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How to Make and Keep Friends as an Adult

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When you are a child, making friends is relatively straightforward. You offer to share your toy, or sit down at someone’s lunch table, and you have your foot in the door. Being in school facilitates friendships for most people. Spending most of your time around the same people during some of the most formative years of your life makes it easier to make friends. When you are not surrounded by a circle of social opportunity, it becomes much more complicated to make friends. Sure, you might keep in touch with friends from your years in school. However, it is just as likely that you grow apart, your friendship styles end up being incompatible, or that the friendships just do not withstand the test of time, for whatever reason. Adulthood brings new obstacles to building and maintaining friendships like long distance, busy schedules that never seem to align, and romantic partnerships.  


TV shows like Friends, New Girl, and How I Met Your Mother seem to imply that every adult has a cohesive group of friends who do everything together and complement each other perfectly. When reality fails to match these expectations, it is difficult to not feel as though something is wrong with you for struggling with adult friendships. Rest assured, just because you are currently dissatisfied with the state of your friendships in adulthood, does not mean you cannot change it. It is very much possible to meet and make friends at any age. That is not to say that it is a walk in the park, and it will probably require venturing outside your comfort zone, but it is possible to find your people past your years in school. 

Where to Find Friends

The first step to making friends is finding people you are actually interested in befriending. Once you leave school, most people spend the majority of their time at work. This is a good place to make friends for those that work amongst and with other people, but with the recent rise in remote work, not everyone has the benefit of a social pool at work. Even if you do work with others, you may not work alongside anyone who shares your interests or who seems interesting to you. So, while work can be a good option for meeting friends in some contexts, what do you do if work is not an option for friend-making?    

Join social groups

Local social groups like book clubs, walking clubs, or workout classes are great ways to meet people with similar interests. This is a great way to make friends because you automatically have a subject in common that you can use to start a conversation.

Try using apps

People most often think of apps as a way to meet romantic interests, but there are apps for platonic connections too! Apps like Meetup or Bumble BFF can connect you with other people looking to build new friendships. 

Volunteer

Volunteering not only benefits your community, but it can also introduce you to people who share your values. Websites like VolunteerMatch can help you find volunteering opportunities. 

Take classes

Enrolling in classes or workshops related to your hobbies is a great way to meet people who share your interests. Similar to social groups, classes provide common ground to start a conversation. If paying for a class is out of your budget, check to see if your local community center offers any free workshops. 

Become a regular

Frequenting a local spot regularly (e.g., a library, cafe or restaurant) provides proximity and frequency which can facilitate connection. Seeing the same people frequently increases the likelihood of connecting with them and, even more importantly, maintaining that connection. 

How to Maintain Friendships

Though finding and initially making friends sounds like the hard part, maintaining those friendships is a whole other challenge. When you are inundated with demands for your attention and energy from work, family, health, and anything else you are responsible for, it is easy to let friendships take the backseat. While it is absolutely okay to drop the ball every once in a while, if you truly want to build your social network, you also need to be dedicated to its maintenance. Here are some tips for maintaining your connections:

Communicate expectations 

Clear communication is a requirement for any healthy relationship, platonic or otherwise. Being transparent about topics such as your capacity for spending time together or providing emotional support, dissatisfaction with a friend’s behavior, and what you want out of a friendship is critical to maintaining a healthy dynamic. 

Be present

It is okay if things get busy and you do not have a ton of time to spend with friends, but when you do spend time together, make an effort to be present. Stay off your phone as much as possible, be a good listener, and fully enjoy the time you have together.
Express appreciation and love

Even if you assume your friends must know you appreciate and love them, it is always nice to be reminded. Small gestures like a “thinking of you” text, surprising them with a coffee, and thanking them for what they do for you go a long way with regard to making your friends feel loved. Be the friend to others that you wish you had, and hopefully you will begin to cultivate the types of friends that you want.  

Takeaway

When you are building your social circle, the number one thing to remember is that you need to be patient. Interpersonal connection does not happen overnight, and not every connection will turn into a full blown friendship. It is hard to be patient, but without patience, you might settle for incompatible people which creates more pain in the long run.

Focus on quality, not quantity when it comes to friends. While having dozens of friends may sound great, most people do not have the time or energy to maintain that many fulfilling friendships. Research suggests people need three to five high quality friendships to feel fulfilled, but there is no right or wrong number of friends as the “right” number of friends is up to the individual. When you are trying to determine the amount of friends that is right for you, consider what you want from your social circle, and then you can figure out who to surround yourself with to accomplish that. Remember, feeling dissatisfied with the state of your social life does not mean that there is anything inherently wrong with you. Making friends as an adult can be intimidating, but you can build lasting friendships with patience and willingness to go outside your comfort zone.    

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