I feel like I’ve been trying everything to make friends, and nothing ever works. I’ve had periods of my life where I have not only had friends, but I would even say I had too many. That life is long in the past. I became an adult, moved cities and started working from home. I have made zero friends since. I will try and note a few reasons I think this is.
1. **I have only ever made friends when I am in a situation where I see the same people nearly every day.** This has only ever been in education and working in an office for me.
2. **Joining hobby/sports clubs do not work.** No matter what club I join, nobody ever cares about socialising or making friends. The only care about the subject of the club. E.g Board game club people will nearly exclusively talk about board games. The problem is I never get to know anyone. No jokes, no personalities, no stories, no ideas, no nothing.
3. **Meetups do not work.** The problem with meetups is that you can actually have good meaningful human conversation, but not make friends. This is because I nearly never see anyone go to these meetups regularly enough (usually just the one time) for me to keep talking to them and make friends with them.
4. **All of my passions are done alone.** I passionately love many things. Films, video games, music, classic literature, sketching, reading manga, art history, food, drink etc. However I find all of these things to be made significantly less fun when done with others (if they even can be done with others). The only things I want to do with others is to make them laugh, be loved, be respected etc. There are not clubs for these things. This is a huge shame as having love and affection in my life is the one thing I am most passionate about in life.
I’m not convinced you can make friends as an adult without meeting them at work or being extremely lucky and just stumbling across someone who is on your mental wavelength. I meet zero people at work as I work from home, and have met hundreds of people in meetups and clubs with also a big fat zero friends made. This is ridiculous as I used to have hundreds of friends and many close friends just from seeing them at the office or at school. Am I missing something huge or is this just the bleak reality of life for me from now on?
6 comments
So I am near hermit level introvert… so consider the source-
I’m a bit confused by your suggestion that all of your passions are done alone… in fact food and drink might be the most social human activities in existence. Art music literature film are all vying for second most social activities.
The problem that you seem to be experiencing is that you seem to need several interactions to click with people and clubs and meetups lack the regularly that you need. Have you considered taking a recurring class on some subject your are interested in- basket weaving to EMT certification there are multi week classes available on plenty of subjects
Making friends as an adult isn’t difficult – for YOU, ir may be, but not in general.
You seem to have tried diff avenues to meet people, which is great! But there is a large process in between “meeting” people and becoming “friends” and I feel like people sometimes think it is instantaneous…and it isn’t. If you don’t connect with people, then try to figure out why: is it social awkwardness? Is it mental health issues? Is it coming on too strong/desperation? Is it poor or weak body language? Do you make others uncomfortable OR not know how to interact with them?
I was hanging out in the DMV waiting to renew my tabs. Middle-aged dude by me is wearing a nice flannel. I tell him his flannel is nice. He says he found it at goodwill. I say oh dude that’s a good find, I used to be in the apparel business and those seams are triple stitched – that’s a work garment that is going to last. He says he’s a welder and needs something thick enough to take the sparks . .
Long story short, I made a friend!
If you open to *being a new friend* for people, and initiate conversation while they are bored, you can make a friend easy as breathing. Waiting rooms, long elevators, any queue, waiting at a bus stop, sitting at a bar.
It’s not rude to say hello! It’s also not rude for people to ignore your hello. If someone isn’t busy you can say hello and tell them your name, comment on something. If they engage with the comment then they want to keep talking.
I’m 5’5″ and dress like a cowboy so I guess I’m profoundly unintimidating which also helps
yea it’s hard esp in big metro cities.
We all want to express our authentic self to others and be listened to. Millions of us in the same city feel this way, yet it’s hard to find a safe space for that to happen consistently.
Sometimes it just feels like an irony. Everyone feeling the same yet nobody is coming together to connect to solve it.
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Yes, it is very hard. Especially, as others mentioned, living in a metropolis. The only contacts and potential friends I have are my colleagues or the colleagues of my wife, and we happen to hang out mostly with her colleagues but just for “convenience” (we do not really like spending a lot of time with them, as we have almost nothing in common). In my work, I get to attend meetings with different people which are all uninteresting because scientists are boring as fuck and don’t care about anything but science. When we go out with colleagues the topic always eventually ends in something scientific and I fuckin hate it. So yes, I can’t manage to make new REAL friends, just circumstantial ones that I will most likely forget once we move again (we move every couple of years due to our careers).
If you’re lucky in terms of neighbors, they are the best bet in terms of potential friendship, as you can see them often and easy. I’ve been lucky in my previous city, where we frequented other 2 couples from our building. Right now we just talk occasionally with the current ones.
When you’re a foreigner or anyway come from outside, people won’t care about you. What you can do is to find people from your same city, region or country.
It’s very difficult.