Making and keeping friends
#makeFriends
Many adults I talk with struggle with feelings of loneliness and having difficulties making and keeping friendships. I see this often in populations of young adults, those recently divorced and people with advanced education and graduate studies.
Some young adults leave for college and develop extensive friendships while away at school. This can put a strain on old friendships from high school, making those reunion times while on semester break and summer vacations awkward. Friendships that do not have as much to talk about that are current events are stuck in the past and conversations become about the past.
Sometimes when people have been away for college, graduate school or advanced education not only are removed from the regular interactions of friends back home, but they are busy enough that maintaining friendships of any kind are difficult. When the business of life begins to settle down, old friendships have become stale or people have moved on.
People that have been in close romantic relationships or spouse type relationships often put their friendships on a back burner. When their romantic relationship changes, re-entering friendships sometimes finds that those relationships have changed so much they are no longer viable.
What is a person to do when this is the case? If is not happy or healthy to be lonely. We have to re-activate ourselves to seek new friendships, but that can be difficult. In school we have a reason for being present and we are forming our identities as adults; it is natural to gravitate towards those that help shape that identify. What can you do now that we do not have those places to meet people and our identify is already formed.
The best ways to meet friends is by sharing a common context, like a group or activity that you like to do. When we were in school we had this with sports teams, grade level or after school activities. Those things were as necessary to our development as to our parents sanity!. Now that we are adults we have to find places where those common contexts benefit us. The context will give us something to do, and things to talk about with new friends as you get to know one another. After you are acquainted with new friends, those common contexts will help keep you seeing your friends with regularity.
Some suggestions I like are:
Recreational or sports leagues in your community. Softball and kickball are common and often result in general laughter and general hilarious fun. Often these events involve weekly practice and sometimes groups of friends go out and socialize after the big game.
Check online resources such as: meetup.com The website has groups of people that meet to do things you enjoy doing. Knitting groups, cooking/grilling groups, even language groups that get together and practice speaking a language is a great context to enjoy a beverage or a meal and practice your habla.
Volunteer your time! volunteermatch.org has a database of things across the country and is a great way to meet people. Many times you will have similar values with others you volunteer with. What could be a better common context than dog friendly events or a day at the park. My favorite is for Weiner dogs and is called “the cross town barkaround” and whenever I go I get lots of product samples and free stuff!
Take a class: check out your municipal parks and rec center. Often the classes are taught by local experts and are inexpensive. My favorite by far is Thai cooking classes. I get to save money on my favorite dishes and make the best food with the best ingredients any time I want.
Support youth sports or activities in your community and get to know the parents and participants. It goes without saying that the kids self esteem is greatly impacted by this. It is super fun to get the autographs of student athletes when they are featured in a local paper. Also don’t overlook clubs such as the local high school art club or theater club. They can benefit from your support and those are great places to meet other parents. If you do not have kids attending the schools or in the clubs, the clubs themselves benefit from your financial support and sometimes have art shows and booster mixers that you can meet other parents and school faculty.
Get out there and meet people and share some smiles! @mentalhealthamerica #4mind4body bit.ly/4Mind4BodySocial