I 22m find older people easier to maintain friendships with because they tend to be better communicators and have more experience however I have recently begun to make more friends around my age some of them have become bullies, others have cut me off because I wasn’t the best friend I could be and some I’m still friends with how can I be a better friend to people around my age I find a lot of people my age don’t know how to set boundaries and lack a lot of empathy due to experience how can I work around this or maybe help them communicate with me better and communicate better to them and have more empathy too because I’m young to and these are good people that I want to be a good friend too
How can I be more compassionate, pleasant and warm
2 comments
Stop and think before you respond. Really think. Don’t just talk to talk. Listen 90% of the time and speak 10%.
Generic answer but find people you genuinely like. It might be that other people your age are not really bad communicators, they just have a different way of communication and interests/life goals or paths than yours. Either you can stick around long enough to get warm with them or talk to enough people and you’ll come across the ones that fit with you. In my experience, thinking about “being a good friend”, trying to do something or be someone that you are not will only lead to exhaustion. It’s really about finding good friends and then you’ll automatically become a good friend. Just keep approaching people, being honest about yourself. If you have some mannerism that you think might put people off tell them in advance in a casual/fun way that you tend to do that so don’t mind it.