Making Friends as an Adult For Dummies (eBook)

Rebecca Greene (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
512 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-28846-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Make lasting friendships at any age

Making Friends as an Adult For Dummies helps you overcome the challenges of building friendships, forming new bonds, and meeting new people. First, you'll learn what your friendship needs are and decide what kind of friends you'd like to meet. Then you'll get concrete advice for building a new social circle, turning acquaintances into good friends, and letting go of friendships that just aren't working out. Single or married, parent or childfree, many people face these same challenges. This Dummies guide will show you that you aren't alone and will help you discover sustainable ways to overcome loneliness, keep friendships going despite occasional tension, and build your 'family of choice.'

• Assess your friendship needs and learn how to find people who would make good friends
• Gain the communication skills to resolve conflict in new and existing platonic relationships
• Overcome your fear of rejection and learn to politely end friendships that aren't working
• Learn to be a good friend and deepen the friendships you build

Make friends after retirement, relocation, extended isolation-or just because friends are nice to have. Making Friends as an Adult For Dummies is the judgment-free book that makes it easy.

Rebecca Greene, MSW, LMSW, is a mental health therapist in group practice and a self-help author. She received her MSW degree from The Catholic University of America. She helps people of all ages develop healthier friendships and overcome friendship challenges. Rebecca speaks and writes regularly on the topics of friendship, social skills, and mental health.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Understanding the Challenges of Making Friends

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exploring why making friends is hard

Understanding loneliness and social isolation

Identifying turning points when it’s helpful to make new friends

Given that you’ve picked up this book, chances are you’ve been finding it challenging to make new friends as an adult. If so, you’re in good company, because lots of people feel exactly the same way.

As a mental health therapist, I’ve found that loneliness, having no one to talk to, feeling left out, not fitting in, and lacking a support system are all emotionally painful and difficult issues that are often on people’s minds. If you’ve been finding it hard to make new friends for a long time — even years — don’t despair. Making friends does get more challenging the older you get, but making a new friend as an adult is still very realistic and doable. Making new friends is one of life’s joys, and friendship makes life fun and exciting. This book can be your road map to creating the connections you’ve always hoped for.

Many people feel that making new friends is a lot like dating. You have to put yourself out there repeatedly, make small talk with lots of people, go on lots of friend dates, initiate get-togethers, and suffer through some rejection before you find your person. You’ll find that you vibe with some people and you don’t with others. Making new friends as an adult is ultimately a numbers game, and the more you put yourself out there, the more likely it is that you’ll meet your ideal friend.

Before this book delves into all the steps (and skills) you’ll need to master in order to make new friends, this chapter explores all the reasons why making new friends as an adult can be so challenging. Sometimes it’s helpful to identify the reasons why something has been so hard in order to understand the journey better. It’s also comforting to know you’re not alone in your struggles. Understanding more about why making friends has been so difficult will give you new insight and help you feel less alone in your friend-making journey.

In this chapter, I explore the main reasons why making new friends is challenging as an adult. Then I discuss how difficulty making friends contributes to loneliness and social isolation. Next, I introduce several key turning points when making new friends is easier. And I wrap up the chapter with several reasons why adulthood is the ideal time to make new friends.

Exploring the Reasons Why Making New Friends Is Challenging

You’ve probably noticed that making new friends as an adult can be challenging, but you may be wondering exactly why that is. Understanding why it’s so challenging for many people to make new friends can help you feel less alone in the journey and help you understand why it can sometimes feel so daunting. When you understand the challenges, you can gain new insight into your struggles and figure out what your best action plan is to make new friends.

Making new friends as an adult is challenging for many different reasons, including lack of free time and lack of opportunity to meet lots of new people the way you could back in your school days. It was easier to make new friends when you were younger because you had an abundance of free time to hang out with people and you saw lots of people at school. But when you’re an adult, everyone is so busy — it’s harder to justify making the time to meet and get to know new people when so many other things are demanding your time and attention. Plus, it takes a lot of time to make a new friend. A 2018 study by Professor Jeffrey Hall, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that it takes around 40 to 60 hours of spending time together to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, 80 to 100 hours to turn a casual friend into a friend, and more than 200 hours to make a best friend. That’s a lot of hours that many busy adults aren’t willing or able to devote to friend-making.

Here are some of the things people complain about when it comes to making new friends as an adult:

• Everyone already has their friends, and they aren’t looking for new ones.
• Everyone is too busy to make new friends.
• People don’t prioritize friendships.
• No one has time for me.
• I put myself out there and invite people to do things, but no one reciprocates.
• All my friendships feel one-sided.
• I reach out to others all the time, but no one bothers to reach out to me.
• I moved just a little farther away, and now none of my friends will make time to see me.

Do any of these concerns resonate with you?

As you do some self-reflection about why it seems so hard to make new friends as an adult, it can also be helpful to contrast why it seemed so much easier to make new friends in high school and/or college. According to a 2019 report by Snapchat called “The Friendship Report,” the average age to make a best friend is the age of 21. During your college years, you’re surrounded by similar-age people for many hours a day, all in the trenches together, and all having new experiences together, so there’s lots of time to get to know each other. That’s especially true in college for those who live on-campus in dorms. All those late-night study sessions, parties, and hangout time with roommates often leads to lifelong friendships.

There’s no other time period, unless you live with roommates as an adult or live in a retirement community as an older adult, that can compare to the intensity of the social interaction in college and the young adult years.

Contrast this to adult life, where you’re working full-time, and fitting in social time with friends in bits and pieces wherever you can. You no longer have leisurely time to spend hours getting to know people in a close-knit setting. For working adults, the workplace, which is one of the main places where adults make friends, isn’t as conducive to making friends as college was. Sure, you’re working in the same building (if you’re even working in the office at all), but you’re all at different ages and stages, and you may live far apart from each other, so it’s not as ideal a situation as making friends when you were younger.

In the following sections, I explain all the key reasons why it’s harder for adults to make new friends, including lack of time, prioritizing other aspects of their lives over friendships, and having rusty social skills, among others.

Believing they don’t have time

One of the main reasons why it’s so hard for adults to make new friends is that they don’t have much free time to socialize. With many adults working full-time and taking care of all their other responsibilities (for example, raising children, doing household chores, running errands, exercising, wrangling pets, taking care of elderly parents or other family members, dealing with car repairs, and going to medical appointments, not to mention sleeping), it’s no wonder so many of them feel that they have very little free time left over to socialize.

When they do socialize, many adults turn to the tried-and-true friendships they’ve had for decades (usually from high school or college) instead of putting in the time and effort to make a new friend from scratch. It makes sense — many adults are stretched thin and pulled in many different directions, leaving little remaining energy to make new friends.

Proximity is very important for new friendships (see Chapter 5). The closer a potential new friend lives, the more likely you’ll actually become friends because coordinating get-togethers with people who live close to you is easier than it is with people who live farther away.

One of the variables that makes it harder to make new friends as an adult is living far from your potential new friend. The “30-minute rule” from a 2007 study in the journal Social Networks says that people are less willing to visit a friend who lives more than 30 minutes away. If you live within a few minutes from a new friend, it’s much more convenient and easier to fit a quick get-together into your busy schedules.

When looking to make new friends, focus on finding friends who live close by, which you can do by meeting neighbors, going to your local community center, and finding other local community places to make new friends.

The difficulty of coordinating schedules makes it challenging for adults to make new friends, especially if they have kids. Juggling work, kids’ activities and transportation, plus all the other household tasks really uses up a lot of time. Finding time to meet up can be challenging when people’s schedules are so different. It really helps to join a hobby or interest group that has regular meetings, so you have that dedicated time on your calendar to socialize with others who share your interests (see Chapter 5 for more on joining groups).

Prioritizing work, family, and romantic relationships over friendships

Another reason why it’s harder for adults to make new friends is that people tend to prioritize work, family, and romantic relationships over friendships. The relationships we have with our spouses or partners are often seen as the core relationships in our lives, and they’re often...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Partnerschaft / Sexualität
• Schlagworte: Adult friendship • Friends • Friends Book • Friendship • friendship book • friendship skills • Isolation • loneliness • making friends • overcome loneliness • relationships • Relationship Skills • retirement friends • Social Skills • social skills book
• ISBN-10: 1-394-28846-8 / 1394288468
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-28846-5 / 9781394288465