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Robotbeat

It’s hard to make friends as an adult. Especially:

1) If you don’t have kids (socializing with other parents).

2) Don’t go to church/synagogue/etc (church attendance in decline)

3) Do not live where you grew up. (People chase opportunities in other cities.)

4) Aren’t in school any more.

Neighbor friends are also possible, but it can take many years for people to become comfortable enough to be friends, and due to #3, there’s often not enough time for that to happen before people move.

Half my friends are from work and half are parents. They’re not super shallow friendships but also not soul-level deep, either. Deep friendships were left behind from college days.

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I've been seeing this sentiment shared recently and what I always suggest is to

1) Look at your hobbies 2) Find people who share those hobbies

Plenty of opportunities exist whether through meetup, BumbleBFF, local postings in cafes/on lamp posts, etc. (this is true of cities, remote destinations may be more difficult but thats the tradeoff of living around less people I suppose)

If you can't find groups for your hobbies, try starting them! Doesn't have to be a permanent leadership role, but if you get the ball rolling others will likely come and BOOM you've found potential friends.

If you don't have hobbies, look into volunteer groups. Rewarding and often extremely kind people who will value what you bring to the table.

Hope this helps!

echoing this, i've met and made most of my current deep friendships via climbing and snowboarding. shared experience and time lead to friends

With covid remote, I finally started exercising more regularly and attending meetings for local hiking groups and a maker group that I had been putting off for ages. And I think my productivity at work increased because of it.

Changed jobs to negotiate a permanent remote situation and am not going back.

I think it’s fine for some people to want to be on office, but think that a lot of work in the tech area should have the option of remote - and frankly would be better remote first with in-office allowances instead of vice versa.

I could see that. These folks should: Join a club, volunteer for a charity, play a sport, add a hobby, visit nature.

I find this perspective interesting. I'm 36, have no kids, don't go to church, don't live anywhere near where I grew up or my biological family, and haven't been in school for a very long time but have no shortage of friends or even deep friendships. I think culture is a huge reason. I live in close-in Portland, Oregon and I think the main thing we all have in common is that we all enjoy going to see live music and DJs together. Urban living and music can have a huge ability to replace everything on that list. In fact, my partner and I will be throwing a vaccinated-only music festival this summer and we have about 100 people invited, the vast majority personal friends and only a handful have kids. However, I think working in tech helps. Most of my old friends who never made the jump from the service industry into tech by going to code school or something like that had to move away because the city got too expensive. In short, music + tech + urban makes finding and keeping friends easy, at least in Portland.

Contemporary architecture doesn't help. In 70's developments houses have front porches, but sometime in the 90's they turned houses around, and now everyone sits on their back deck or their games room in their cardboard palace. You don't encounter people any more when you are walking the dog.

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