong disconnect between than and the desire to have a family/kids/friendship. If you have the ability to, seek some sort of talk therapy to explore this question. Chances are there's some "wound" that's blocking your ability to want to connect with people if this is the case.
Finally, you sound like someone who closes doors before they are even open. I suspect when you say "hookup culture..." what you are really saying is "I have a reason for why I am not on dating apps." When you say "people treat me like I am invisible" - you are writing off an entire town as not being interested in you, which gives you an excuse to not try to connect with them (yet, somehow they had all met each other - so it's probably your vibes - and that's in your control to change). If you really believe that your location is a problem that's preventing you from having relationships, then move. If you have a desire for family and kids and you think that's not possible in your location, why are you there? (and, if you are about to give yourself an excuse as to why that's impossible, pay attention to that too)
Solid "unsolicited" (odd thing to say) advice here, especially in the third paragraph. Another description for this I think is simply being genuine. Being genuinely interested in other people's lives, their families, and the stuff they like to do goes a long way and will tear the layers off people. In my experience, learning this combined with listening will have you quite possibly wanting less friends.
> If you have to constantly take the social initiative, then you're carrying the relationship.
I don't think that's true, and the article does talk about this a bit. Relationships are never actually 50/50. If you're expecting that, you're gonna have a bad time.
But really, think about outcomes more than trivial details: if you are the one who always has to be the one to reach out, but you end up having a good time when you talk or meet up with the person, then isn't that still a good outcome?
But ultimately everyone gets to make their own choice, of course. Would you rather have no friends or family, or would you rather have to put in more effort than the other person at some aspects of maintaining a friendship/relationship? Ideally it shouldn't be this stark dichotomy, but if it is, you gotta make your choice.
(Also, "no unsolicited advice please" is a weird thing to say when you're posting about a personal situation on a public forum. If you don't want to take this as advice, then take this as disagreement with what you're saying, and my expression of frustration that your choice seems to be "be alone and sad" when the alternative is "put in a little more effort than the other person".)
Our neighbor is in his 70s. No kids, no wife, no family. Spends his time watching crypto videos on YouTube and gardening in summer. He is polite and helpful, but we try to avoid getting into conversations with him because those end up becoming monologues of him telling us about the apocalypse.
Living alone today is easy. It’s also comfortable, because you save yourself all the drama and overhead of having to deal with another irrational human being. It’s also easy to feel superior for living this way, telling yourself that you are rejecting a sick society. The thing is, with nobody knowing you intimately and giving you feedback, you can end up being totally delusional and not ever realize it.
> Hookup culture is de rigueur
I don't think that's generally true, especially if you're looking to date around your own age. Some in the age bracket may be averse to marriage, but not a relationship in general.
Also, an unsolicited book recommendation: Hesse, Steppenwolf. You may recognize yourself in it. I did.
It's a great article, but is not the way that I have worked.
I'm a bit "spectrumish." I'd make a great hermit. I don't really find a need to have close relationships.
One thing that I've found in any relationship, is that a "power dynamic" changes things a lot. Most romantic or working relationships have a "power dynamic," where one party has some kind of leverage over the other, or that one party gets more from the the relationship, than the other.
This isn't necessarily bad (after all, we get married and have families all the time), but I feel that it adds a different "color" to the relationship.
Most of my closest (male) friends are ones that I don't have a "power dynamic" with. We usually have drastically different vocations, and don't really need each other. We generally have common interests (I suggest that volunteer work is a great thing), but find each other's company enriching and interesting.
// Most romantic or working relationships have a "power dynamic," where one party has some kind of leverage over the other,
This is a very weird way to think about it. Something I realized after I got married and bought a house and had kids, is that I love it and none of it would be possible without my wife. Likewise, she couldn't have any of this without me. We are partners.
If we wanted to look for power imbalances, we could find them. Like, we could obsess over who makes more money, or does more child care, or who had a greater impact on our selection of where we live etc, but that would be a very weird thing to put front and center. Much more importantly is that both of us are willing to put a lot into the relationship and consistently get even more out of it, enabling us to lead deeply meaningful lives together.
> This is a very weird way to think about it.
Got it in one. I’m pretty weird. I assume that my friends, acquaintances, and others, are also weird, as I read about that, in some book (can’t remember which one). It was one of those “Things that make you go ‘hmmm…’.” things.
But if it makes you feel better to call me “weird,” knock yourself out.
I didn't mean that you are weird (though sounds like you are and that's great, me too)
More like - well, as I wrote in the comment - I found that perspective on relationships to be kinda missing the point for reasons I described.
Maybe I'm just weird in the same way as GP on this, but I think power imbalances are important to be aware of in friendships, and it's tricky to be friends with someone who's far above or below in a hierarchy that is a very important part of your life.
I agree with that. I don't agree with GP's assertion that "most" relationships suffer from this.
Fair point. It was an overgeneralization, on my part.
Making friends is easy, keeping friends and growing the relationships are difficult. I am mostly introverted but have periods of extreme extroversion. I'm 34 but all of my best friends have passed away from various accidents over the past decade.
I feel like a shell of my former self where all I do or have a desire to do is work. The only person I consider my friend is my former boss who, after losing his wife to ALS, I did everything I could to be there and support him because he took a chance on me by offering me a job that ultimately has led to a great career in the tech field.
I've noticed my personality has slipped away, I no longer have hobbies or anything of real passion in my life anymore and thus there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
It's incredibly lonely and a poor place to be yet I really don't know how to escape it. Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy.
There's still a bit of hope deep down that all isn't over yet and a ray of sunshine can still propagate itself somewhere, sometime.
> there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
I think that the most valuable (and appreciated) thing you have to offer are your atttentive ears and your time. That's what many people are looking for in a true, deep friendship.
The real frienship isn't about super-intresting hobbies or flashy personality but really basic things like listening each other, supporting i small or large difficulties etc.
Yup, exactly like the article mentions emotional support and debugging.
Listening with your whole attention and authentically sharing your experiences is a massive component of any strong friendship.
This is something I've only understood in the last year or two. It took me ~40 years to understand because I was very emotionally neglected as a child, so I never processed my emotions or helped others do the same. From my mid-teens through 35, I thought I didn't have the same emotions as other people.
First, let me say this sounds like the first stages of depression. It is VERY difficult to break out of yourself because by this point or a bit further; you start having trouble figuring out why you do anything, so you stop doing almost everything. Once you reach that point, it is very rare to be able to self-diagnose and get on a path to recovery.
This was me a few years ago. At some point, I stopped being authentic and sharing my experience with others (just saying what I was feeling, dis/liked, wanted/didn't want, etc).
There is likely an emotional block or a few in your past that you feel you shouldn't/can't/won't talk about to others (because it will bother them).
"Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy." <- this is a symptom of an emotional block.
You are saying No to yourself without considering options or asking people for ideas. There are an unlimited number of ways to adjust those situations to work.
This has been true in my personal life since I was about 13, but when it happened in my professional life too, I became very isolated and it wasn't until I read waaaay too much psychology that I started understanding that other people have had the same feelings (nothing I felt/feel is unique; what makes me unique is the combinations of those things) and then telling people bits of it, then more.
To continue that last two weeks ago I forced myself to cry for the first time since I was around 13. Then on Friday, I wanted to cry in the car during a sad song and I let myself. Then Sunday, I felt my sadness damn crumble and I was really sad about random things for a few hours.
It's a long process, but being able to feel sad again will let me WANT help from other people again and WANT to connect with them. It will let me feel lonely, which will motivate me to go find people to be around. Soon, this process will lead to more friends.
In many ways we've forgotten how to be human (as a culture) which actively prevents from connecting with other people in one way or another. I'm on an active journey to learn all the things I didn't learn as a child and I'm still pretty lonely, only one close friend, but I've already gotten past feeling empty inside and not interested in doing things.
Make two lists. One, an activities list. Every time you hear something fun to do, put it on the list. Eventually, after a couple years, you'll have nearly everything. If it's on the cheap side it's a good sign, although expensive things can be fun too.
The second list, is a content consumption list. Basically, building a twitter, but without the timeline. Write down categories you like, and people you like, and get a YouTube subscription so you don't have to have adds. After around 2 years, you should be rarely adding people & content to the list.
My advice: have a separate categories for movies to watch & tv shows to watch & only do so with friends & loved ones. Never watch tv or movies by yourself, would be my advice.
I understand loneliness. It can be a sad journey.
> and get a YouTube subscription so you don't have to have adds
Nice try, Susan.
Sorry to hear that. Recommend you try an activity that involves physical activity and other people. Kayaking, capoeira, rock climbing, whatever feels interesting to you.
IMO this is the #1 takeaway:
> I was trapped in a ‘normal’ mode of conversation - making small talk, being inoffensive, feeling aversion to being weird, respecting where I thought other people’s boundaries were.
If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow! Everyone's life is different and has differently shaped spaces for relationships, interaction, etc. It's very common for people to be open to growing closer to some of their social circle, but be unsure about who to focus on. It can be you if you simply indicate you are also interested!
On the other hand, I think this is more wrong than right:
> A point I’ve made throughout is that this is a skill.
Calling "Growing closer" a skill suggests it is a craft that 'you should' practice - but it's not. Growing closer requires work and attention and you will get better at it over time - but to think of it as a skill "you are doing" instead of a mutual process that advances only at the shared pace you are getting into manipulation. "Growing closer" is measured by the combined 'distance' by which you and the other person have adjusted your lives to be closer to one another.
Maybe OP means that having deep and vulnerable conversations is a skill - and THAT I would agree with, but it has nothing to do with growing closer! You can have deep conversations with strangers (in fact it's often easier to have them with strangers).
People who discover the power of intimacy in our atomized world risk accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.
> to think of it as a skill "you are doing" instead of a mutual process that advances only at the shared pace you are getting into manipulation.
A mutual process needs some coordinated actions from both sides. If I'm unable to play my part, then there will be no mutual process. I believe I understand what you are trying to say, but it is the next stage of education on "how to make friends". When you have skill to make friends, then you can think of how to apply it mutually. If you have no such skill, then all your argument about manipulation just doesn't apply.
> If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow!
There is a question of how to do it. I do not know, for example. Have no idea. Several times different people tried to make friends with me, I tried to be open for it, and it didn't work out.
I don't know if I quite said it before - but I don't think a relationship just "succeeds" or "fails." A good relationship occupies the "right" amount of space in each person's life for that pair of people and also is, for each person, part of a larger healthier whole. There are many variables in this balancing act and we are all getting it at least a little 'wrong' all of the time.
Generally, you can make any relationship closer by investing more time into it. But that means you risk getting stuck in trying to make a relationship fill a spot it won't ever fill. Often, that relationship will be "better" if you can accept less intimacy and hold it less tightly. There are people who can be extremely important to us, even if we can't take too much intimacy.
> Several times different people tried to make friends with me, I tried to be open for it, and it didn't work out.
Yah! Of course! This is always possible. Sometimes relationships just don't work for either person, despite everyone's best efforts. In those situations, the kindest thing we can do is gently invest less energy into the dynamic. Sometimes you can find an unexpected new relationship that's less than 'friendship' but still valuable and compelling. If you think about it like someone did something wrong, it's becomes more discouraging than it has to be.
> Sometimes relationships just don't work for either person, despite everyone's best efforts.
This "sometimes" works for me every single time. I'm 40+ and never had any friends.
> Sometimes you can find an unexpected new relationship that's less than 'friendship' but still valuable and compelling.
I never experienced this as like. All my relationships end when we stop meeting each other at work.
> If you think about it like someone did something wrong
Oh... I do not think that I did something wrong. I think I didn't do something. Systematically. I'm not sure what exactly. The article gives some hints, but I need to think it through, to be sure.
I spend my teens to figure out how to not do something wrong. I'm very good at it, I even do not need to think about it, I just do not do anything wrong. It became ingrained to such an extent, that I cannot even imagine what I can do wrong, because my mind suggests only "right" options.
> Generally, you can make any relationship closer by investing more time into it. But that means you risk getting stuck in trying to make a relationship fill a spot it won't ever fill.
Your wisdom probably very wise and useful, but only for people who already have some relationships and need to decide what to do with them next. I have no relationships and I do not believe I will, so all your advice is wasted on me.
At the same time the article we discuss gives me something to think about. Yeah, I'm vulnerable and I'm not going to risk being hurt by a careless person only to get some intimacy. I'm not going to ask people weird questions, because they can ask them back. I mean, I can deal with it, I can wriggle out of any uncomfortable question, but it is kinda unfair to them if I ask but do not answer.
I'm really sorry to hear about how hard a time you've had forming friendships. I think you're right that I'm talking about how to invest energy and focus once you've found something that's stable and natural on some level.
I do think the article presents a lot of sensible and well-framed approaches. They talks sensibly and systematically about systemic concerns around friendship. I hope you find companionship.
I think the "this is a skill" just refers to the various things needed to form and maintain friendships (being good at conversations, taking social initiative, following up, etc.) More of a set of skills. And to be fair, my interpretation is that it is a set of skills both people in the process of friendship possess and need to practice to make things work (it is possible after all to be a bad friend or a bad partner due to your own lack of effort or skill with eg communication or vulnerability).
> * it is a set of skills both people in the process of friendship possess and need to practice to make things work*
I think this is another example of the idea I am trying to critique (and warn against). This suggests that "the process of friendship" is a singular, universal thing that will look the same for all of us (or for all of our friendships). Or that friendship "working" is a straightforward series of opportunities for both people to "say yes" to something. I think that is wrong.
Instead, I would say that over time a friendship is best understood as a series of opportunities to become more or less central to each other. Closeness and stability do not need to be linked! My oldest friend and I are extremely stable and comfortable with each other - but I would not say we are close. That we aren't close isn't a failure. It's a recognition that our lives have gone in different directions and that we most comfortably experience intimacy with other people. It's not a failure! Both our lives would be more frustrating if we relied on each other, with our divergent social worlds and approaches to life, for mutual understanding.
> it is possible after all to be a bad friend or a bad partner due to your own lack of effort
This is true, after a way, but I think it mis-orders things in a way that will lead to confusion. You are only a bad friend or partner if you don't make the effort that you agreed to make. If you are frustrated that you friend or partner isn't showing up in a way that you want them to show up in a way they have never said they will - you are the one who is doing "badly" in the relationship! Obviously, the reverse can also be true - people can promise things and not deliver, but the gap is between commitment and behavior. There is no bad or good level of energy to put into a relationship as long as you aren't deceptive about it.
Basically, you aren't a bad friend or partner because of 'your own lack of effort' - putting more effort into engaging a way your significant other doesn't want would make things worse. It's the lack of alignment that causes the problem and, until that alignment is corrected, you can't know if more effort is actually what the other person would like.
> Calling "Growing closer" a skill
My take on it that the skill isn't the act of growing closer itself, but the actions you can take to elevate conversation above small talk and see if there could be greater compatibility there for a closer relationship. And that latter part is maybe a big part of the skill: I agree that just having a deep/vulnerable conversation isn't going to give you a close friendship, but I think that's a necessary step on the path. Determining whether or not -- from those deeper conversations -- whether or not a deeper friendship is going to develop is also a skill worth mastering.
(Maybe the author did actually mean what you thought, in which case I agree with you... and so I like my explanation better.)
> work and attention
Attention is such a good choice of word. Attention with memory is key. I feel memory/remembering is the work, because we are constantly flooded with new things all day. Otherwise, once I am out of a conversation, I am into another app or meeting.
> accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.
Damn that's true. Though I think our instinct is to try to connect on a deeper level, and with just good intentions. We can be good friends with a lot of people. And be close to very few. That's ok, and better to be clear.
Every few years I get this urge to “start over” somewhere new where I’m going to turn everything about my life around. Whenever I’ve tried to make friends or be social, it seems to fall into this almost cyclical pattern.
I’ll find a group of people who hang out and join that. Tend to make pretty good inroads early, and people seem to like me.
Then over time the group slowly starts to fracture into “cliques” none of which I eventually fall into. It starts to feel at some point that I’m no more than a court jester, there to make opportune jokes to entertain the other cliques. People care less about what I have to say and I guess any eccentricities about me that intrigue people get old quick.
Sooner or later there’s a big drama caused by some petty disagreement and the group fractures along those cliques. Sometimes reconciliation is tried, but by that point no one’s schedules line up, or half the people are always sick, etc.
I've seen this happen but it's really interesting that you say this is cyclic/it always falls into this pattern for you.
Have you found that reaching out to individual people in the group to be worthwhile?
I often find it hard to make/maintain meaningful connections in these groups (and the "people care less about what I have to say" etc feels relatable), but I've had great success with just asking individuals like "wanna grab coffee/lunch sometime" either 1 on 1 or in a group of 3. It can be kind of awkward, and there's always a sense of "Oh you guys were hanging out? Why didn't you let me/XYZ know!" but I just embrace that and it's been a much better way for me I think to make close friends.
“If you go out looking for friends, they are scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere.”
― Zig Ziglar
And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make
- Beatles
But in the end it doesn't even matter
- Linkin Park
Dunnes stores
- Me
The number of people I have tried to be friends with, but who not treated me like one -- I think it sounds catchy, but is not true at all, at least in my circles.
We often don't consider the impact our current age has on our experience.
Making close friends is easier the younger we are. When we are young we have fewer responsibilities, and we have fewer hangups.
As we get older, we have old life experiences which stand out and leave lasting behavioral impacts. Plus, we have real and immediate responsibilities which have priority - but which we may not announce all the time. The other party may not know the circumstances; they merely don't get especially magnetic interactions from us.
My caution to those of us who are analytical and want to understand how life works is that we do not discount the significance of age and circumstance on matters of friendship and human connection.
Minor edits for clarity :)
Many people make close friends at university, even without intentionally doing so. There's a common, yet erroneous, pattern of thinking in many "successful" people where they attribute their actions to their success without considering that they may have still been successful had they chosen different actions. In this case, the author may have still formed closed friendships had they not chosen to do so intentionally, as many other students do. The only way to really know would be to have the author clone themselves twice and have each clone go through school with one intentionally seeking out close friends and the other not.
Perhaps I'm an outlier, but having to sit around making small talk and sharing personal life experiences with a like-minded cohort is literally a nightmare scenario for me. On the other hand, I love working with people on collaborative effort-intensive projects, working toward shared goals and so on (but I don't have much interest in getting involved in their personal or family lives afterwards). Also, I may be unusual in that I don't suffer from loneliness, there's always something interesting to get involved in or work on. Is this a very uncommon type, I wonder?
Additionally, financial restrictions on activities are a reality for many people these days, ruling out a large number of extracurricular activities that would be fun and interesting to share with others. When one's economic future is on the line, things like friendships become luxuries that might have to fall by the wayside, as people have to move in search of employment, and budgets get tighter. People in a college environment are often not under such immediate pressures.
"making small talk and sharing personal life experiences"
It sounds odd to me to combine these concepts in the same sentence. Sharing personal life experiences is arguable a necessary part of building deep friendships, and it's often a vulnerable and intimate act. Small talk is none of that, if not the opposite.
But it is a prelude and a warm-up exercise.
No one - well, hardly anyone - jumps straight into deeply personal conversation with a stranger without it.
I'm 23 and have lived most of my life without having close friends. I'd say I'm very extroverted and can strike up engaging conversations with most people I meet. I'm easy going and don't really have a fear of talking to new people.
The problem is that I end up with dozens of friends that I regularly have good banter with, but it just never feels like one of those "best friend" or "close friend" situationships. Most of my own problems or vulnerabilities are dealt with by myself, internally, perhaps with some advice from others if I discuss it. It feels like you need to lean on people emotionally in order to actually become closer.
What OP has mentioned does actually work and I have used some similar approaches, without knowing it, to improve my friendships. But you also need to attach a high value to regular conversation and communications. If you don't keep in contact on a regular basis, the friendship will diminish, regardless of the closeness.
> It feels like you need to lean on people emotionally in order to actually become closer.
I do feel like a lot of friendship comes down to interdependence, which I see as a good thing. But it's not always emotional, it could be that he helps you fix your motorcycle and you let him rant about his ex-wife. Or maybe you rely on this person's great taste in video games.
But yeah in general I think being open enough to gently "ask for help" in one form or another from people helps them grow close to you.
Serious question.
For those who have had close friends in their late teens to mid 20s, do you still have close friends after a significant life event like getting a job, getting married, moving to a new city, having a baby, etc?
I relate with the author of this article in my 20s, but cannot relate at all in my 30s because my life has significantly changed (for the better).
Nope. I had plenty of close friends through my mid-20s, but now at 42, after moving away to another state, I still believe we have enough accumulated trust and love that I'd give those people just about about anything, and feel comfortable sharing anything, and I'm reasonably sure they all feel the same way, but we haven't kept in regular contact. I'm not a phone conversation person and never have been, and quit all social media years ago to preserve my sanity. Regular visits aren't feasible because of the distance and the visits I can manage are ones in which I prioritize seeing my family over anyone else.
I don't have any serious complaints. I'm not lonely and people aren't super-important to me. I've got my wife and my cats and that's enough. I have no idea what I'd do today to make new friends that would ever be anywhere near what my old friends were. Those were people I saw day-in and day-out for years since we were in school together, we shared major life events and formative experiences that can't ever be repeated, and spent a level of time together that simply isn't feasible for so many reasons, from having a full-time job to having to prioritize time with my wife to no longer having the capacity and energy to go out and stay up late on any kind of regular basis.
Again, I have no complaints, but I don't see how it's realistic or possible in most cases to ever make friends as an adult that are as close as the friends you make and maintain throughout childhood and teenage years, other than a life partner or partners you actually live with.
No, but a better answer is probably that the relationships are different. As with most HN advice it's completely contextual.
Close friends from before the transitionary period are still people I can connect with to a large extent. Not all are people I'd now want to spend a lot of time with because time is so limited.
Making new close friends is something I've somewhat given up on based on the fact that I've moved so far away, now have had to prioritize work and family, etc. I suspect there will be fleeting opportunities as the kids create introductions and I perhaps get more time for hobbies/volunteering.
I think things are very dependent on circumstances. People commenting and giving advice only have knowledge of X circumstances, but there are really Y or X number of them out there. This means that I get left feeling like I'm doing something wrong, missing out, etc. based on how others describe life. Anxiety and other mental challenges affect how I feel too. Things aren't that bad when I actually take a big step back and think about life though.
Wait, you're saying you can't relate anymore because you don't have close friends anymore and don't want any? Or because you have close friends naturally so don't need to analyze how to do it?
I am older than my 20s, and have moved jobs and cities a couple times, but I don't have a spouse or kids. I still have some close friends (including one or two i've had since my 20s and one or two i've met subsequently), but would personally like more and closer. I'm not sure if that answers your questions!
My guess is a lot of people in our particular society in the USA stop having close friends when they have a spouse and kids... but I don't this this is true in all places and times, and I personally suspect it's not very healthy and people would be doing so much better in many ways, including unexpected ones in ways people don't realize would be affected by this, if they had more non-family intimacy. But whatever works!
That I had close friends until I got older and had more responsibilities in life. That I relate with how to do it, but I don't have time to do it because it is not as important to me at this stage in my life.
I honestly can't imagine close friends not being important to me!
Nope. I had my closest friendships in high school and college. I haven't talked to any of those people in 30+ years (nor have any of them reached out to me). Careers, relocations, families happened. Life has forks like this where paths separate and never rejoin.
And no, I didn't make new friends in the same way. Being young with a lot of time and no responsibilities doesn't ever come back.
I've kept 3 very close friends (they don't know each other), and now we live in 3 different continents. One I met in my teens, another in my early twenties, and another when I was almost 30. We're all almost 40 now and keep daily contact via text and have a call once every 2 months or so. They're the people I ask advice to and share good and bad news.
There's no secret to it, we're just on eachother's minds and ping one another frequently.
For me the only close friends I have kept through my 20's and many life-changing events are ones I made in high school, and mostly because of Discord. Being able to virtually hang out has made it possible for me to maintain relationships after a move which I wouldn't have been able to keep up before.
This is a great post. A few immediate thoughts.
Friends become harder to make (mostly for men) as you get older and have children. It simply takes more effort and you'll have less time, but having friends that you see regularly is probably more important when you are 40+. It's worth the effort and easier to systemize.
Following up & reaching out can be a big blocker. I just decided that I'm always the one to reach out and I even built myself an Airtable tracker to do this.
Vulnerability is trending up (for lack of a better description). Writing this post was vulnerable and it's #1 on HN. Finding the right way to open up, make it interesting and not seem needy is an very valuable skill.
Why mostly for men?
Excellent article, but don't make having close friends part of your main goal. Once you are comfortable with who you are, do things on your own, work on new hobbies and interests, then you will attract the right people. Being confident and positive are a people magnet.
I strongly disagree, or at least don't think that's Universal. There's more to meeting and making friends then simply being yourself. There's taking risks and putting yourself out there. There is making time and priority for them. Maybe this works for someone who is naturally an extrovert and naturally makes friends, but that isn't everyone. Not everyone can or should try to take a wait for them to come to me approach
> don't make having close friends part of your main goal
Why not? If that's what you want, then, by definition, that is your goal. Sure, you might be falling prey to the XY problem, where your actual problem is that you're feeling emotionally unfulfilled, but erroneously believe that having close friendships (when you currently have few or none) will help solve that problem. But... I kinda think that's likely to be a pretty good solution.
Screw vulnerability. Of course, I have problems like everyone else. But I have given each one a lot of thought and decided what's the best thing I can do right now, or that there is nothing further than I can do. I don't really need advice or practical help, it's a matter of me allocating my limited energy and willpower. On giving side, there is also so much I can offer to someone outside my immediate family. And the last thing I want to do is to pay MORE attention to downsides of my life by talking about them to others.
What I really wish I could have is camaraderie in personal growth, which for some reason seems to be impossible in Silicon Valley. For example, I have been taking photography classes, but when I ask other students if they want to go on a hike, shoot pictures together and improve our technique, nobody is ever interested. I can understand that women might think I am hitting on them, even after I mentioned I am married and have kids, but not even old guys? I don't know if it's something about my appearance or mannerisms or if people only live through organized events and have no interest in just hanging out with others based on mutual interests. Maybe they also outsource their vulnerabilities to professional therapy? :-)
Now of course nothing is black and white. Being able to give someone an unfiltered account of one's day is a testament of quality of the relationship and reassurance that if I faced a truly overwhelming disaster in future I might have some help handling it. But overall, I would rather expand my life than dwell on aspects of it that either can not be changed or are already being worked on.
I wonder if "Dividera et Impera" has something to do with workplace relationships and the society at large? In autocratic systems it is not in the interests of the ruling class that people would be friends with each other.
Friendship is not too far off from unionizing.
This is way too complicated. All you have do is show up to the same place regularly to places where other people also show up regularly. School, work, dog park, gym, etc.
That's quite obviously not true, because almost everyone shows up to places regularly, and some people fail to make friends. Unless you assume that all the people who are having trouble making friends are jobless independently-wealthy agoraphobic shut-ins.
Showing up isn't enough. You have to engage with people, and push past mundane surface-level topics of conversation. And after that, you have to follow up and schedule time outside of whatever place/activity where you met.
I know plenty of people who go to work or a gym or whatever every day, but don't come away from it with close friendships.
I agree with this. From my experience, people who feel lonely (and feel saddened by that) tend to become overly worried about what others think of them and obsessed on making an impression. That usually leads to them becoming an echo chamber of themselves and starting to act "artificially", which is noticed by others as not being authentic. I'd say that sharing, which arises from mutual interest, is the cornerstone. So being in places where people authentically share mutual interests and cooperate is a great place to make friends. Sports associations (team sports, climbing, hiking, with the added bonus of physical activity being awesome for mental health) community centers with activities (chess, musical groups, dancing)...
I think so. Seems so many people want a "how to" on every aspect of their lives. Friendship should not be something you try to design or have a strategy for, I can think of nothing that would drive me away faster.
Friendship happens, if through shared experience, interest or just chance. True friendship doesn't happen because you woke up one morning and "Make a Friend" was at the top of your todo list for the day.
I think for many, perhaps even most people, you're right and friendship happens organically without deliberate intent.
Some people just do not work this way - maybe it's being somewhere on the autism spectrum, but whatever the cause, some people need to take a more methodical approach to do this.
I think what this blog post shows is that such an approach really can result in true friendships.
It's a bit like online dating I suppose. That idea is abhorrent to some (or used to be - the stigma has reduced considerably over time), but when it works, there's nothing preventing the resulting relationship from being as genuine as one that started any other way.
Showing up definitely helps but in my experience the transition from acquaintance to friend comes through a bonding moment where there was an emotional connection - either struggling through or achieving something together or vulnerability from one or both of you.
There are a lot of bad things about drugs and alcohol but one of the reasons I like them is they tend to enable/accelerate these moments.
I’ve only really intentionally made a close friend one time. However, my longest closest friend was not that way. Him and I bonded pretty much immediately after getting into a fist fight on a high school wrestling mat during practice and our coach had to separate us. Now he’s been there through most of my achievements and I his. Good guy, doing a PhD in chemical engineering at Case Western now.
yes. I see what you're saying.
heads out into the street to start a fist fight
The systems angle mentioned later in the article may seem a bit …engineered, but it works!
I’ve moved a ton in my life, and I have an annoying habit of losing touch with friends when I move away. Out of sight, out of mind, ya know?
Anyway, to combat this annoying habit, I started scheduling monthly phone/video calls with each of those friends. It’s been a game changer, especially as folks have kids and busy lives.
Think we have been forgetting the necessity of relationships in a post-internet society. It can be a good thing to be intentional about relationships. The benefits don't only apply to introverts, it can also be important for extroverts to cut off harmful people from their lives and deepen connections with those they need most.
Plus one for intentional relationships. I've become much more careful about who I form bonds with as I've grown older, and I've left a handful of long-term friendships behind when I realize I didn't want those people in my life. I'm not an extrovert, but I do make friends easily and I learned the hard way that if you just make friends with everyone who comes your way, you'll end up with some bad friends.
Appreciate the note on making friends - I’m also not exactly an extrovert and I also make friends easily. I wish I would have known this sooner that it’s not as difficult to make lasting friendships as it may seem.
But it does take time.
> A key mindset I use when forming connections via conversation is: “If we aren’t both excited about this conversation, do something differently”
This is my problem. Friendship seems to be a series of entertaining experiences. People seem to value others based on their entertainment value, but then when discussed it's always about some other warm, fuzzy feeling. The best friendships seem to happen as a kid, when you hold no judgements, and also outside forces out of your control decide who you are exposed to (i.e. where you go to school). As an adult, the judgement list is way too long for people to commit their time any longer than a short conversation. It's no longer about being yourself, being accepted, and going with flow. Instead friendship as an adult is a chore, with responsibilities and expectations, which unlike a job are all implicit and hard to navigate.
I love this, it's very well-written.
For some people this kind of thing comes naturally/intuitively without necessarily being explicit about it; and for some people being explicit about it won't actually work anyway.
But for those like me who like and find helpful analyzing it and being explicit about it, this is very well-done!
I've always assumed it was the lack of BIG things happening that limits the depth of friendships. With my childhood friends, we went through so much growing up together (family deaths, relationships, breakups, make ups, divorces, death of classmate, arguments, school, sitting around together for hours just hanging out, etc.)
Those sorts of events really deepen a friendship. I don't experience anything like that with my adult "friends". That limits how friendly we can realistically be. Sure, I've made friends as an adult, but they're just people I know and enjoy seeing once in a while.
Maybe having really deep relationships as a child makes it that much harder to make friends as an adult as they suffer by comparison.
"What's fascinating is why that disconnect happens. Since the 1950s, sociologists have identified three factors that need to be in place for friendships to take hold.
They are:
• Proximity: You're around each other regularly.
• Unplanned interactions: You see each other even without putting an appointment on a calendar.
• Privacy: You're in a space where you can exchange confidences."
See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make...
Each one of these has been destroyed haha. Surely nothing bad will come of this haha.
I love the article, and the experiment. He is clearly way ahead at 17 than I am at > 40, which amazes me. I have had a lot of bad experience with friends, so that has hampered me since and put me off and made me weary of having friends. I also don't do friend things well - I don't find the energy to reply to messages and emails. I do like "going out for a drink / coffee" type things, as well as doing something together, like going to he gym. I might try this out though, as it sounds good.
This is interesting because I have a handful of close friends, but I've never made a close friend intentionally. I suspect that even "naturally social" people might benefit from thinking about their social lives and relationships with more intention, especially as we/they get older and opportunities for random friendship development tend to wane, especially in highly-individualized Western society where people spend most of their time focused on themselves and their nuclear families.
It is my experience that the most "naturally social" individuals ARE operating with a lot more intention if they let you really pick their brain, or you watch them interact with disparate groups of new people in different settings.
Maybe it depends on what we mean by "naturally social".
I tend to be gregarious and outgoing in most situations, but I also am very much an introvert in that I find it tiring to keep up for a long period of time. I find that I lack the social stamina to maintain and tighten connections with new people I meet. So my natural tendency is to have a large number of loose acquaintances and a very small number of close friends.
This was a great article. I've been doing this for quite a while now, coincidentally. I just noticed that I can get my needs met if I open myself up (I feel lonely all the time). I actually got the feedback quite a lot from a bunch of people/new friends that myself opening up very soon is what drew them and immediately lifted the relationship past the awkward acquaintance-phase, they really dig that. They've been more open as well.
The comments have great advice as well, my key take-aways:
- more female friends as a dude (on that, sometimes takes a bit of work if you're interested in each other beforehand, that's where I'm at right now. a break of two weeks should work magic) - be more initiative, be a friend to other people - show up and stay connected, even if it's not 50:50, which is unlikely anyway
I have social anxiety/depression and have lived most of my life in the basement (literally and figuratively). But since last year or so I'm very extraverted. Not sure how this works, but it does and it's awesome. I just chat to random people (being German!).
The only thing I'm still struggling with is friends who behaved in a way that I didn't like. Instead of talking about it I withdraw from the relationship. But one step after another.
>I find it hard to introspect on exactly what the internal experience of past Neel was like, but I think the core was that trying wasn’t available as a possible action. That I spent much of my life doing what felt socially conventional, normal and expected, for the role I saw myself in. And ‘go out of your way to form emotional connections’ wasn’t part of that.
The whole intro part of the post sounds a lot like ASD 1 musings, including the approach regarding the solution...
They are numbered now?
Yeah, three tiers, I think the old term for 1 was much better...
I always considered myself someone who made friends easily. In fact when my partner and I met she found it hard to keep track of my various social circles. Friends from school, friends from my first stint at university, friends from my second stint at university, friends from places I used to work etc. She on the other hand had one or two close friends.
Since having kids I've found it much more difficult. It's literally a once a month thing to get a couple of hours to go out for a beer. I enjoy meeting up with a couple of guys I meet through prenatal classes but they are all in the same boat and making time for a new friend when their free time is so limited is challenging.
I also had the profoundly upsetting situation of losing touch with one of my closest friends due to some poorly chosen words while I was in a poor mental state following some stressful experiences after our first was born. Interestingly, this also meant I lost touch with many of the people I had friends in common with on his side.
Weirdly, for my partner her social circles have exploded. She now is very close with a small group from her prenatal classes, she's also converted a couple of her ex-work colleagues into actual friends, many of them by them having similar aged children.
I feel it is relatively easy to make friends during engineering (under grad) when there is no financial responsibilities and you have lot of patience, high level of tolerance. When compared to age where you have more financial responsibility and certain age where you no longer have patience to let go some of things which you do not like in other person. It comes to point where I feel why do I need to compromise on so many things to make friends.
This is kind of sad. It just feels like OP has built this enormous apparatus over some emotional void they've picked up in their development. Making friends just isn't that hard for the vast majority of people.
If you're having to use reverse engineering and problem solving to form emotional connections, then you might want to spend the time in therapy and working through what caused you to be emotionally stunted.
> Making friends just isn't that hard for the vast majority of people.
Is that actually true? Things I've read seem to suggest that, at least for men, forming close friendships is hard, especially as we get older.
I'm feeling it, too. I'm 41, and with the exception of my partner, I don't think I've made a close friend in nearly a decade.
(Also, note that this is talking about close friendships, not just people to hang out with.)
But really, this "apparatus" seems to work for this person, and he seems to be happy with the results, so who are we to criticize? If others who also have trouble making friends can find this useful, all the better. If not, that's fine too.
You're making a lot of assumptions. Sometimes a blog post just isn't meant for you.
I'm not sure how I'm making an assumption. They admit they were unable to form emotional connections prior to this convoluted methodology they've developed.
Convoluted? There are a lot of words in that post, but most of it is about the author's personal journey.
The methodology boils down to:
1. Push past mundane small talk and ask deeper questions. Follow up with more questions.
2. Be willing and able to open up when asked questions (or even when not asked, as a follow-on to what the other person is saying).
3. Don't be afraid to be the one to reach out to try to set up more meetings.
4. Put yourself in situations where you are likely to interact with people, especially situations where those people are likely to have similar interests.
Doesn't seem that convoluted to me.
Therapy can literally just be talking through the same kinds of mechanisms as described here (with the plan to apply them to real life). Source: it was for me. How are they going to become second nature if you don't practice?
Why are you so weirdly judgemental/insecure(?) about this very earnest post?
> Making friends just isn't that hard for the vast majority of people.
Good for you and the vast majority of people, I guess...?
Because I find gamifying connection sad.
Late 20s (username not for age)
I used to have tiers of friends in HS and a lot in college. I put a lot of effort into it being a glue between people. Overtime I tried less and less to do that. Even pulling inwards like hiding in my room during parties. Now I have 3 close friends. Real friends. Crazy how you change over time.
I had a best friend but one day we just split. My current friends I do most of the engaging. Since I'm always online/wfh. I'm also a loner/not an extrovert. So yeah... I know you could try to change but I am the looks down at the ground, shy person now. Before I was a jackass which could be good because I was not as limited. Now I just have this constant questioning if I did something cringe.
There is a messed up thought. Pretty much all of our interaction is a chat/text. Since we all live in different states/but we were around each other during childhood. Aside from occasional photos... It's almost like you could replace them with bots since the medium is electronic.
This fellow had higher emotional IQ at age 17 than me at age 27. Great read!
If it you makes feel better, at the age of 34 my therapist handed me a "feelings wheel" as a way to help me name my emotions[1]. Prior to that, my emotional vocabulary essentially consisted of "anger" and "joy". This in turn lead me down a very deep and painful rabbit hole to figure out why I had so much trouble accessing my own emotions, opening up to people, and trusting others.
[1] https://feelingswheel.com/
I have lots of friends at varying levels of closeness - from folks in a shared group chat to folks who helped clothe me when I couldn't. I find them easy to make, honestly.
But the most interesting relevant experience I had recently was when a friend of mine suggested using these couples' cards just to get to know each other, skipping the explicitly romantic ones. I barely knew her except as a sister of another friend of mine, but we did a couple of these every day for fun for a week and we ended up quite close at the end of it.
It's stuff like "what situations make you anxious?", "what is a time you were really happy?", "what things do you do for me which you wish I appreciated more?". This lends some credence to the idea that questions around vulnerability help quite a bit. I've always been quite intentional about making friends, but this rapid-bootstrap is literally the fastest it's happened to me.
I can relate to the author. When I was ~28yo, I used to do similar things and experimenting socially. The best way to get to know guys is by doing shared activities - basketball, hikes, going to sauna, gym. But it only makes acquaintances. The vulnerability and honesty part can only be achieved 1-on-1 and some people don't like those talks. But it really makes true friends. It can cut through the polite-social-minimizing-risk-bullshit-talk like a knife. It's really hard to have very close friends and having at least one is a true blessing... I never had the fortune of meeting great female friends though. Even though I like talking to them and doing activities that involve many females (dancing salsa, bachata, kizomba).
I often find myself in a situation where someone is monologuing and I'm listening but I'm not very interested and I don't know how to pull out. I wonder if anyone can offer advice.
(I haven't finished reading the article yet; if I find an interesting answer from the article, I'll reply to my own post)
I skimmed through and the article looks a lot like what I think as well. One bonus point I didn't see is that the more people take the intentional-based approach the easier it is to befriend each other. My best friendship was formed and is sustained through intentional effort we share to keep it this way.
This guy should move to scandinavia, he'd learn that conversation is cheap. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to a scandie for literally hours just to have it come to nothing. No new friend, not really even an acquaintance, it was all just talk and meant nothing at all.
Scandinavians are very friendly and pleasant people on the surface, but it's hard to penetrate that surface into deeper friendship. To really get into someone's inner circle of close friends you pretty much have to have grown up with them or known them for years.
Same with the Dutch and Belgians. The countries are so small and families rarely move very far from each other. This makes it very hard as an outsider to break into friendship circles as often they've known each other since pre-school.
I have a simpler algorithm. I ask three questions:
- Do you have a dog?
- Do you smoke?
- Are you in favor of nuclear energy?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you are not going to be a close friend. Everybody else is welcome.
> One of the greatest sources of joy in my life are my close friends. People who bring excitement and novelty into my life. Who expose me to new experiences, and ways of seeing the world. Who help me learn, point out my blind spots, and correct me when I am wrong. Who I can lean on when I need support, and who lean on me in turn. Friends who help me grow more into the kind of person I want to be.
This depicts people who provide functions for the author - entertainment, mentoring, advice - not people who share mutual love. Friends can and do provide some functions, but that's not necessary, sufficient, or the point. Love can be and is transformational, but that's not the point.
This is a structural problem made worse by individualistic social norms. Once you’re out of college, or contexts where there’s “hanging out” that happens without intention, you’re in a situation where you have to do several things: meet people you like, put effort into making plans, and have time together frequently enough to become friends, not just people who like each other. I work on this problem as a builder and I’ll observe that most of the cultural scaffolding that used to support this has deteriorated, see Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam or The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz for good research on this.
Making close friends is a big reason why I'm building FourHere (https://www.fourhere.com). After working in Silicon Valley for years, the only people I've been able to somewhat connect with are co-workers. Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc doesn't actually help you build friendships -- it's a bunch of people you know about, but don't actually meet. And I think that's unhealthy. There are studies that show close friendships, can help us live up to 20 years longer.
I don't really understand this tendency to create these artificial systems for having friends. To me it's in the same category as dating apps, or weird exercise routines.
The best way to have deep friendships is to live a social life. Engage in the community you livee in, take on responsibility, be politically active, start a business, become an open source maintainer, if you're religious go to church/mosque/etc. If you're active and engaged with the people around you'll basically have no choice but to have deep friendships. We're social animals by nature, there's no need for a ten step program.
Some of the suggestions you offer don't really increase the chances of making close friends.
Like being an open source maintainer - how is that really going to lead to close friends?
Or starting a business - sure you might network more, and meet business partners, but do they really become close friends?
I will say that going to a church regularly was the #1 thing that really led to lots of friends for me. Like instantly.
I'm not talking about 'networking' which is a grift in the same category as all the other artificial crap, I'm talking about sitting in the same awful office, fixing bugs till midnight, eating crappy pizza and putting your blood and sweat into something that's meaningful to you. You do that with people for several years, they're not just friends but pretty much family.
And being involved in an OSS community around a shared project, particularly long lived ones offers the same opportunities especially for people who are physically in a place that's isolated. I know a non-trivial amount of people who found their spouse through academic and OSS communities. Work connects people.
>You do that with people for several years, they're not just friends but pretty much family.
In my experience, right until the moment you're not longer stuck together and then you start to drift apart pretty quickly.
> sitting in the same awful office, fixing bugs till midnight, eating crappy pizza and putting your blood and sweat into something that's meaningful to you.
Sure, I've done that. And yes it creates a connection of sorts, I got to know my co-workers pretty well at least in that context. It's a social situation. Demented and sad, but social.
But did it ever lead to meeting up to do anything outside of work? Not once. Did I keep up with any of those people after job changes? Not even for a day.
You are describing ways of getting acquaintances/just friends, the article describes ways of deepening those friendships such as paying more attention to questions that lets you better know people, I found it very helpful, it may come 100% naturally to you, but not to all of us
We're bipedal animals by nature, but not every individual is able to walk. Likewise, although we're social animal by nature, not every individual can easily form close social ties.
There are many reasons a person might struggle to make friends. For instance, some people were poorly socialized, or have some kind of early-childhood developmental trauma that makes it difficult to feel the appropriate emotions when talking to people. Others naturally have trouble with empathy and so are unable to smoothly navigate social interactions. And some just naturally aren't interested in learning about other people's lives, or in telling others about themselves. So they have to force themselves somehow.
I agree with you: these artificial systems are pathological and unpleasant. But sometimes it can seem like the only option.
My impression is that you've never struggled with any of these very basic aspects of life. Consider that not everybody's experience is the same.
I don't think your experience translates well to everyone, hence the need for different methods.
I'm active in my community, politically active, have started and sold a business in the past, etc... and all I have are acquaintances. I don't think anyone outside of my immediate family even knows when my birthday is or how old I am.
This really isn't true. I lived a pretty active life for a decade or so, as a drummer in various drum groups (samba, etc). I was well-liked, people knew my name and seemed to enjoy hanging out with me, and I had some decent conversations. But I didn't really have any people I'd be super comfortable chatting with 1-1, and nobody I'd call up and specifically hang out with.
It was only when the pandemic hit that I realised that, without the regular group socials I was used to, I literally had nobody to chat to. At that point I started doing more or less exactly what this article said, and deliberately trying to make closer friends. I'm happy to say that the strategy worked pretty well.
Perhaps you are naturally good at making deep friendships in these circumstances, but I think a lot of people are not.
You're describing a way to make colleagues and acquaintances, not friends.
The more active social life you lead - the less time you have to spend on every individual you meet, hence, it is not enough to become close friends.
I think the approach in this article is great… for some people.
It really doesn’t apply once you have a lot of responsibilities and limited time. Commitments can quickly eat up your time, whether it’s caring for elderly, kids, a family or all of the above, on top of career.
As the author mentioned, most of these techniques don’t apply to people you need to be around fairly regularly, which tends to be almost all the people you meet once said responsibilities are established.
Location makes a big difference too. I've always lived in big cities in areas with lots of expats and transient people. Its very easy to make friends. In suburbs its tougher, especially in areas where people grew up still know neighbors from elementary school.
The other thing is I've always had room mates - its a lot cheaper and more social. I never really wanted to live by myself.
If you want to meet new people, get a hobby or go to a bar. Like attracts like.
It’s all instinctual. Friends, enemies, danger, etc. Noticr how effective your experiment was. Did you try the same approach at a dance club? Why not?
No such thing as close friends. Mutual benefit is all that matters unless there’s blood relation.
“The young have yet to learn the blessings of selfishness”.
How old is the author? Going in I thought this was about how to form close friends into adulthood (like 30s and 40s)
But after reading I’m thinking maybe this guy is still in college.
I think the cards for forming deep friendships are way better stacked in early 20s college than say, a work from home mid 30s professional.
It's good to keep in practice with making friends -- close or otherwise -- as an adult. Most of us are pretty bad at it, and on average we got worse at it during Covid. I appreciate the spirit of the post and applaud the author on seeking it out and writing about it.
Arrange another meetup immediately with anyone you find cool is the best advice.
The chances of meeting up again is slim or unknown , so don't leave it to fate.
Interesting approach, however I'd like some more data on it before trying it. Intuitively I'd go for the "by chance" route
tbh I feel like it's much easier for me to make friends when I was younger (5-10 years ago). Many of my high school friends are still in touch right now back in my home country. It is quite hard though when you're an immigrant in a foreign country, I don't feel like I have close friends here although I have decided to settle in this country.
I was expecting someone to comment on attractiveness and its impact on this. Didn’t find it.
The author is a child. The core of his anecdote is "I dated a girl and then I went to a summer camp and got my camp mates to do that '36 questions' exercise the New York Times popularized several years ago." I think this advice would be useful to socially awkward college students who need explicit instruction for talking to classmates.
Yeah, I was so ready to agree with this article at the beginning, but then got to the 36 questions part and felt queasy reading it. Imagining a friend coming up to me and reading off some script about "who is your ideal dinner guest" makes me depressed.
I do think there are some decent observations in the beginning of this article that a lot of people take too long to realize.
1) There comes a time in most people's lives where making friends won't come without a lot of effort. You will have to go out of your way to create situations where you can get to know people.
2) Asking probing, slightly uncomfortable questions can lead to deeper friendships. If you're the type of person who doesn't feel comfortable digging into people's feelings, it's worth it to force it.
That being said, you need to treat your friends like they're unique people. You can't read questions off a script and expect them to feel good about it.
While the author is young, they've made some accurate observations - at least in my experience.
The author's primary advice for making more friends is that you will have conversations with lots of people and you should iterate through them quickly by making more intimate conversation and revealing something about yourself to deepen the relationship.
This makes sense if the author is a student at a school of any meaningful size in a popular major. But it doesn't make sense for adults struggling to make connections outside of school. Assuming you work in an office, would you serially go from desk to desk asking coworkers out to 1:1 lunches? I'm a member of over a hundred groups on Meetup and I manage to find in-person events maybe every couple of weeks or so. And I talk to maybe 1-2 people at each one: everyone else mostly brings coworkers and talks to them instead. When I go work on a laptop at a cafe, I try making some kind of conversation with someone who is also there alone, but that's also usually 1-2 people a week and that's a sentence or two back and forth, not even a conversation.
I get the sense that even lonely people looking for more chances to connect with others have few promising encounters with strangers and can't apply that "filter fast" mindset.
I am 41 and it's certainly more difficult at this age because people my age are busy with family and work. Friendships ebb and flow based on external factors. Having realistic expectations is important.
I work for myself and generally with my work I am not interacting with people on a daily basis. I also got divorced two years ago and since then, I've made a concerted effort to be more social and do a better job keeping up with friends. I've made quite a few new friends since then, and several that I see at least a few times a month.
My take-away from this article mainly was that making yourself vulnerable makes someone else willing to share too. It's valuable to get to know someone better. I don't think it has to be done in a scripted fashion. For me, the opportunities tend to present themselves organically.
I've had some deep conversations taking a ski lift up a mountain, walking around on the street knocking on doors during a campaign, waiting around to launch at a flying site and on a long drive in a car. You'll probably learn that you have a few shared interests with that person. When you do, it makes finding opportunities to get together and do stuff easy.
> Assuming you work in an office, would you serially go from desk to desk asking coworkers out to 1:1 lunches?
I disagree with the author on a lot, but this is not a bad idea, at least for people you work closely with. I probably wouldn't take them to a sit-down place 1:1 unless you're already comfortable with them but grabbing coffee or a fast-casual lunch that you take back to the office is a good idea
Sure! I do that with my immediate teammates at places I've worked. Outside of that, I'd have to go knocking desk to desk with no pre-existing reason to.
You captured two of the author's points well: 1) more vulnerable, intimate conversations that eschew social norms can lead to more and deeper friendships; and 2) to grow deeper connections you should cast a wide net and filter down based upon compatibility. The author makes other points about taking initiative and following up as well.
Your critique of point #2 is that a middle-aged adult has less opportunities for casual conversations with a stranger than a university student?
Maybe. Off the top of my head, here's a list of places a middle-aged adult can find casual conversations that may lead to friendships: gym, grocery shopping, volunteer work, hikes, walking in the park, sports, library, cafe, public events, bar, club, mall, in the checkout line at any store... I can go on. If you consider all these different avenues, you encounter 100+ strangers every day.
I'm a middle-aged adult that had no problem making friends throughout school. It was easy, almost the default. I lost most of them to time and distance. And now, I find myself with little to no close friends, outside of my family and significant other, because making friends isn't the default as an adult. Making friends takes work!
The author correctly highlights that you must exercise intent to make friends. I've discovered some parts of this through trial-and-error over the past couple months as I've been intentionally putting myself out there, and have received promising results so far. I still have a ways to go.
I leave you with a recent experience of mine that touches upon a lot of the author's points.
I workout 5-6 days a week at the gym. Headphones in, don't bother me. I see this same guy every day I'm there. He's working out, but he's talking with people too. Half the people there know him. For weeks, we'd pass by each other and say nothing. Until one day, I passed him in the hallway and asked him "How often do you work out and for how long?" Such a random question, but I was curious because I see him every time I'm there no matter the time. He gave me a long detailed rundown, told me about his 165-day streak, why he does it, etc etc. We exchanged names and then went about our days. Since then, we've spoken to each other every time we see each other, and our conversations have gradually gone deeper and deeper. And there's something strange about him... he's present. He's not in a rush, he's fully engaged in the conversation, and he's not afraid to talk about anything. So when we talked about what we did for Thanksgiving, I shared a little bit of vulnerability about how most of my family and friends are spread out across the country in different locations. Well, he was familiar with one of them, and actually traveled there to propose and get engaged. Turns out we'd been to some of the same places off the beaten path and enjoy the same things. Then the next time we talked, I asked about his wedding, and he shared some vulnerability about how the woman left a year after the engagement, just before the wedding, so on and so on.
This experience isn't unique. Since becoming intentional, open, and willing to share my actual self, I've had this same experience many times over the past couple months. Once with the cashier who was checking me out at a sporting goods store. Our conversation twisted and turned into her sharing vulnerability about growing older, with her birthday just a week away. Now, when I see her, we have real meaningful conversations without feeling like we have to be "normal".
Yet still, after these positive experiences, I don't exchange information, follow up, or take initiative. And that's what I need to improve upon. Because why wouldn't I do that after having a few good conversations? Well because I'm scared, I don't want to feel like I'm imposing, and what happens if we don't actually get along. Oh well... just have to dive in. :)
I also work out at a gym 5-6 days a week, but without headphones, because I want to be able to hear people reaching out to me.
There are definitely gym regulars (the guy wearing Top Gun shades indoors who uses 14 plates for his leg press and never puts them back). The extent of my socializing at that gym, over the course of two years, has been "sorry, are you still using that."
Exactly, the opportunities for you to converse are there. You can act upon the author's advice. I suspect you're choosing not to in your daily life.
You can talk to anyone, not just the regulars, with a little bit of observation. Most people are happy to talk about their lives because we all go through life with little to no people showing an interest, not even people close to us.
Another example from just the other night, I see a person with an amazingly low percentage of body fat and muscle tone. That's a feat that takes dedication! So, I ask them if they strength train and run... how are you able to stay healthy without injuring yourself with that training volume... oh you run trails, do you have any good recommendations for someone just starting out (because I want to get into trail running), so on and so forth.
There's a wealth of opportunities for conversation out there my friend. Be proactive, give it a go!
My point is that I, apparently, am more open to others than you, and make more effort to address them than you, but don't have accidental results as good as yours. I suspect that you understood what I meant, but decided to post a critical and accusatory note nevertheless.
In my experience, there are only two reasons why a middle-aged adult would approach someone in 80% of those scenarios. One is that they're trying to sell me something or solicit donations to some cause, and the other is that they're literally insane and are about to start telling me why 5G towers shoot mind-control rays.
Yeah absolutely accurate for their age. Will their age change things? I know it did for me when I approached 30.
I wish I know how, as a migrant that changes countries every 5-7 years... Alas, there is no way.
Becomes nearly impossible as you get older and have a family.
> I...was too anxious to try...a non-standard action
That's a really familiar type of anxiety.
We tend to put a lot of human interaction into a shared narrative. That's pretty useful, so long as there is a role in that narrative that we can fill, that will bring us to a desired outcome.
As soon as it doesn't, we suddenly become personality responsible for writing the narrative. To become the writer is intensely liberating, but the pen feels heavy and sharp to an unpracticed hand.
And we have a lot of social boundaries that make it feel wrong to be the writer. Who are you to dictate this interaction? Isn't that selfish or greedy? Playing God? Blasphemy!
Social interaction can feel a lot like chess. After years of practice playing the roles of each piece, being a pawn, a bishop, a rook, the queen, all you have left is a king. 50 more moves and you lose! What do you do? Cheat?
But cheating is wrong! It's an unfair advantage! It breaks the rules!
Breaking the rules is actually fine. The rules are nothing more than structure for the game. We don't have to keep playing. The only rules we can't break are thermodynamics.
My first instinct is to make a new game. Better yet, an expansion! I can just put all my desired functionality into an abstraction, and share that with everyone! That's collaboration, right? I have another word: boilerplate.
The scary thing about playing God isn't rejection: it's faith. If someone puts their faith in my narrative, then suddenly I'm responsible for their needs, too.
I don't want the responsibility. I don't want to pay God. But that's selfish in it's own way: someone has to fill the role. If I'm the one putting faith in others, then I'm dumping my own responsibility onto them.
So there is no way around this anxiety. I can't factor it out and abstract it away. I can't place the burden on someone else and expect them to succeed for me. I can't analyze and predict potential outcomes.
There are only two moves left:
1. Wait
2. Act
Option #1 is just what we call the time leading up to Option #2, so the choice has already been made. The only question left is, "When?" "Now" is as good as answer as any other.
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The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that "yes" is a valid option. It's important to respect "no" when you hear it, but to expect "no" takes all the power and potential out of "yes".
He writes and thinks like an INTJ. I bet he is one of us.
TLDR: Ask people questions, genuine deep ones.
People like questions. It allows them to talk about their favorite topic: themselves.
Don't read that as selfish, it isn't. It's just the realization that any interest beyond the superficial is surprising to people. It's sadly very unusual.
Wait, they are 17?
Oh god.
This deserves a deeper read
Great article
I really like reading this article and I think it's a good start to get rid of a loner lifestyle.
There's however one caveat... making close friends is quite a culture dependent topic in my opinion. Making close friends requires differerent approaches depending on the culture you're living in. Strategies that work in San Francisco may not work in Miami, Buenos Aires or Trondheim.
I think the strategy of "Go do things with the same group of people repeatedly" is quite universal.
In some cultures and sub-cultures "opening up" is closely tied to the consumption of inappropriate levels of alcohol, while in others you can go without and still build a good connection to other people.
Both are encompassed in my comment.
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That font is super-annoying. You are not a friend...
Maybe you could be his friend and help pick a better typeface that works for prose ^^