How do I make friends as an adult?
How to reset, retool, and reengineer your social circle.
This is part 3 of 5 of a series called “Why Relationships Matter.”
In case you missed it, here’s part 1 and 2.
When you're a kid, there aren't very many qualifications or prerequisites in order to be friends.
Shoot, I remember when I was a kid...
You like Doritos too? Friends.
You like soccer too? Friends.
You want to play outside with me? Friends.
You like board games too? Friends.
You want to play N64 with me? Friends.
You have nerf guns!? Friends.
There's a mutual understanding as a kid, "If we can have fun together, we can be friends." And actually, that becomes focal point of the friendship. Fun.
Man, this one brings so many memories:
Every single time one of my childhood friends came over, I'd get super excited because I knew the coming hours were going to be a seemingly endless blur of laughter and hilarity. Fun was the common intersect of our lives and it was the main reason why we enjoyed each other's company.
But as we grow up, our pursuits and interests become more sophisticated. Playing with Legos, playing freeze tag, or playing at a playground no longer give us that sense of sheer excitement. Depending on our maturity or stage in life, we develop a whole range of different interests, tastes, and sometimes, fetishes and obsessions.
Commonality is a huge foundation of friendship. There needs to be at least one thing that both people can talk about endlessly on the same wavelength or an activity they can both enjoy together.
It could be two guys at a bar, watching the game, buzzed and ranting about how their girlfriends are crazy and how their bosses are terrible.
It could be two women who are shopping, looking for the same maternity clothes, realize they are both stay at home moms who hang out on the same parenting forums, and read the same parenting books.
It could be two people who attend similar meetups and share the same philosophies, perspectives, or value systems or code of honor.
It could be two people that have gone through a common struggle like cancer, or losing a lot of money, or growing up in an abusive environment, or quitting smoking.
It could be two people who have the same hobby or side interest, they might go to the same gym, they might both be into golf or a pick-up sport, they might bike on the weekends, they might knit/crochet, they might be avid followers of the same TV shows or musicians/bands, they might volunteer for similar causes, they might play the same video games, or they might both be addicted to Quora.
But.
Even if you have commonality established, there's still another integral factor.
Proximity often determines how much we interact with these people.
We all have different careers, different priorities, different relationships, so to intentionally sync up with someone on a regular basis outside the course of our typical schedules can be a huge effort.
That's why in many of the examples I gave, there was a clear location/activity that brought the two people together.
We all know the experience of losing touch of friends after high school or college -- we're just simply not doing the same things anymore, but that's one of the most critical factors in making friends.
For me, I do a lot of things on the side to increase my exposure and odds of meeting people who I can connect and resonate with, and hopefully become friends with.
On Sundays, I do CrossFit (I just started this 2 months ago).
On Tuesdays, I'm at ToastMasters (I just started this 3 months ago).
On Wednesdays, I play ultimate frisbee (2-3 years).
Multiple times a month, I go to meetups via Meetup.com (2 years).
I'm also part of an entrepreneurial thinktank centered around lifestyle design and high performance called "Ramit's Brain Trust" that holds local meetups every month (8-9 months).
Every two months, I donate blood (Started 4 months ago).
Every six months, Quora holds Top Writer meetups (The first one I went to was Nov 2014).
Every summer/winter, I try to reconnect with specific friends from high school and catch up (Been doing this for 5+ years).
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I attend a potluck with a group of family friends I've known for over 20 years.
The people I meet at Ultimate/Crossfit/Toastmasters/Meetups/Blood-donation are very surface level -- event settings and doing activities together are primers for trust and the initial conversations, how deep the interaction goes is different with each person and requires a consistent interaction.
The people I meet in the thinktank and at TopWriter meetups are often better connections. Some of the most interesting people that I hope to know for the rest of my life I have met through these groups.
To be clear, I'm not a part of any of these organizations/groups for the sole purpose of trying to make friends -- I truly support and believe in what they each stand for.
Hopefully all of this gives you a good framework to start with.
Making friends isn't a technical challenge, but when we become adults and learn to self-direct our lives, finding people we A) resonate with and B) see on the regular basis is a MUCH tougher challenge than when we were young and conveniently went to the same place 5 days out of the week to learn/study and spend hours in the same classroom/campus together.
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