How to make new friends as a grown-up

featuring a fun listicle...

Sharing links to articles about adult friendships or talking about how self-doubt gets in the way of making new pals always results in a tonne of replies and responses. You are not alone in your loneliness. Let’s talk about how to change it xx

1. Build the crone commune you want to see in the world

Does anyone else have a (largely Golden Girls-based) fantasy that our elder years will involve a shared house and loads of cackling? I never know what to do about my (much loved!!) partner in this daydream, but I am smitten with various communal living arrangements I’ve noticed sprouting up.

Much of the appeal of The Crone Commune is that a diverse community of creative, thoughtful, interesting women would then be on my doorstep, and the question of ‘how the hell do you make new friends as a grown-up?’ would be answered.

But given that every time I share this idea, all I hear is, ‘OMG ME TOO!’ I’ve come to the conclusion that commune-worthy pals are always hiding in plain sight, just waiting for an invite.

2. Send the invitation

When I shared on the Gram that I was moving back to Aotearoa-New Zealand, Niki sent a DM: ‘Hey, I’d love to meet for a coffee when you get here; I think we’d get on’. She was so right, and a few dates later, our friendship is bobbing along nicely.

Most of my adult friendships have begun this way.

The DM > IRL meet-ups have a richness to them; you’ve already seen each other’s holiday photo dump, you know they went through that shitty break-up eight months ago, and they’re allergic to tomatoes etc, because you’ve been a witness to their life. The small talk is already done.

Social media is an excellent source of friendships. It’s SO worth sending the invite to take these virtual connections to the next level.

Online relationships cannot replace real, live, in-person connection. There’s just something unique and irreplaceable about being able to smell and touch another person. It’s primal and human and there is never going to be an app for that.

I highly recommend taking a deep breath and mustering the 12 seconds of courage it takes to send the invite.

3. Be willing to take the risk

I didn’t want this post to be about where to find new friends because you probably already know that (or you can consult the Googler).

I’m more interested in the un-Googleable: the very good reasons why we don’t send the invite, why we hold back from letting another person know we are open for new pals, why we long for the company of women but we don’t do anything to create the conditions for this possibility.

It’s almost always connected to the risk of being hurt - judged or rejected outright. Maybe it's worse to be ghosted after the first meet-up?!

I don’t think there is a way around these risks. Sometimes, you just have to be willing to do it (even if it feels horrifying). I find it helpful to remember that the five-baby-rabbits-in-my-belly feeling is also a sign that I’m alive!!

And being utterly free of nervousness, anxiety, or awkwardness sounds a bit ‘Trumpian’ to me.

The most important thing is not to allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole if this doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped. This is no reflection of your worthiness or how loveable you are. It's almost always that you aren’t compatible #nbd

(I learned this during the first 36 seconds of my one date with Tim. On paper, we should have been a total match! I was excited to meet him after a few days of chatting over a dating website (this was long before all the swiping on the apps). But then we met, and it was just… flat. No chemistry. Nada. Honestly, I felt duped. But it was no reflection on him; he was lovely. We just didn’t have that mystical spark of compatibility).

4. Trust the vibes

That same spark of compatibility applies to potential pals, and I think we know if the vibes are off with a new friend.

Sometimes, there is a mismatch between who you want them to be and who they really are, and sometimes, who they are online is not the same in person. Sometimes, there will be a spidey sense that while they are great! they aren’t your people. Sometimes, they are just really into CrossFit.

Sometimes, we need to be open to the possibility that it’s our stuff that’s coming up.

5. Sisterhood wounds are real

I’m always a teeny bit suspicious of women who loved high school because, for most of us, it was a confusing emotional minefield. And this car crash is often where we learn about friendship.

I’ve yet to meet someone without a hurtful, sometimes heart-breaking story of a friendship gone wrong. Usually, these experiences are from times when we didn’t have the language, skill, or perspective to navigate conflict.

These memories stay with us, and our protective self-doubt will try to hold us back from any potential risk of repeating these hurts of judgement, criticism, and rejection.

This is why it makes complete sense to me that you’re just trying to organise the next book club meeting, but the echoes of past hurts are bubbling up with a (seemingly) disproportionate amount of messy vulnerability: What if no one comes?! I knew she didn’t like me. OMG, why did I say that?!

It can be helpful to remember that you are so much more resourced now. You can make requests of people, you can tend to yourself.

6. Let yourself be known

Most of the friends I met in my twenties and thirties are no longer in my life, primarily because, back then, I was pretty chaotic. I was a chronic oversharer (offering too many details to too many strangers in too many pub loos).

I found it easy to meet people, but I didn’t really know, like, or trust myself, and I was always guarding against the risk of being disliked. So I just kept morphing into the person I thought they wanted me to be, which was inevitably quite disappointing for everybody.

With my work being what it is, I’ve learned that letting ourselves be known requires some emotional safety, a degree of curiosity, reciprocity, tenderness, and warmth. And actually, only a very small, quite limited number of people⁠ — can and do, (and maybe should) give us that.

7. Be your own best friend

I’ve been sober for more than a dozen years, and I just can’t with drinkers, so I’m going to back away slowly if that’s how you socialise, so you should totally have fun! It’s just that my sobriety is foundational to how I take care of myself (plus, being home with a tea-book-pooch situation is my idea of a good time), so I am always going to choose me.

It has been a loooong, somewhat labyrinthian process, but I’ve learned to enjoy my own company, to accept my quirks and awkwardness - my gravestone will read: ‘she never knew what to do with her hands’ - and I’m mostly pretty proud of how I take care of myself.

Perhaps most crucially, I don’t abandon myself in order to keep others happy. This has meant getting ok(ish) with disappointing people, so it’s not tidy, but it feels healthy.

Even though it’s a bit of a cheese sandwich cliche, learning how to be your own best friend really is medicine for every other relationship you have.

8. Don’t believe the unhelpful myths and legends about friendships, but also we really do need each other

According to Pew Research, most Americans (53%) have between 1 and 4 close friends. So everyone isn’t hanging out without you. Not everyone has a BFF. Most people don’t have a squad.

You’re thinking of that TV show. Or Taylor Swift.

So many friendships were shaken up during the pandemic. Many surface connections seem to fall away without the usual rhythms and requirements of school and work to keep us tethered to each other’s lives. We’ve emerged from social distancing to an exhausting Global meta-crisis and the dawning realisation that we are much more interconnected than we ever probably knew.

Last year, Cyclone Gabrielle brought the worst floods in a century to Aotearoa. My (aforementioned) new friend Niki lives alone in a tiny beach town an hour outside of the city. They were cut off for days: a sobering reminder of how fragile our infrastructure actually is and how much we need each other. But neighbours pitched in, food was shared, tractors were borrowed, and bonds were forged.

I suspect the climate emergency will create an increasing dependency on each other. So maybe old Kurt was right and we all need about fifty people? Maybe the new world will require us all to build our capacity for things like communal decision-making, boundaries, and mutual care?

I hear this is all the rage in the crone communes anyway.

9. Date your friends

A few months ago, I bought a pair of ecru(!) square-toed ankle boots in the winter sales, and I cannot wait to wear them to dinner with my women pals back in Bristol. Helen and Phil will totally appreciate my dopamine boots.

Our semi-regular thrupple dinners are in my top five favourite things to do, ever. I highly recommend dating your friends. My top tip: plan the next date before you leave - it gives you something to look forward to.

Both Helen and Phil began as internet connections and one of us sent the invite and there was a pretty immediate sense of ease and depth and belly laughs. Over time, that morphed into safety and connection, deep care and love. It’s not about what you do; it’s about prioritising time together. Showing up and listening are universal love languages. I’ll remember the woman who was a dick to you on that last work project and the date your Dad died because I want you to feel safe with me too.

These friendships have created a bond that made it easy(ish) to ask for help when I got pleurisy (as it turned out) last year while Ash was away. I wish I could say to my bewildered and lonely 14-year-old self (who was so traumatised from bullying she had to move schools), honey, one day you’ll have friends who will sit with you for nine painful hours in A&E.

Send the invite, lovely x

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life