That’s a delicious-looking bagel sandwich, isn’t it? It was even better because I met a good friend for breakfast at a new diner in town before work.
I mentioned that she’s my good friend, but until a few months ago, we were close colleagues, but not “meet for breakfast” friends. I have moved around a ton in my life. This has made me very good at adapting to new situations but it has been terrible for building friendships. And, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt that need for friendship grow.
When you’re a kid, it’s pretty easy to make friends. Everything you’re experiencing is new, and you go through those new experiences with a large group of people at the same time -- something that is bound to lead to bonding and friendship.
As you get older and get into work responsibilities, family relationships, and parenting, you can (and I know that I have) to start looking inward a lot more. That inward focus leaves you very out of practice with making friends.
At some point, I started to make a conscious effort to make more friends. I signed up for community art classes and I started to be more interactive on my social media channels. I signed up to volunteer for town activities. I’m also making an effort to go to events outside of what I normally do (this weekend, I’m going to look into visiting a historical house in my neighborhood and taking a tour).
Now, these activities haven’t always been fruitful in the making friends department, but one thing that I learned from the Secret to Making Friends as an Adult episode of the Happiness Lab podcast by Dr. Laurie Santos is that the biggest secret is continued effort. You can’t just make one contact and then expect a friendship to grow on its own. You need to nurture the friendship and make repeated efforts to engage.
Which brings me back to my breakfast meeting with my friend. We both worked together, lived in the same town, and had children the same age and in the same school. However, we were both pretty busy and never seemed to interact outside of work. At some point, I decided to set up a monthly dinner meeting between the women I worked with who all lived in the same town. It’s a standing invite, and people are free to join or not. Sometimes it’s a full group, and sometimes it’s just me and one other person. We chatted about work, of course, but also about life, our children, politics, anything and everything. These monthly dinners led to strengthening our friendship ties outside of work, and now one of my colleagues and I meet regularly outside of those dinners.
What are your tips for making friends as an adult?
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