Friends are under-clustered. Why? | Hacker News Reader

Friends are under-clustered. Why?

bensouthwood.substack.com

25 pointsjger156 comments

It's not too weird that people move to places where they have opportunities, and individuals will have different opportunities in different places.

After university, I moved to a new city where a bunch of my friends had moved after graduating as well. For a couple of years things were really good, but it was a city with a crazy high housing and rental market and my salary was not really keeping up. I also wasn't having any luck dating and just felt out of place in the city.

I made the hard decision to move away for a cheaper housing market and better salaries, even if it meant leaving my friends behind. It's been five years since then and I have a longterm girlfriend, a house of my own, and double the salary I was making. The only thing missing is my friends, and I haven't made many friends here. Certainly not a consistent group to gather with for board games or whatnot.

I keep in touch with some of my old friends online but mostly don't. I think something this article doesn't mention is that sometimes people are just friends because of proximity, out of convenience. It's the ones who don't live nearby but you still want to visit and spend time with, those are your real friends.

Why isn't it weird? To me it's very weird. Why do we think a slightly better job opportunity will lead us to greater happiness than focusing on our personal relationships?

Friends are like health. You know they're great but you don't realize how great until you're without them. And it's a shockingly easy lesson to find yourself "learning" repeatedly.

I think people know it. They just make a calculated decision to move to the suburb with the best schools (i.e. most expensive they can afford) for the benefit of the kids.

Same with leaving a small town and going to a more expensive city with higher and more income earning opportunities.

The obvious solution seems to be: Become better at making new friends.

Just because you happen to be friends with that person who lives two hours away from you doesn’t mean that they actually are, out of all the people within a two hour radius from you, the person most suited to being friends with you. Instead, most friendships are the result of mere coincidences.

For instance, most friendships result from school, university or work. And while the element of having a shared history might be somewhat important for a friendship, I would venture to guess that the real reason we ended up making friends there was that outside circumstances pretty much forced us to get to know the other person, thereby creating the opportunity for friendship to emerge.

So the real question becomes: Can you make friends with new people when there are no outside circumstances forcing you into contact? Are you able to be your own cause?

The only obvious remedies would seem to be high density urban life and living online. Neither remotely close to a solution but they do help.

For a city to retain some unique flavor might be underrated. If you like Portland you're very likely to love Portland. And if you don't, it's good for you that all those weirdos are clustered away from you.

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