i lost all my friends to marriage and family life. I choose to remain single and now i cannot relate to any of my friends.
Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Kind of resigned to my fate and accepted that this is how things are.
Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Kind of resigned to my fate and accepted that this is how things are.
This I can very much relate with, a lot of my formerly good friends I never see anymore because they have literally negative amount of free time, they are already cutting into their health and sleep just trying to raise 2 kids, a dog, a cat, 2 full-time jobs, and unethical amounts of on-call time. I don't think they are all doing "well" either, honestly, but they don't have time for friends, even if I try to get coffee them they usually end up having to bail in 20 minutes.
I remember when these people would go on long hikes with me, build stuff together, play duets, support each other through sickness and other times of trouble, but that is no more.
I'm okay because I've been fortunate enough to be able to find new friends, but yeah, I understand this phenomenon.
Society is just too demanding of people in general. There used to be a time in history where only one parent worked, and in theory now that both parents work they should only theoretically need to each work half time, but that isn't what reality accepts right now, reality wants both to work full time plus some more.
I have a vanishingly small but nonzero number of friends who seem to manage family life very well, including things like alternating each parent taking over 100% of kid responsibilities for a few days at a time which gives the other parent the freedom to basically do whatever they want or need to do including hobbies or social life, but that number is really quite small, and most of them have money to hire help or have close family in the area.
> Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's
It's much easier if you're in the right place. I can definitely say late 30's is no problem at all to make friends if you're in the bay area.
It may be a bit challenging to discover them at first but once you find one or two and make friends with the organizers, you'll start getting vortexed to many more as long as you are friendly and come off as either good-looking, interesting, knowledgeable, or accomplished (not necessarily all of the above, but friendly is non-negotiable).
Peninsula and South Bay also have plenty of social events but they take a bit more effort to find. Look for interest clubs of sorts and start from there.
If you're joining a large company such as Google or Facebook, they normally have plenty of social events, though it's been much less since COVID.
If you're doing a startup, you'll get invited to various investors' parties and things and you can make friends from there.
But in general ... the bay is much more forgiving of age than most places in the country.
I'm guilty of being that guy. I have four kids; two in diapers and one still trying to master the potty. Having "literally negative amount of free time" and "cutting into their health and sleep" is right, and it's good to hear a single person recognize this.
I had an old friend contact me recently because he's getting married and wanted to send me an invitation, but also wanted to catch up. I was interested in catching up, but it was two weeks before I finally found 20 minutes to call him on the phone while at a playground with my kids. Even then, when little kids see you on the phone, they panic because they don't have your attention, so one started tugging on my clothing and screaming "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" Sadly, I usually just tell people to email me, because at least I can write a thoughtful reply when the kids are in bed or randomly absorbed in some activity for a few minutes.
Anyway, before my wife and I had kids, we felt like it was hard to make friends because everyone else had kids. We figured it would be easier with kids. Now I'm not sure. We can hang out with other parents when our kids play together, and we can relate to each other more, but everyone else is just as swamped, so these are just more casual acquaintances. It's also exponentially harder to find a good match between two adults and N kids who need to be similar ages and play well together. My wife still complains of being lonely all the time.
* I wrote this reply over the course of 30+ minutes in 2 minute slices in between responding to my kids' requests for various snacks, art supplies, and changing one diaper.
Still can't imagine having 4 young ones at once. Anymore than two seems unfair to each of them and my SO. There's only so much of my energy/affection/time to go around.
Agree it's hard to have any closer relationships, even with other family because of time constraints. I've tried to stay flexible and be the bridge with neighbor families or friends with kids of differing ages. Peers are great and so are mixed aged friends. A lot to learn and enjoy at least until the "it's not cool to play with babies" culture sets in.
There are definitely pros and cons to having the kids bunched together. Mine are all under the age of 7, and I can still take them all to the playground, or give them a box of sidewalk chalk, and they'll all play happily together. So friends don't have to be the same age, but this doesn't work with a much bigger age gap. I don't know how parents properly balance big kid vs. little kid activities and needs. But with a bigger age gap, the older ones would be somewhat independent and potentially even helpful while you're struggling to care for the younger ones.
I do feel like I'm consistently failing to give my wife and kids the attention they deserve, let alone my old and new friends. So yeah, when someone else wants my time, I usually think that I should probably give that time to my family instead.
This is just not true.
Consider getting a hobby and joining clubs or attending events.
Establishing a friendship is (basically) impossible without:
1. repeated contact
2. a common activity to share
Most people get this through school/university/workplace/partner, but there are plenty of other ways.
Examples:
- Buy a motorcycle. Join a riding club. [0]
- Join a rock climbing gym. Look on Facebook for belay partners.
- Find a maker space near you.
- Learn a musical instrument at a school.
- Play online games. Join a clan.
0: I've never made friends faster than via motorcycles. Literally made friends at traffic lights.
These things do not happen by accident.
Think of it like a marketing funnel. At the top, meeting people at a club. In the middle, hanging out 1:1. Bottom of funnel is doing something that requires commitment and self disclosure.
This sounds like treating people as means to ends; it sounds rather instrumental - I expect you didn't mean it like that.
There are all kinds of things that can give rise to a close relationship; circumstances, including financial circumstances, interests, emotional needs, fears, etc. These kinds of things can't be engineered with a 'filter'.
But yeah, obviously the more people you meet, the greater chance you'll meet someone you get on with.
I desire deeper relationships. I work to deepen relationships. Discovering and befriending people is a means to that end.
> These kinds of things can't be engineered with a 'filter'
My understanding of a marketing funnel is that it is not primarily concerned with filtering people out actively, but in drawing people towards a goal, who will otherwise self-select out of the process through lack of motivation.
Similarly:
I attend meetings of a club, and gain acquaintances.
I will only have acquaintances if I do not engage in the next step of the process: inviting, or accepting an invite from, someone to lunch. And so on.
> give rise
These things do not happen by accident. You do not enter into financial "circumstances" with another person strictly by accident. You do not talk to someone about your interests by accident. You do not get your emotional needs met by someone by accident.
Forming deep relationships is an active process that must be approached with a problem-solving mindset.
If it were not so, we would hardly be discussing the subject.
It does no good to remain passive, fatalistic, or organic-fetishist (anti-instrumentalist) when we're talking about one of the most important needs we have as humans.
Interestingly, the parenthesised "explanation" doesn't explain the meaning of "organic-fetishist"; and I suspect that understanding your final paragraph might throw some light on your earlier remarks. What does it mean?
This sounds to me like the jargon of some cult.
I mean don't assume that something is better because you didn't try to make it happen. And I mean that we really need to work to have deep friendships.
> This sounds to me like the jargon of some cult.
I find that odd.
EDIT: I thought about it a little more, and I guess I can see where throwing around a bunch of negative, made-up words ending in "-ist" sounds culty.
I doubt that. I bet if you pondered, you would remember having taken all sorts of steps to forming relationships in the past. These might not look like what you're imagining, and certainly you'll have to do something differently now.
But see my reply to another comment below, re: friendships don't happen by accident.
And fwiw, I don't know you, but I believe in you. You can have more close friends in the future. You're capable of the work necessary.
The good side is there are loads of women in their thirties desperate to date, have kids, settle down. Esp if you didn't relate well to women when you're younger you have more maturity now and the odds are much better.
Other people should try this as well.
I even tried Bumble BFF, but it just further revealed I have no idea how to make friends.
If you don't enjoy having a dog, join a group of some sort. Dance, crossfit, hacker space, HAM radio, sailing club, community clean up crew, church, baseball...you name it.
I also am never in contact with friends from school, old roomates, etc. who I did everything with at one time.
When my kids were younger, I was part of another group of adults who were parents of kids involved in the same activities. But now that the kids are done with all that, those adults never kept in touch.
It seems normal to me, honestly. I think friendships are matters of happenstance and cooincidence and when circumstances change the friendships are rarely kept up. People who have long-lasting adult friendships will probably realize that those friends are neighbors or have some other external commonality. If those things would change, the friendship would quickly fade.
What I found is that my friends shifted over the years, with most being 15 years younger than me nowadays. Some know how old I am, some don't know. But overtime if they get use to you, the age thing doesn't matter.
If you want friends you should find it in younger people. An easy way to do that is to have suite mates or join a team in your job with younger people.
But it also depends on how you look. If you look obviously older, the first impression will take a bit of time to get over. Kids won't be inviting you to parties until they're more familiar with you, so it will take time.
I believe you're trying to be helpful but parent poster seems to be content as he is and there is nothing wrong with this. Just as you don't have to be married or have kids or like dogs to be a regular human being.
Not impossible, although often hard. It also depends on how much effort are you willing to put into the search and the friendship.
I read what the poster said as him saying that he lost his friends to marriage and family life. I obviously did NOT read the bit where he said he chose to remain single.
I actually interpreted the first part as him saying that he had got married etc.
Mea culpa - apologies again.