i miss having friends (a guide?)
Why are friendships in adulthood so hard??
Just for context for all of this: I am not a professional in any of these topics. I am an adult with ADHD and autism. This is to say I have trouble with social cues and sometimes forget that some people exist.
I don’t thinking making friends as an adult is any more difficult than in grade school. As a matter of fact, I think it’s easier to make friends in adulthood. We have more free will and more experience, and more need for friendship. It can be as simple as signing up for a class, talking to the new guy at work, getting someone’s number at the dog park. Nerve-wracking, maybe, but not hard at all. So why do so many of us feel like we have no friends as adults, and never will?
It isn’t meeting people that’s challenging. There are people everywhere. It’s actually maintaining the friendship once you’ve started it. First of all, we probably only see these people within a certain context. This will usually be the same context as however you met them. But, eventually, the fitness program ends, or you leave your job, or your dog dies. Suddenly, this excuse you once had for consistently spending time with someone is gone. We all have such different schedules and routines, how are we meant to keep seeing each other now? There might not even be any real closure to it, sometimes life just gets busy. As a kid you have to see these people everyday, it’s forcibly consistent. When you’re grown, though, one day you just stop showing up.
Outside of these maintenance challenges posed by timelines defined beyond our control, the context in which you know this friend could be the limitation itself. As humans, we are very good at setting rules and obstacles for ourselves where there are none, as a perceived means of protection. We are social beings; our survival has always depended on others, so it’s only natural that we would want to keep ourselves from overstepping for fear of being rejected by the pack. This means we might decide to keep our relationships contextual. If we only ever see Suzy at book club, we are safe, because we know the pattern and we know the rules. If one day we think about trying to ask Suzy to go to the mall, alarm bells start to go off, because this isn’t consistent with our relationship with her. Your brain says NO! don’t ask her to do that, it might be weird and she might not want to and she might say no and maybe she’s also allergic to malls. Be shameless and just ask. You can find a new book club if it somehow goes so terribly that that’s required (but it almost definitely won’t be). However, if you manage to push past the mental resistance from sheer willpower, or lack of rejection sensitivity, and being changing the context of your friendship, a new problem arises: novelty.
Novelty is a challenge when developing new relationships because it decenters connection. While, yes, sharing new experiences with someone is bound to deepen the connection if positive, the same novelty could foster a sense of anxiety that lingers throughout the experience, casing us to focus on our own nerves rather than connecting with the other person. This can happen when stressors like unfamiliar environments or people distract you from connecting. The best way to avoid this is to either 1) go the more antisocial route and plan to spend time together somewhere that you know and/or is less crowded, or, 2) go the more adventurous route and choose to do an activity that will take your mind off the stressors. Something that requires concentration like a new physical skill or art form. Just be sure that it’s an activity you can do in tandem and bond over. Something not too competitive, frustrating, or individual. I think the best is when you can hang out with someone without having to plan a reason or activity, but that usually comes as you unlock a higher degree of friendship. And speaking of higher degrees of friendship, here comes the final, greatest challenge: maintenance.
If you manage to consistently see this person enough to be comfortable trying to spend time together in a different context, and subsequently successfully do that, the next step is to just checks notes keep doing that?! But how?? As someone who was constantly (and I do mean constantly) flaked on by people growing up, I learned to prefer my own company. By not even asking to hang out with someone, I was ensuring that I wouldn’t be met with the disappointment of cancelled plans after getting my hopes up. While it was really important for me to develop the skill of being fine on my own rather than codependence, I feel that collectively we have all veered too far into the other direction. We are no longer willing to tolerate our friends being actual people. I can remember a time when close friends were like our siblings; if they did something we didn’t like, we might talk to them or fight about it or take a bit of distance for awhile, but you always came back to each other because the bond was almost always greater than the betrayal. Before, your bestie had to kiss our boyfriend or kill your hamster to be permanently taken out of rotation. It seems that now, though, any little thing can instill the urge to remove, block, unfriend, and it really is that easy to never speak to someone again, never give them a chance to make up with you.
Maintaining a friendship can come with many challenges: time, distance, lifestyle. The biggest obstacle, however, is always ourselves. You say you just don’t have time to talk to them, make time. They live too far away? You made time, now make the trip. Can’t do that, or their schedule doesn’t allow your visit? Facetime. No time or just not a fan? Short video or voice clip. Can’t make that work? Text. Broken thumbs? Someone can help you write a letter. Y’all are all about ‘’if they wanted to, they would’’ until the ‘’they’’ is YOU. And you might be thinking: well, I’m too scared and this person doesn’t do all of these things for me anyway so they probably just don’t want to, wah, wah, wah. Consider this: they are just as scared or overwhelmed by the idea of reaching out, and think the exact same thing about you not wanting to spend time together. So, if you care about this person enough, suck it up, find the courage for the both of you, and start showing up more consistently. It might be hard at first, but when your friend notices you actually taking an interest and regularly wanting to spend time with them, they will eventually pick up the slack. If they don’t, and you feel really betrayed and discouraged by this, COMMUNICATE!! Your friend might be going through something they don’t want to stress you out with, or trying to take a break from social media, or still not be confident in your friendship. After all, we’re all just people. But when you just assume they hate you or cut them off, you’re punishing yourself, and them, for no reason. And potentially losing a good friend for good.
Signed, the lonely anxious friend.
Whether you’re at the stage of meeting people, levelling up your connection, or maintaining your friendship, do 2 things today to be a better friend. Let someone vent, make them a card just because, send them a video update of your day, subscribe to their Substack (hint-hint).
Sending Reels is great and all, but don’t forget to say hey once in a while and ask what’s going on in their life.
Send this to someone you want to be a better friend with.
♡ Hal
