> “You meet someone really nice, but if they don’t return a call, drop to 90, if they don’t return two calls, that’s an immediate 50,” she said. “If they’re late to something in the first month, that’s another 10 off.” (But people can move up the scale with nice behavior, too, she added.)

OK, here is one case where the lack of friends is not mystifying at all.

That'll be a 20 point deduction!

It's worth noting that some people are just completely shit at timeliness, no matter how important the thing is.

I am and so are my a lot of my friends "I'm running 30 minutes late!" often meets a "No worries, I might be an hour". A punctuality obsessed person would hate me.

Come on, in your own example you provide a white lie to the person and tell them it'll be 30 mins, when you know that it could likely be longer. Why not just say you're running an hour late instead?

I suffer from this myself, so don't feel like I'm picking on you, but I realized a long time ago that it's just me being dishonest with myself and others, and I should cut it out.

Leaving it for a permanent record of my crankiness. Sigh, I may be getting old...

Or maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.

I'm old and cranky too.

Does that count?

What I think is worse than being late are thr monsters that show up on time to a party. Like wtf who does that.

"Your call is very important to us. Please leave your name & number, and we will get back to you as soon as possible."

Some people are so high-strung and high-maintenance, I don't know why they do it to themselves. Perhaps their career path rewards this behavior, and they become so obsessed with success as defined by their career, whatever that means, that it becomes their entire identity. Because the way Thayer is approaching life sounds a whole lot like the way people behave in corporate america. Thayer Prime would probably benefit from eating some mushrooms in the forest.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjL07JQ5cLo

edit: By mushrooms I mean the kind that educates, not kills.

Sounds like she's just put a number scale on what most people do intuitively.

I don't think it's too high-strung or high-maintenance to expect people to be reasonably on-time.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. The real good stuff is in the comments. -10 points for not reading the article for me.

If you invite someone and they bail 10 times, maybe you stop inviting them.

I am pretty sure certain events I’ve been invited to was only because I was good friends with someone else. And once they stopped going my invites stopped as well.

Some people you’re close to may have other things going on in their lives, but you loop them in anyway for when their situation changes.

If it's hard, it's usually a psychological difficulty rather than a lack of opportunity.

Unless you live somewhere exceptionally remote, you're usually surrounded by people and opportunities for meeting them are quite frequent. You could strike up conversations most anywhere: from streets to bus stops to parks to bars to dance and social clubs to special interest groups, work, cafes, parties, conferences, and so on.

Usually, though, most people don't make the effort, for a variety of reasons ranging from fear to awkwardness and lack of social skills.

Once you meet people, though, you have to go further and cultivate acquaintances in to friends, and lots of people fail to do that as well. Even after a friend is made, however, it's still a challenge to get closer and then to maintain the friendship, which again people often fail to do.

For people over 30+ some common threads are same-aged children, similar pets, common hobbies, etc. It's just easier, and let's assume that my life is busy enough that I don't have the energy to work in new relationships that don't have a certain flow to it. It's not about fear or lack of social skills, because at some point we are ALL going to be awkward in a conversation and this is easily forgiven, especially since by the time we hit 30+ we are a bit more patient.

Personally, I've found that creating a small group is the best way to find new friends and the energy to cultivate it is spread out amongst the group. Inviting new people into the common circle is MUCH easier. It's easier to keep interesting conversation with 3 people than 2. But with more people comes the problems of scheduling and opportunities become slimmer.

Similar-minded people looking for friendship is easier than doing it alone.

I actually do live in a fairly remote place, pmoriarty, but your comment has me reflecting on culture. Seattle, where I regularly visit, is known for the "Seattle Freeze," whereby people are insular and guarded. I spent a lot of years there in the tech world and have no relationships to show from it; just business. Perhaps you are in a locale where the culture is more open and welcoming, where people are more willing to engage in conversations with strangers?

This is certainly nowhere close to the norm in europe. I only know a couple of people who work more than 40 hours a week (37.5 is standard in the UK), and they definitely take vacations.

I don't think much has changed, except now more people use headphones and cell phones to signal that they're in the latter group. Previously they would have nodded and said "mm-hmm, oh wow" a lot.

"How you doing today?"

"Oh, you know how it is." He gives me a weak smile. I can tell he feels worn down from the daily grind.

I pick up my script, then think of a way to keep chatting.

"Hey, this is going to sound weird, but I also have <foo> medical condition. Do you have any advice on getting that treated?"

I have no idea why this made sense to me, but it was something like "Pharmacists fill scripts, and they also see prescriptions daily, so they know which illnesses are treated by which medicines, so therefore this is totally not a weird thing to do."

He gives me this super surprised look and stays mostly quiet. I say "I should see a doctor huh?" and he says yeah. I walk away feeling like a dummy.

I didn't mind at all, and I'm not afraid to try to make new friends. But now instead of this random person thinking of me as a neighbor (he always called me by name) I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm weird. And I am.

The point is, I don't really care about being weird. I don't think I'm alone in this. But I stay quiet because it damages social relationships to express myself in odd ways. It's better to be on a cordial first-name basis than have an arms-length-but-personal experience with them.

The opportunities you mention for meeting people are really not as frequent as you make it seem. And it's unclear what to say to force a conversation. Yes, some people have this skill. Some are also naturally good looking. But seeing as this is Hacker News, I think the audience might be closer to my side of things.

The reason I wrote this was that you mention there are all these opportunities. But going over in my mind, I can't see a single way to talk to that guy that isn't socially weird. He's at work. He just wants to get his job done and move on to the next customer. I don't know anything that could make him laugh. Asking about his day or asking him to tell me what it's like to be a pharmacist would be seen as yet another frustrating thing to deal with at work. And there are other people in line behind me, so this is an imposition on everyone else.

But those people are opportunities too, right? I could just turn around and start chatting them up. Except not really. It's the same for everyone else in life: We're all busy, all dealing with our own things. And the older you are the busier you get.

All of this is to say, you can live in one of the biggest cities in the country and still feel completely isolated and alone. I know. And maybe this comment will put it into context that it's not really their fault. It's just the shape of the situation.

I usually hack on my projects at the mall on a couch, and end up meeting quite a lot of people. But only if they happen to be hacking away on something too, and eventually I ask them about it. But that seems rather an uncommon situation. So I'm wondering "Outside of work and family, where would other hackers have excuses to meet people in daily life?"

Even now, the smart thing is to stay quiet and not post this. You're told to stay quiet in a thousand ways by the society around you.

Using the coworking space is a surprisingly good way to meet people. Obviously the guy locked in an office, headphones on, hammering out code should be left alone -- but there will be many people sitting in the common areas, chatting with their buddies. They might be drinking the free beer on tap. They probably have a startup, open source project, etc. that they're passionate about and would be happy to tell you about.

I strongly disagree; I think it's the opposite. Friendship takes time. You need to invest the time into conversation, building trust, building a relationship. You won't have a good friend after a week together.

It's also why quite a lot of my close friends are ~10 years younger than me—I move a lot and each new city I hit I have to make new friends. Many times that means people in their 20s that can spend leisure time like that. Probably not the best for my renal system though.

So at least for me the "meeting" people got solved.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drop-in/id1038351294?mt=8

Looking at the data I have received from the sign-up and data selection processes there should have been no problems.

This is interesting...

It's definitely a somewhat unique phenomenon, and I like both the effect (seeing friends more regularly) and being able to experience it from the inside.

It does, however, give me the feeling that I should put more effort into getting together with my other friends. But life provides any number of excuses to delay it.

You form your first friendships really early on with an extremely strong commonality - the hugeness of the world and your lack of information about it. Literally everything is in common with your peers circa age 2-4 because nothing is established yet. If it weren't for how our society has a habit of breaking these kids up constantly throughout their childhoods I would think those relationships would form the most iron clad friendships you can get if they survive to adulthood. Too bad about 90% of the kids you meet in daycare you never see again after you start school.

School is the next big one, where for most kids they will struggle alongside each other for 13 years straight. The mixing up of classes year to year again hurts the likelihood of strong friendships forming, but you can also just have kids your age in your neighborhood as a strong peer group. You have massive amounts of commonality at that point - you are taking the same classes, you live in the same area, you know the same people, you are subject to the "same" pop culture of your school.

That is where those high school clicks emerge from. The most bonded peer groups of before specialize as they age.

The same hold true into college, but I definitely don't see the same commonality and uniformity there. Going through puberty is really the cutting off point where divergent personalities specialize your interests enough that finding commonality becomes much harder, and you start having much less to offer your peers over their cumulative experiences and engagements.

It only gets worse from there. The more years into life you are, the more interests and specialties you have as a person that makes finding compatibility all that harder. People force themselves into relationships and marriage out of societal pressure. Nobody forces you into friendship nearly as much, so over that hump the lack of compatible people drops to near zero. Its why I think most marriages fail - they are trying to force the highest degree of friendship, when the older you get the harder it is.

Pokemon Go, and video games in general, are extremely effective ways to get people a commonality to force them together and interacting in ways that can build meaningful bonds. A common challenge is essential to bonding. The more passionate you can be about it the more likely it works.

But even then the 30 year old comes with baggage. They already have their favorite movies and musicians. Likes and dislikes. Hobbies and things they want to avoid. Because they have experienced so much more a fraction than they would have as children they are that much more set in stone. The adage of how you can't change a person applies here - even children demonstrate dramatically declining malleability as they gain experience in life. As you gain magnitudes more life experience your flexibility personality wise declines by similar magnitudes. It is trying to fit together puzzle pieces - if the pieces are made of clay you can mold them to fit. If they are tried out and set in stone they are rigid and it is much harder to find a match, and those matches are much easier to fracture and break.

The commonality and struggle are the prongs of a puzzle piece. The more impactful on your life, the happier it makes you, the more passion you can have for it the more pronounced those prongs can be. Early on you only need the simplest commonality as being the same age or living near one another to forge bonds - as you get old and your piece gets more defined and nuanced, it takes larger struggles and stronger forces to bind pieces together.

"The friend of your youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you...and perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moon flower. It didn’t matter a damn to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant.”

Great answer. I would just add: the bigger the struggle, the stronger the friendship. Military friendships are the extreme example of this. I've seen war comrades crying like children after decades without contact.

There's actually a pretty good financial analogy with... finances. At uni "all of us" lived the same lives in the dorms. We had all the same financial life, which was "student poor". Rapidly the ultra rich kids moved to the ultra high rent apartments, we had lives that diverged, etc. Decades later rather than all of us having the same financial condition and experiences, there are likely very few people exactly like me financially.

Finally there's a lot of hand wringing that I'm not hanging out with people who have nothing in common with me other than drinking the same beer or cheering for the same sportsball team. A lot of people grow up and see that as the waste of time that it is. At 18 you can be fooled into thinking a shared enjoyment of "Miller Lite Ice" is a deep personal connection, but many people can't be fooled that way at age 50. Not really a problem.

I also think the importance of having a common lifestyle or a lot of shared interests can be overstated. I don't share that many hobbies with my wife but I enjoy talking to her and spending time with her regardless. I enjoy meeting up with old friends from school even when they're at totally different career stages than I am. You don't have to do the most expensive thing you can afford every night.

I am able to make new friends, but they end up being more like acquaintances most of the time. Currently I am in grad school, and that's working out well for me. There's something about the shared camaraderie and shared suffering from the workload that builds real friendships.

Like you said, grad school has been useful because you're all going through the same situation and spending repeated time with each other.

For me, it was picking a handful of Meetup.com groups that interested me and going to meetups over and over and over again, until I became one of the regulars that knew pretty much everyone and they knew me. And then we started inviting each other to private events, and friendships grew from there.

What other struggles are there that we can take on to facilitate bonding?

It occurs to me that raising children is a struggle and can help someone bond with their spouse. That doesn't help single people (like me) though. Work can be a struggle, but not always a positive one, and switching jobs can end it. I imagine firefighters and EMT workers face a deeper struggle than corporate jobs and form deeper friendships.

> Currently I am in grad school

A post about being in grad school at 42 would be something I'd read.

My recommendation to people is to find a meetup (doesn’t have to be from Meetup, could be a sports league, religious group, volunteering...) that meets frequently so that you have a chance to slowly get to know the same group of people over a course of time. I find meeting up once per month is a little too infrequent for growing bonds and prefer weekly/biweekly meetups but sometimes you end up meeting someone who you gel with and it’s easy to meetup many times over beyond the meetup interval.

www.nytimes.com.

Advise: If you are an adult who is struggling to find friendship and find yourself pushing away opportunities bc of (percieved) unequal interest: Resist your ego's crusade of misery.

If you've ever flaked on someone for a reason other than: you secretly hate them, or malicous disrespect... try calling an 11th time, maybe even a 15th(...apply discression here, and of course not in a row).

Relationships are not a zero sum game, don't wait for hubris to rationalize loneliness.

Edit: also, meetup.com

The reason it bothers me is because these men end up overrelying on their girlfriend or wife for both emotional support and to manage their social life. Without the woman doing it for them, they get angry, misanthropic, and antisocial due to not having an outlet - and they don't see it as a problem at all. But their families get to watch them become more unpleasant and withdrawn as time goes by.

This is something I find really hard to talk about with the men I see doing it, especially when it's my own partner. Obviously it's not all men. But my dad DEFINITELY does it, and the result is that he's gone from being a fairly open-minded, liberal, and environmental kind of person to someone who can't seem to talk about anything other than guns, American politics (we're not even American), and the "idiotic" policies of our local politicians. He recites stuff he's heard on TV as if it's gospel truth. It seems impossible to have normal, non-political conversations with him anymore, he just doesn't have any knowledge or interest that doesn't come from TV.

He's my dad and I love him, but needless to say, when I see my partners going down the same path, it freaks me out. Sorry, I know that's a lot to extrapolate from your very short comment, but maybe it's just something to think about.

Perhaps it should.

I'm an immigrant too, although no language issues, so I have lots of friends in my home country and not many here, a lot of those were expats or work connected and the rest are via my wife and her work - she didn't grow up around here either but is American.

I'd hate to go down that road you talked about and I've seen people do so. We've not been able to have kids either so don't have that path of getting out of our bubble.

Food for thought indeed.

I've suggested a few times (gently) that she take her work mates up on their offer of going for a meal (I gather one of the women at work is in a similar boat), I'm introverted by nature so I only socialize in settings where there is a distraction (tech and chess as mentioned) but it's enough social life for me.

I don't really need anyone to bare my soul too, I've always handled that stuff myself.

This is one of my fastest upvoted comments ever. I think it struck a chord. There's no way of knowing whether it was men or women upvoting, but I have a feeling I'm not the only who has had these thoughts.

Or is it that they seek a stable relationship because their social life was already starting to dwindle? And they fall back to letting their partner manage their social life because they simply wouldn't have one at all without that help.

I see it a lot in people I know. They didn't care one bit about having a stable relationship. That is until their friends started becoming busier in life, maybe some moved away for other commitments, and they started to feel lonelier and wanted someone who was going to be there for them.

All this becomes a vicious cycle as each time someone feels the group of friends is no longer able to satisfy their needs and they seek a partner, the group is fragmented even further, making it even more difficult to provide what the group needs. Eventually you reach the point where there isn't a group anymore.

While I don't know if I speak for many men, in my experience the best male friendships are comprised of multiple people. If you don't have that group, it is difficult to have the best kind of male friendship. That is not to say one-on-one friendships are bad or impossible, but it's just not quite the same.

I'm young and already excuse myself by saying that I don't mind having just one or two close friends. But this is how it starts: we tend to think we can handle being mostly friendless, and yet, as we age, it seems that many of us can't.

Not sure what the solution is, but you've definitely underscored a big problem that I've (till now) underestimated. And I'm sure others have too.

I also think that women tend to get more emotional support from their relationships. Men don't really get this (at least explicitly) from their friends. They do get it from their intimate partners. For a lot of men, their partner is the only person they ever 'open up to'.

In general, I think there are strong cultural (and possibly even biological) reasons for the different approach to and amount of emphasis men and women put on socialising. In some circumstances, being a bit of a social recluse can be advantageous (e.g. extreme dedication to particular pursuits such as a career), but in total I think that men as a group suffer for this tendency. They are much more likely to end up alone and lonely in later life (discounting the fact that women live longer). I think this probably plays a large part in the high suicide rates amongst older men.

I think that something that could be done to address this issue - and something that would benefit both men and women in a variety of ways - would be to focus on removing cultural and financial barriers that keep men away from their families and in the workplace. For example, we shouldn't talk about maternity or paternity leave, but instead parental leave. The financial security of families should not be seen as a man's responsibility, but a shared responsibility (this goes back to the seemingly intractable issue of the relationship between financial status and attractiveness of men). These are really ingrained cultural attitudes but we can chip away at them.

Focussing on some of these sorts of issues would be good for men's mental health and a much more productive means of levelling the earnings gap between men and women than focussing almost exclusively on sexist discrimination in the workplace - a red herring in many (but certainly not all) cases. As most people are aware, a significant part of the earnings gap is down to the responsibilities women take on outside of the workplace, such as caring for children and elderly relatives or supporting the local school. We should be looking at what it is that is holding men back from participating more fully in their community. I think by not doing this, many men are missing out on one of the fundamental aspects of being human.

Sounds like me!

I don't want more than a couple of good friends. Anything more than that isn't friends, it's acquaintances with delusions of grandeur. That ends up leaving most of the pushing for socialization on my wife's plate, because ... I don't.

That said, I find that women maintaining the social relationships is a bit more stereotype than truth. I know more than a few women that are also pretty shit at it, and they're doubly embarrassed because they don't feel like they're fulfilling their gender role.

- HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1854

In fact most of my male friends also don't get too deep in discussing their feelings. So it might not just be a lack of friendship, but a deeper problem which is men having a hard time discussing their emotions with others.

That doesn't mean I'm going to get sucked into to some kind of tribe like a political party or a religion. Or maybe it's just as accurate to say I already got sucked into a scientific outlook and scepticism at a young age and now find it impossible to escape.

For a while I would make friends with people in their early 20s, as that was the age group that would be randomly free after my kids were in bed. I'm approaching 40 now though and am not sure how socially acceptable this still is...

I haven't made new 'friends' because I just don't want more of a social life. I am a pretty strong introvert; I am loud and friendly and boisterous, but spending time with people tires me out.

During the week, I get up at 6am, spend time with my daughter while I get her ready for daycare. Then, I go to work, where I am talking and laughing and having fun with coworkers all day while I work. Then, I come home, picking up my daughter on the way home. We go for a walk, she tells me all sorts of stuff, and then I make dinner while my wife watches her. We eat, get our daughter to bed, and by then it is around 8pm or so. At this point I am tired, and just want to relax, maybe read or watch TV a bit, chat with my wife, and go to sleep. There is no way I would have the energy or time to socialize on weeknights; I am all socialed out from work. The few times we do have plans during the week, I dread it because I know how tired and unsocial I am going to feel.

On the weekends, I am spending time with my daughter and wife. In the morning, I will make us breakfast and we will either play outside or go for a hike. We then take her home for a nap, and we do chores around the house. I always feel like there is not enough time on the weekend to get everything done.

I have a few close friends who live far away; we all play video games together once a week. I chat with my family, and between my nieces and nephews on both sides, there are a lot of video chats to have.

How is this a bad thing? Why do I NEED more friends than what I have? I am not sure what more 'emotional support' I need; I am a super happy person, always optimistic, and my wife is there for me when I need her (which isn't super often). I also can talk to my parents and sister if I needed more emotional support, or my two close friends if they weren't around.

I don't think your dad's issue is lack of relationships, he just sounds like he is an angry person. Is he retired? Being retired is a WHOLE different dynamic.

In fact, the biggest thing I feel I am lacking is ALONE time to work on hobbies. Before I got married and had a kid, I had all sorts of fun hobbies I did; I built airplanes and helicopters, I built robots, programmed games for fun. I like building and designing stuff, alone in my workshop, but I don't have enough time now to do it very often. This is a fine sacrifice to make, because I love my family and want to spend time with them, but it isn't like I am sitting somewhere lonely.

I am curious, however, if there is something you think I am missing by not having more friends. I certainly can't see it, because the idea of having more friends that I have to visit and see just makes me feel tired even thinking about it.

I can't say what you need, I don't know you. Maybe you could ask your wife if she thinks you need more friends? If she says something like "eh? Why?" then you're probably fine. But if you get a long pause and then, "Well, it wouldn't hurt..." then maybe you should ask her more questions.

But people without children really have no excuse.

edit: to make things even worse if i go somewhere by myself with child, all i see are groups/cults of mothers discussing parenting stuff, it's very rare to see men, they are too busy working and it's very unlikely to make non romantic female friend

Travel is certainly more difficult than it used to be, but I've found that the types of trips I used to turn my nose up at (all-inclusive resort-ish) are appealing in a completely new way. We can put the toddler down to bed, set up a baby monitor, and go down and enjoy ourselves like we're actually adults, often meeting new folks.

I don't doubt the gender asymmetry that you imply; do you care to speculate about why it exists among middle-aged people?

I also think social isolation around gay people makes friendship among gay people special. I don't know much about Western countries like U.S., but here in Tokyo, most of the gay are still in the closet. They have to pretend to be straight outside gay communities. It is really stressful. They cannot talk much about their lovers or their gay friends. A lot of gay people around me say drinking with straight people is just boring because of those reasons. That drives us to make gay friends.

It is quite anecdotal, but I didn't have single friends a year ago, and now I've got 4, 5 close gay friends since I started using a dating app. I am actually very satisfied with my current life.

I changed a lot as a person after 30 - I moved to the bay area for one thing. I also transitioned... which let me meet other women in more feminine contexts (IE, fans of a clothing brand).

I also met a lot of people who became friends through dating.

Almost all of my friends that I see regularly I met in the last 5 years or so.

If you put no effort into it of course nobody is just going to randomly insert themselves into your life. And as you get older you don't have those common experiences of intermingling with lots of other people of similar ages or demographic backgrounds due to school, growing up, and so on. So put a little effort into it.

!/s

/g

A theory of mine is that big families were once a thing because it was a way to have built in friends well after 30. When you have 5 adult kids and many grand kids I imagine you never feel like you don't have a lot of friends as the large family serves as a proxy for that kind of companionship.

That being said I wonder how social media will impact this. The majority of my ex friends still follow me, and I talk to many of them multiple times a week via group text.

Maybe I'm really strange here, but do guys even have lady friends who are not their relatives, who are not their co-workers, and who they are not trying to date?

Edit: Downvotes? Is there something controversial about being friends with women to just have enjoyable conversation and platonic interaction without some sort of ulterior motive?

People get families. They have time for other people after the kids are done. Depending on the time they got the kids this can take till they are mid 40.

People met a whole bunch of people till they got 30 and decided that they only need the 2-5 best who are left in the end.

People have a career that eats most of their time and they want to invest the rest of this time into their relationship and not general friendships.

In general I have the feeling many people are more focused after 30. Mostly on romantic relationships.

Most new people I added to my "friends" in the last 3 years were love interests. Since I'm polyamorous, this isn't much of an issue for me, but I can imagine this to be an issue for monogamous people. They get a partner and that's it. The people they meet after 30 who are willing to share much of their time are singles searching for a partner, so if you already got one, you're not of interest.

I don't like spending too much time around tech people, since I do that for 8 hours a day, so tech meetups are out of the question. I went to the hiking club, but the average age is like 50. Nightclubs just aren't the place to find friends.

Generally, after school or university, people's circle of friends is fairly set.

The problem is that after university, we have a lot less free time, and there's a lot less opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and walks of life. Clubs are meetups are great for meeting people with similar interests, but not so great for broadening your horizons. A lot of the things I'm interested in now I never would've done if it wasn't for meeting random people at university.

I guess immigrants have it bit harder because you come from a different culture/language/race so connecting with natives is a bit hard and then you end up connecting with other immigrants.

I've had the problem at a few different times in my life that, whenever I actually suggested to guy friends that we hang out, they interpreted it as a pass and thought I was gay. I'm not making this up at all. I think part of the problem is not just the way that priorities change as we get older but the fact that the US seems to have an extremely closed-off and anxiety-ridden culture to begin with. Maybe, in a sense, people here have too much personal space and just aren't good at being around each other?

In almost all parts of the world, there's nothing wrong with grown men hanging out or grabbing drinks to share trial and tribulations of life.

Which means that you need to meet potential friends through and with a group which makes it a lot more difficult.

Coming from a mediterranean country, many of the points that other comments raise as problems for meeting people past 30 are not so pronounce.

Is not that it isn't harder to meet people and make strong bonds, but its common for men in their 40s and 50s to play Football, hang out with their colleagues for a drink after work, meeting friends of friends, etc.

Generally speaking I feel like social ties are much stronger there, so it may be worth to take a look at how people behave in other places when addressing these topics.

What are we worried about? The public nature of discussions? Worry about putting yourself out there and getting digitally recorded for ever? Why aren't we able to have a tinder for friends as a successful service? Yeah I can build yet another one but I am trying to see where my employer and other competitors are failing. Is there a giant gap of being able to discover like minded people / enable rich experiences that these aren't filling?

FWIW from my side, I have had pretty deep / enriching discussions here / on reddit / stackoverflow etc. which have always been good enough. So I am probably not the right sample set to answer these :\

  * Sports: lifting, yoga, martial arts, rock climbing, hiking.
  * Adult classes: dancing, cooking, painting.
  * Hobbies: guns, diving, photography, fishing, boating.
  * Lifestyle: all kinds of travel, alcohol and other substances.
  * Professional: startups... eh... scratch that.
  * Charity: pet shelters, soup kitchens, organizing.
  * Politics: volunteering, door-to-door.

yeah, this is me. how do you meet the people who just want to sit around, drink a few beers, chat a little, and maybe watch a movie?

I'm just speculating that abundance, city life plus the internet has taken a toll on social skills in recent times.

And another point, as someone has said somewhere else in here, "friendship" could have just been perpetuated by sitcoms. Probably what is more important is just a community where you see the same faces more often and friendship would generally just be a natural byproduct of that given enough time.

This doesn't really bother me. I think relationships are probably more ephemeral than the zeitgeist would have you believe.

That's not a bad thing, or a good thing. Just an observation based on anecdotal experience.

For people who aren't, this confirms their lack of social life as 'a problem'. This isn't helpful to them on so many levels.

You make friends and grow your social circle by having a common interest with people. This could be knitting, cars, pacman...it doesn't matter, it's just a common bond and a language you speak. Meeting in real life is essential though. Online acquaintances aren't 'friends'....

Throughout life I had a strong core group of friends. Moved to the city to get a proper job, and grew my social circle. Between my late 20s and today, I've seen my friends move away for various reasons (growing family, can't afford the city, relationships, etc.), and myself having my days taken over by having a baby boy -- which I enjoy every last bit.

It's been an adjustment. Getting used to the idea of having to sit at home most nights because your partner is out (and thus, you need to watch the baby), or simply being too exhausted from work/parenting/life to get back out of the house after you've put the little one down.

Having my own child, combined with my friends growing in various ways as seen my social circle crumble. All in a mere two years. It's actually been a bit shell-shocking!

There's light at the end of the tunnel. I've grown adjusted to my "new normal", and am finding new ways to create new relationships, or re-connect with the old ones. I'm setting up board game nights with the dads I've met in the area, getting out a bit more now that the little one is a bit saner to manage (although we're thinking of a second .. !), and keeping in touch with old friends through online games and scheduling time to see them every few months.

I would implore anyone in a similar situation to not fall into the trap of thinking it's OK to be without friends. Short term, that seems reasonable ("I'm too busy with my kids and work .."), but long term, I can see that having serious effects on your personal life, and family.

And I'm really not that good at being social. I'm rather introverted, really, but having a shared activity makes getting together a lot easier. If I click with someone friend wise I can always suggest we get lunch sometime.

Every time I end up in a stable live-in relationship (and I've seen this happen to a lot of my friends as well), the idea of going out and seeing/making friends more than once a week feels more and more unnecessary over time. It's so much easier to cook dinner and watch Netflix rather than get dressed and be on the prowl (both for romantic relationships and interesting people to hang out with).

I also really wish I could meet older people (I’m in my mid twenties and think 40 to 60) but I don’t know how to proceed. I do from time to time with my in laws friends but how to find people that age genuinely on my own ...

The traditional networks around things like churches, rotary, clubs, chambers of commerce, masonry, hunt camps, golf, sailing, and political parties still exist and are open to members. They do require a level of sincerity and self acceptance that is perhaps outside the comfort zones of many younger people, but arguably so do friendships.

Friendships for men in particular are fraught in the best of circumstances, but it's an extra challenge to live in a city and become someone other men respect enough to keep around over the long term.

I have a family, a heavy cycling habit and a demanding job: I don't really have time to make and maintain serious friendships outside these activities. What friendships I have right now are from my single days - they hangout with us during various vacations/dinners etc. But new friendships are pretty much impossible because of a lack of time. If these old friends move away etc., then it is pretty much going to be hermit style after that :)

The puzzle is instantly solvable if you ask why can't I be a good friend to others. Lets see, at age 19 I was juggling part time school, Army Reserves service, a grunt manual labor job, and an internship fake job, I was kinda busy. At age 22 I was working a semi-challenging full time programming job while still going to school just under the full time tuition credit limit to finally get my CS degree, so MTWR all night lectures and saturday morning class lectures until noon, so if someone said "hey lets have some beers" I'd be like LOL no. Starting around age 31 I was busy for a couple years with my father's obscure diagnosis terminal liver cancer which appeared out of the blue for no reason and couldn't be correctly diagnosed for months, which means not just the illness but helping mom move to apartment and sell the old house after fixing it up a bit, honestly I don't think I had a minute off from age 31 to about 33 or so when things started settling down. From age 29 until, well, frankly now, I have been busy raising two kids, and "daddy please come to my soccer game" trumps "hey lets have some beers" every time. And I spent most of age 30 talking to gastroENT doctors and dietitians and pediatricians about what ended up being Celliac disease for my older son, which ironically is very relaxing once you emerge from the medical industrial complex with a diagnosis, but until then its endless hell. At age 44 my MiL is slowing down and its time to move her from her house full of stuff requiring some repairs and cleanup to an apartment or "assisted living" or whatever, so I'm guessing this will consume about a year or two of my life. Around age 26 I got married, must have done it right still married to her, but doing a standard big spending American style marriage meant we consumed pretty much a year of our spare time, and I was merely the groom (tux fitting is like 15 minutes one time for guys whereas custom handmade wedding gown fitting is like five two hour trips to the gown maker for a dress she only wore a couple hours on the big day, for example)!

So yeah I have no idea why some dude can't find friends, but I could write for pages why I would be a terrible friend to someone who needed time. Lets face it, some rando from a hobby or work is pretty low on the totem pole which is crammed with family members.

And in the time it took you to write those pages you could have instead started the basis of a friendship with someone. Yes, you are terribly busy, but I guarantee you that there are people who are much busier than you who still maintain friendships.

It sounds like you have already given up on making friends, but I hope that's not the case. It really is worth it, but it means making an effort, and maybe a slight shift in priorities.

I think you also overestimate how much time friends require. I average maybe an hour a week and that is more than enough to maintain multiple friendships.

I'm not really sure how to proceed, as every time I expend a bunch of effort and push myself out of the acquaintance stage, that person leaves town for work and I am stuck right back where I was. It's a large enough problem as to where I've considered moving to places less advantageous career wise just because they are less transient.

Personally I think that the world `friend` have been de-valued to the point used interchangeably with acquaintance. Also the modern social `self help` book's that mostly recommend venting people from ones life that are too needy or selfish and to surround yourself with only positive people who only want you to succeed have accumulated in a situation where people to people contact is very limtted and when it is its normally criticized and scrutinized for its merit.

The other end of the stick that I do like waggling is why do you think you need a friend? Are you soo focused on `friend` that you're not looking after yourself first? Maybe you're focused on friend because it takes the spotlight off yourself as the arbiter of your own life? Hell you may have not been successful because you didn't have a friend!

Focus on yourself, put boundaries around your life. Get a good night sleep, and focus on being better than you used to be yesterday. Expand your social/business circles and Friends will follow in a healthy productive way.

And if I didn’t have family, and was just some orphan in the world, who knows what I might do. Probably turn to a life of white collar crime at some point.

But I also suspect a strong socioeconomic factor as well. When you are no longer in university and in the work force or even a family of your own it changes priorities a lot.

One thing I like about improv is that I am forced to interact with others, something I was not good at. Now I am better. Not great, but definitely better.

Plug: In Los Angeles, I recommend the Westside Comedy Theater (westsidecomedy.com) just off the Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade. Very welcoming to all.

I'm nearing 30, and I'd say over 90% of my friends have significant others. Long-term relationships significantly changes a person's behavior; the concept of friendship gradually shifts towards "How can I include my SO in this?" If we go to the movies, it's gotta be a film that he/she is going to like, and they don't like scary movies so that's out of the question now. Maybe your existing friends you've still got around will tolerate this, but new friends aren't going to do everything that your SO wants to do. With my guy friends especially, everything now revolves around what their SO wants to do even when their SO actually permits us to go off and do guy things. I think this happens to most people, though, and I would be no exception if I was in a relationship. As the article states, good luck if you are trying to make friends with another couple. Chances are at least one person in that party isn't really interested in the friendship.

Putting aside that constraint, however, I haven't had that much difficulty making friends at my age. I think a lot of people figure out that most people aren't worth their time, thus friends really don't provide all that much. As long as you've got a couple good friends who have your back even if you haven't talked in months, you're golden. If you're in a relationship with someone, the even less you need the company of others.

People also get dull by the time they're in their 30s. They spent so much time working and relationshipping that they lost a lot of imagination and didn't really expand their horizons as much as their Instagrams would suggest. I'm not saying this is a permanent state, but a doldrum that happens after a person has spent so much time ticking off the boxes of things they're supposed to accomplish. That's what tunnelvision can do to a person. It's definitely possible to get out of it, which is probably why my few real friends are either in their early-to-mid 20s or past 40.

This is very true. I had a longterm, and at the time I thought "rest of life", relationship break down in my early thirties and looking back it has been a change for the very best. I 100% agree about the "wall" at the year 30 mark (she was also around that age and I can't help but think she had a crisis of thought about "is this 'it'?"). I was very much feeling that and it was creating a combined sense of excitement and sheer terror. Throughout all of this was a handful of my own friends, of which I see one regularly and the rest sporadically (from months to years even) - but I never once felt "lacking" in friendship.

The couple that manages this best is one where Sun--Wed is single friends time and Thurs--Sat is couples friends time. Probably not for everyone but this seems to work remarkably well for them.

Kids would probably change things though.

Does anyone else feel this way? I hope I’m not just projecting.

I always suspected being house poor has to do something with it. One time I overheard a neighbor who was complaining on the phone about how debt ridden she was. I guess when you are barely scraping you don't have any emotional space to acknowledge people.

I suspect it's worse for senior citizens as well...

So it doesn't seem like it's the shackled-together aspect that causes the unfriendliness. On the contrary, a model which fits better is that people are inherently antisocial and unfriendly, and find that with rented accommodation they can get away with it.

Contrast with today: Until a recent move to the suburbs, I have had very little in common with my any of my neighbors except for the fact that we are all seemingly perpetually transient. I still don’t have much in common with my current neighbors but living here for a whopping 3 years straight has given me the chance to reach out and get to know them.

Yes, that's my concern too.

I think you’re right. The homeowners are probably aware that they’re locked into their neighbors for a very long time so building relationships makes more sense than the more transient renters.

Y'all are scaring me.

Anyway the article names various and sundry complicated and small manifestations of this phenomenon, but what's the big picture? Maybe making friends past a certain age is hard because it's unnatural and somewhat irrelevant? Maybe making friends is just another naturally- and reproductively-selected trait that helps with mating and is much less relevant otherwise. Meaning that wanting friends, results in having more friends, which means more hunting/foraging helpers and teachers of same, which makes you more likely to survive long enough to mate, and more likely to find a mate (since all your friends will have siblings etc., and the ones from outside your tribe are particularly valuable statistically/genetically speaking) and successfully pass that friendly tendency on to the next generation.

Or heck maybe wanting friends is an indirect and sublimated sexual urge in and of itself. It's not like homosexuality comes outta nowhere. And/or maybe being with one person is psychologically a surrogate or substitute for (or practice for later) being with your mate, just like owning a dog is to having children.

Anyway, once all the mating stuff is over with, maybe you're immune to it all. I don't have much to go on here, other than 1) my tendency to look to evolution and the Ape for explanations of human behavior, and 2) the fact that I noticed I lost interest in friends as soon as I found a mate I was happy with. And interestingly, being with the previous one, whom I wasn't happy with, didn't put a damper on my social tendencies at all. (But I was younger then too, so there's at least one confounding variable.)

Regardless, I suddenly notice there are large swathes of life that seem to be there only to trick you into mating. (That is, the ones that aren't there to trick you into giving someone money.)

(Some people use the one to accomplish the other.)

(And vice versa.)

But then you reach a point where you're immune to all that, and it's a relief. You can finally get on with it, whatever the "it" is in your life. We flatter ourselves that life is complicated, important and purposeful, but actually it's pretty simple and probably random. Life just wants us to mate & raise kids, and then after that, it could give a shit what we do. (As long as we keep out of the way of other people mating & raising kids, of course.) That semen/those eggs are just your genes heading for the lifeboats of a sinking ship. But that also means once you're freed from "life's plan for you," you can stop giving a shit right back, and finally do whatever you want!

I never had a lot of friends in high school. I was a nerd when and where being a nerd was bad. I never really got the dynamic that mirrororing helps a lot with this and that I contributed to this by unwittingly coming across as aloof. What friends I had weren't... great. Frankly, after high school I never saw them again and honestly don't feel like I was missing much.

What compounds this is I have severe myopia. Always have, always will. It's not the kind of thing that surgery can fix. This meant, say, playing team sports just wasn't possible. It's also a limiting factor in so many things. Not being able to drive a massive handicap. It impacts the ability to even watch sports so that's not something I ever developed an interest in.

I also have anxiety issues. Not major. Not "I can't leave the house" type issues but... issues. In high school I never had to try so it wasn't an issue. In college I did, although I didn't realize it at the time. But it kept me from going to classes in part because I just didn't want to have to deal with not being able to see/read the board from that distance.

So I was pretty much a no-show and ended up dropping out. This also meant that I just didn't make a circle of friends in college like so many seem to.

There's been some interesting research done on people who appear trustworthy. This is a hard thing to measure but it seems to hold almost universally true. I think the study was about people who appear "untrustworthy" were more likely to be given the death sentence out of a pool of people who were all later exonerated with DNA evidence.

I feel like I'm one of those people that people just react negatively to. Even if they don't I don't think it matters because I pretty much believe it to be true. Combine that with some low-grade anxiety and you get a bad mix of trust issues and keeping one's distance from people.

I only ever really had one serious relationship and it didn't work out in a fairly gut-wrenching way that's stayed with me for years, in part from the self-flagellation for the choices I made that contributed to that ending.

So here I am, years later in my 40s. I have acquaintances but not much in the way of true friends. Honestly I can't even remember the last time I had a deep conversation with somebody. I'm reminded of Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty when asked "how are you?" and he replied that it'd been a long time since anyone had asked. That's how I feel.

How people form relationships mystifies me so unlike some whose friends fall away but they still have their families, I don't even have that.

So here I am still wondering, how do people make friends?

Which is ridiculosis - but you cant change what people think when they see you for the first time.

Don't get me wrong, being 20 is awesome. When you're 20. Because you suddenly have so much freedom. But when you're in your 40s, that's not that exciting any more. Well, at least it isn't for me. I've done the crazy things, I know how they end. I like friends with a bit more perspective.

Contrast that with my interactions with people my own age and younger: Topics inevitably fall to vapid TV shows and sports, celebrity gossip, This Gadget I Bought, where I partied last week, my office co-workers suck, etc. Wake me up when it’s over!

He would just yack, and yack. Some times I would put the phone down, and come back in 5 minutes, and he would still be talking. He was eccentric, had a horrid childhood, but genuinely nice.

I thought he was nuts, but nice.

We ended up becoming best friends. They used to call us the odd couple.

I ended up trusted him more than family. We just included each other in everthing without even thinking. My girlfriends were put off by him at first, but he would wear them down talking, and before I knew it, he was calling them daily. And when he missed a day, they would ask me if he is ok. He never crossed the line either.

He died a few years ago, but his friendship technique was something I thought was brilliant. Just wear the person down.

I can pass this along, I once heard a therapist say something like, make friends with people your own age, or younger. Her rationale was they will die before you.

When I was in my tewenties, I just didn't have much in common with my peers. I wasen't more mature, but didn't like my generation that much. My friends were just older. I really loved all of them.

If I had a do-over, I might have really tried to make friends with people my own age. I'm all alone now. It does suck.

Anyways, my eccentric friend knew how to make friends. I haven't tried his technique, but might?

It is really hard to make friends even when you are young. Living in shared apartment, playing sport you love, going for dance classes, etc. These activities definitely helps. It took me 1 year to finally crack the code.