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Comment by tosstothemoon | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty interesting find, and makes sense.

As someone that struggles greatly with loneliness -- what kinds of systems have people found to address it as an adult? (Presumably there's an interest on this site, since this article is here.)

I've for years found it to be an utterly crippling problem that I just can't really get on top of. I scrape by by having acquaintances at work, and trying to stay in touch with remote friends (which works quite badly). But I haven't been able to find a good balance with it for many years.

Sometimes I think maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem, but it seems to be an unnatural state for a person to feel alone.

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I've had unmet social needs for years. One thing to acknowledge is when you move cities/countries, it takes years to build a network. My criteria is: You need to change jobs at least once in the same city (or student->job) before you feel like home, because you need to keep 2 groups of acquaintances. So if you've ever moved: It's not because of you, it's the integration process. I'm making my life choices accordingly: I refuse jobs which require me to travel/move, even though I'm single. Mental health is at this price.

I keep organizing parties at my place 3 times a year, for stupid reasons (Hey guys I'm a CEO now! It's like I'm king of the world, let's make a party for my sacre and all dress like Napoleon) (half-birthdays when you're >32.5 years old are another legit reason for a party). Because I have hard times making friends, the people I invite are very random: Two gay guys I've dated, a gym friend, a judo friend, a workmate, a guy from church, three girlfriends of a former flatmate... It's sometimes awkward but they have in common that they're rational people with an understanding for empathy. Yesterday was my 6th party and this little group got acquainted with each other, so they do enjoy coming. And two of them have dated, which means I upgraded to being a platform ;)

But it's a slow process. I still feel like shit depending on the season. I find it hard to manage my levels of hate (hate against the people who abandonned me, hate against the current system which privileges others, hate against smokers who are responsible for my asthma, etc), and hate is a separate thing which makes you actively wreck social bonds, in addition to depression itself, if you have any. A psy may be important.

Ah and do some sports-camp holidays, many times a year. UCPA in France is awesome for that, until 39 years old.

Join a sports league / hiking group, etc. My wife and I are both fairly anti-social by nature, and work in fairly anti-social fields, but we have lots of good friends from frisbee, skiing and climbing. For whatever reason it's easier to form friendships in an athletic / outdoor context.

i made over 50 acquaintances by going to all meetups in my city ( except: women-specific ones ) but I had hard time making a even a single "friend". As I've grown older I am not even sure what a friend means anymore. I have a theory that once you hit 30 you brain turns off friend definition and turns on family/kids definitions. I just can't stand extended exposure to people anymore; Iam mentally waiting for the event to be over so i can go back home and chill.

As I mentioned, there's something about athletics specifically. I don't think I've ever made a close friend at a meetup type event, but I have many lifelong friends from sports.

I play volleyball, touch rugby, underwater hockey, yoga. Now that its summer I've done paddleboard yoga, beach volleyball, biking ect all through meetup.com.

curious, how do you find your sports leagues?

It's definitely harder to make friends when you're older outside of work acquaintances (at least I've found it true, YMMV). I'm an introvert, friendly but in no wise would I be called outgoing, and I'm not much of a joiner. These traits are not conducive to making lots of friends. Finding friends is important, but so is connecting with peers. What I really find depressing is the lack of intellectually stimulating conversation at work.

While I'm now in a local job, the department I'm attached to is in a satellite building far enough off campus to make it impossible to just meet up with my peers. My co-workers are nice, but they're not really colleagues or peers in terms of my professional development. I'm a technical person in a functional/business analyst role where I support a group of non-technical users. I almost never have the opportunity to discuss implementation details with the developers and I rarely meet with other analysts face-to-face. Online interactions will have to scratch that itch, for now at least. Though I do fear with the spread of the 'gig' economy, the ease of outsourcing, and increasing availability of remote work, this loneliness is only going to be a growing problem.

I'm in my mid-30's, and four years ago I started going to as many meetups that seemed remotely interesting to me in a bunch of different groups, met a ton of acquaintances, and eventually quite a few friendships (that are hard to maintain for me, but I do make an effort).

I'm fairly introverted but I think the secret to why going to a bunch of meetups worked for me is I just kept showing up and did some small talk that people eventually got to know me and became friendlier and started inviting me to things due to familiarity.

In fact my closest friends right now I made by taken a chance at a random invite to a weekly game night by someone I met once at a meetup, and just kept showing up to his weekly events, and over time I became friends with everyone there.

Volunteering is a good option for me.

Shared struggle/suffering is a known catalyst for friendship. You could look at public works type volunteering, such as volunteer trail crews, if that kind of thing interests you.

Working hard together to build or care for something is a way to bond, and gets you physically active too which is good for happiness & mood.

Use meetup.com and make an effort to go out and talk to people. If you're going out and meeting new people the main thing is to keep asking them questions and keep them talking about themselves. Then gradually find out which people you like and like you. Just to re-iterate, make sure you make a real effort, it doesn't just happen easily or naturally for a lot of people.

The article doesn't seem to mention that while online meeting isn't as good the internet can make meeting people who want to meet people much easier.

If you live in a modern city and have moved you often don't have the friendship and family groups that people used to have by default. Prior to the internet this was a lot harder. With the internet you can find people who are going to a bar, going dancing, going climbing, playing board games, going to listen to speakers or whatever much more easily.

> what kinds of systems have people found to address it as an adult?

Most people find a "permanent friend" aka significant other aka spouse. I realize this is hard for some people, but that is what the majority of humans do.

Also, if you have some kids nobody will ever leave you alone again.

I've actually done this, and while it's a great thing, it's not really enough in itself. (Mostly because we have greatly different work schedules and are only really together on the weekends, or are asleep.)

There was just an article recently (on HN?) about people being lonely in SO relationships because their common interests didn't align. I can't find the article but googling "married and lonely" brings up lots of articles.

Well, as a person who moved to a new state and worked remotely for three years, I can attest that email, texts, and voice chat are no substitute for in-person visits. Just getting out among people or the environment can help. If you stay indoors and just work all the time, you'll get even more depressed and go a bit nutty. I know this from personal experience.

I can't comment on video chat, could never get that working at the other site because their machines were locked down to the point of uselessness without special permission from ITS requiring 5 pints of blood and a signature from god. I'd be interested to see whether actual VR could fill a void.

That is why there needs to be a social network where you can just hop on and meet people for dinner, yoga class, or whatever.

I don't mean Meetup.com ... you don't use Meetup to go to dinner.

Won't work. This is what nearly all the "social" networks tried to tap into. And look what they became...

What we need is a more open society where it's okay to speak with- and call people again. We also need the Internet where humans get to know each other without going to some dedicated "social" or "dating" service. In the past I've been on websites where over the years people made real friends - naturally, without trying. People formed groups, met in real life, maintained long-term contact internationally. Problem is, Web 2.0 destroyed most such websites.

I don't disagree with your open society point, but social networks do work for maintaining social groups and setting up meetups. I get together with people for dinners, game nights, movies, and other types of events set up with them all the time, (mostly Meetup.com, Facebook, or group texts).

But they're only tools. They merely facilitate, they don't force it to happen.

So do you have friends that you physically meet at least once a week ?

Do you exercise regularly?

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