Why adult friendships are so hard (and what to do about it)
When I graduated from college, I never expected that adult friendships would be so hard. Friendship used to be one of those things that came super easily to me as a kid.
Even though I was always a little shy, once I got comfortable, I opened up like a flower in bloom and was ready to interact with everybody. I had all kinds of different friend circles in each of my classes in high school and was friends with almost all of my coworkers at my first job.
But when I started getting into my later 20s, I suddenly found making friends as an adult much harder than it used to be when I was little. I began to find myself spending more and more time staying in the house and doing things by myself, and before I knew it, I found myself dealing with strong feelings of loneliness.
Thankfully, I have people today that I consider friends and I love spending time with them, but it took a lot more effort and me being much more intentional to find and maintain those friendships.
Because I find this to be so incredibly common (and boy, did it help to learn I wasn’t alone), I wanted to share everything I’ve learned in my studies and pursuit of making friends as an adult. My hope is that it will help you understand that it’s perfectly normal for adult friendships to be more difficult, and to learn some tactics for what you can do about it.
The Four Elements of Friendship
Before we dive into why adult friendships are so hard to make an maintain, let’s start by understanding the elements of what determines whether a friendship will blossom.
One of my favorite YouTubers, Improvement Pill, created an entire free video course on how to make friends. His second video in the series captures the four components that take two people from being strangers to being close friends.
To summarize, the four components are:
- Proximity – How physically close you are when interacting with someone
- Duration – How much time you spend on an interaction
- Frequency – How often you have interactions with someone
- Intensity – How much emotional spark there is during an interaction
Essentially, the more you can increase your proximity, duration, frequency, and intensity when you interact with another person, you will become closer to that person and naturally progress into a close friendship.
Why is friendship harder as an adult?
The four elements above seem pretty simple, right? So why is it that we have to actually think about stuff like this now when making friends came so easily to a lot of us when we were kids?
The simplest answer is that becoming an adult means your life becomes busy. No matter if you’re single or married, have children or not, or work a job that’s relaxed or demanding, being an adult now means you are responsible for taking care of yourself.
When our parents used to do all the cooking, shopping, cleaning, and driving us to and from anywhere we needed to go, all we had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. Especially if we went to school or other places where we were around other kids all day, we didn’t need to think about anything else but enjoying life in the present moment.
Juggling all of the responsibilities we have as adults means we have much less mental and physical energy to interact with others as we did before. Many of us also do not have the same opportunity to be around people who are in similar phases of life as us for long periods of time, like we did when we were in school.
So to summarize it all, the elements of friendship aren’t any different than when we were younger. Adult friendships seem so hard because they just take a lot more work and intention than they used to.
But the good news is: it doesn’t have to be hard! In fact, it can actually be really fun to make up our minds that we’re going to put in the effort it takes to have rewarding, lasting friendships as an adult.
The Plan
So now that we have the why out of the way, let’s get to the how of making friends as an adult. Like with anything in our life that takes effort and being intentional (such as getting a new job or starting a new workout routine), we’ll need to start with a plan.
How do I start making friends as an adult?
The most important step in starting to build adult friendships is to have a plan and envision what you want. I cannot stress enough how important this step is – if you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there?
When I first decided I wanted to make friends, I thought to myself, this can’t be too hard! I’ll just be nice to everybody and see who I like.
I then hopped onto an app and into some Facebook groups and started talking to any and everybody I met. While it was fun getting to know some new people and having conversations, I quickly realized that a lot of the connections I made really weren’t going anywhere and were unlikely to lead to lasting friendships.
I also began to experience feelings of frustration and confusion about not feeling that deeper connection with anyone I chatted with – was something wrong with me, or did I just not “get” this whole friendship thing?
The Lesson
What I learned is that it’s so important to envision what you want for your life and the kind of people you see being along for the ride with you. The commonly known idea that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” isn’t just some fluffy saying – it’s 100% true.
So take some time to sit down and do some dreaming and reflecting on what your perfect friendship circle would look like. Is it all women, all men, or a mix of both? What kind of goals and values do these people have? What types of activities do you see yourself doing with them? Do you picture them hanging out with your significant other, kids, or other family members someday?
Almost like with romantic relationships, having a clear vision of what your future tribe looks like will prevent you from spending time on the wrong people and trying to force connections that ultimately don’t even fit into the vision you have for your life.
What are some good ways to meet people?
Now that we don’t have the luxury of going to school every day and being around people in the same stage of life as we are, we’ll need to get creative about finding new ways to meet people. This can actually be one of the most fun parts of the process!
Start with the Familiar
Start with places where you’re around the same people frequently, such as a job or church. You may need to go out of your comfort zone a little bit here – try to talk to people who you think you would have a good connection with even if you don’t work with them directly. This is admittedly challenging for me and I find myself always sticking to the people who are on my team, but there are other people at my company who have interests similar to mine.
Change it up
Outside of the places you go regularly, take some initiative to join clubs, organizations, or groups in your town or city. Maybe this sounds cliché, and maybe you’ve heard this advice before, but I promise that it works as long as you’re willing to stick with it. The first couple of times you will probably feel a little awkward and not talk to anyone, but after going multiple times, you will start to get familiar with people and feel much more comfortable striking up a conversation. Don’t give up!
Friend “Dating” Sites
The last great way to meet people is online, like you would with a dating app! Bumble BFF is an app that allows you to look through profiles, learn about a person’s interests, and see what they’re looking for in the friendship. If you both swipe right on each other, you will be connected to start a private chat.
This is how I’ve met most of my close friends since moving away from my hometown to a brand new city almost five years ago. Three of the girls I met on the app were bridesmaids in my wedding!
One very important piece of advice I have when it comes to meeting people on apps is to get in front of the other person as soon as possible. Chatting in the DMs might take little effort and be fun at first, but it almost never leads to something more meaningful and can fizzle out quickly. Make plans to hang out or even just video chat over FaceTime, and if you like the person after your first interaction, go ahead and make plans to meet up again in the future!
How do I keep the connection going?
One of the hardest parts about making friends as an adult is keeping the friendship going once it’s been stablished. We’re all super busy and it’s easy for months to go by without seeing or talking to certain friends if we let life get in the way.
The biggest recommendation I have for keeping a friendship going is to be very intentional about planning to connect in advance. When you hang out with that friend, go ahead and make plans for the next time you will see each other. Invite them to events you know you have upcoming in the future, such as your Saturday morning spin class.
You can also just be intentional about putting things down in your calendar – set a reminder for yourself to call or text to check in a few times a week. Have monthly get-togethers where you meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month. Anything to create consistency and a pre-planned engagement to connect.
Please note that while this may sound a little rigid and not as fun as spontaneously hanging out with friends when you feel like it, it will not be like this forever! It’s only in the beginning while you’re getting the friendship established and becoming more comfortable with one another.
Once you reach a certain level of closeness, you won’t have to “remember” to connect with your friend – you will just start to naturally crave their presence and interacting with them.
I don’t seem to “gel” with anyone – what should I do?
One of the things that makes adult friendships feel so hard is finding people you have a strong enough connection with to keep spending time with them.
This was another big problem that I ran into when I first started trying to make friends as an adult – there just didn’t seem to be as much “chemistry” as I remembered when I made friends when I was younger. I personally believe this is a very common thing to face, especially when you are actively trying to add to your social circle.
The first thing you will want to do is go back to step #1, which is outlining a clear vision for what kind of friends you see being in your circle based on your interests and values.
If you didn’t skip that step and you’re still having trouble, the next thing you’ll need to do is take a look at what kind of expectations you’re putting on yourself and others when it comes to friendship.
All about Expectations
Let me explain what I mean by this with an example.
When I was trying to make friends as an adult, I really struggled any time someone that I thought I could potentially be friends with was late somewhere. To me, being on time is a huge sign of respect for the friendship and the person who is waiting.
However, I realized that I often had this expectation and didn’t actually communicate it to the other person. I just assumed that our date “wasn’t that important to them” and wrote them off as somebody I probably could never be friends with.
If you think this sounds judgmental and a little uptight, I completely agree with you. I had to ask myself which was more important: being “right” about punctuality and assuming that people should “just get it,” or communicating my wants and desires in a relationship.
I decided it was the latter, and I have learned never to assume anything about anyone’s behavior going forward. So if you’re having trouble gelling with people in general, it may be time to take a good, hard look at your expectations.
The most important thing to remember
To summarize everything, the most important thing to remember about making friends as an adult is that relationships that feel the most fulfilling are all about giving, not getting. When you’re looking for new friends, find people who you genuinely enjoy spending time with and in which you fully enjoy pouring into the relationship.
This isn’t to say that it will be easy right away as you’re still getting familiar, but it will be so worth it in the end if you stick to it. Making new friends as an adult doesn’t have to be hard!
