Friendship

When it's cold and dreary out like this and everyone is getting cabin fever, it's easy to start wondering about friends and family you haven't seen or talked to in a while. I read an article recently in Medium that discussed the complexity of adult friendships and why it's so difficult for adults to make new friends.

When I retired last year, I had 5,068 contacts in my outlook contact list. I made the mistake of not backing this database up to a personal file or drive and when HR turned off my access to Outlook, my contacts disappeared. Granted, a few thousand of these were business contacts, suppliers, contractors, vendors and end users that I worked with in the healthcare entity. But at least 1,500 to 2,000 of them were people I had worked with or met during my 50+ years of work - childhood friends, fellow service members from my time in the military, hundreds of friends and associates from 28 years at Verizon, an equal number from LVHN. And beyond those were friends I met along the way - Steelers fans, gun club buddies, trail bike riders, people with a similar political affinity as me, people I shared jokes with over the years, musicians and music lovers.

I was able to reconstruct about five hundred of these contacts into a new list through old personal emails, internet searches, LinkedIn contacts and my cell phone call list.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Good grief...I don't KNOW 500 people, let alone want to keep in touch with them!" Turns out, you're right. Over the past ten months, I've whittled that list down to about half of the number. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're one of the survivors.

But this post isn't about my broken database. I wanted to explore why adults have such a difficult time meeting and making new friends with other adults. Think back to when you were a kid - there were playgrounds, clubs, events, school plays. Friendships were organic back then. So many opportunities for interaction. Even in college, there were parties and campus interactions.

I read in Psychology Today that sometime when an individual reaches their mid-twenties, they're going to have the majority of the friends that they'll ever have and that number will taper off over time. They called the theory socio-emotional selectivity hypothesis which is a fancy way of saying that as we get older, we focus more on QUALITY rather than QUANTITY of friends. It's because we're worried about how much longevity we have left on earth and that we want to spend it with the people that really matter to us.

Not surprisingly, the COVID pandemic also played a part in destroying social interactions. We didn't interact with friends face to face as much and over a few years of sitting home or in some form of isolation, we changed the way we socialized. We texted, we talked on the phone, we emailed. Many of these connections that we used to see on a daily basis became a name or a number and our ability to interact looking someone else in the face died with it.

You might be surprised to know that over the last decade, the number of people who will admit to having ZERO friends has multiplied 4-5X what it was even 20 or 30 years ago. Excluding their spouse or significant other, most people will say they can count the number of "good" friends they maintain on one hand.

What happened? From personal experience, I found that I "let go" of friends that I realized were toxic or that made my life worse knowing and interacting with them. Yes, some I ghosted, and I'm not proud of that. But for many, it became a mutual understanding that we no longer had enough in common to maintain a friendship and we parted our separate ways.

If you're still working, people are busy. They have work lives - responsibilities to home and family and there's a time factor that pushes people to decide how to best use that precious time. As a result, social interaction is usually the first thing people eliminate. Unless you're an ultra-extrovert that thrives on getting together with friends, putting in the effort is draining, expensive and fraught with the opportunity for social faux pas.

But if you're on the other side of the spectrum and have time but no friends, life can be difficult. When my father was suddenly widowed, he went through a bit of depression and loneliness. When our family stopped our own busy lives long enough to recognize it, we realized he was suffering and took steps to get together with him often. I started having lunch with him whenever I could get away and he took care of our dog during the day. We would talk on the phone and interact daily. Keeping in contact with elderly people in your life is so very important because they're likely to be suffering in silence.

The experts advise lonely adults that there are several opportunities to make new friends:

• Join things that meet regularly - fitness classes, volunteering, faith/community groups, local sports or rec leagues.

• Lead with small, specific recommendations - "Hey, I'm grabbing coffee after class - want to join?" or "I'm going to check out that new brewery at 7 on Friday - want to come?" (The key is to be specific with the plan rather than a vague one)

• Start with "friend-adjacent" interactions - Ask for someone's opinion, offering a small favor, remembering a detail they shared in previous conversations.

• Look for green lights - Adults give subtle signals if they're open to conversations including:

  • Lingering after a conversation

  • Asking follow-up questions

  • They mirror your energy

  • They mention things you could join

The key is that most people are open but don't want to be intrusive.

• Deepen slowly with vulnerability - not a heavy emotion dump - but rather a small disclosure like:

  • "I'm new in town and trying to figure out routines"

  • "I'm trying to find more people who like hiking"

• Take the initiative to be the one who follows up. I like this one and used it recently. Since retiring, a few of us get together for a breakfast once in a while just to catch up. I get a lot out of these interactions, so I take responsibility for the NEXT time we get together and ask for suggestions for a new place to check out.

I hope you gleaned some ideas from this post. I'd love to hear your ideas as well. Email or comment below.

Have a good day.

Bob