Is It Harder To Make Friends The Older You Get?
Molly: I moved to Bristol with my boyfriend almost three years ago. Despite having lived away from home at University for 3 years, and travelled abroad for 12 months, moving to the ‘big city’ was a pretty daunting prospect.
Adding to the list of ‘daunting prospects’ was how I would make friends when I got there, but fast-forward a full year, and this concern had quickly fallen short of the top spot on my priority list, behind finding somewhere to live, finding a job and settling into life in my new city.
I was lucky to have met some great people through work, but weekends were still generally spent exclusively with my boyfriend, and there’s only so much football chat a girl can take. I needed more friends.
How does one make friends as an adult? Where do I find them? Is there an application form? An “I’m looking for friends” badge I can wear? More importantly, who do I want to make friends with? What type of people do I like? Jeez, what kind of people might like me? It was proving to be a bit of a friend-finding minefield.
Then an opportunity came to attend a small event for Bristol- and Bath-based bloggers. I definitely wasn’t the only person there solo, but I may have been the only one attending for the sole purpose of finding people who might have good ‘friend potential’.
And it worked; I made a friend at that event. And that friend is Gem…
Gem: And in true confirmation of our friendship, I answered Molly’s video call to chat about this article having just come out of the shower with a towel on my head. To which Molly said ‘that is how I know we’re friends, cause you answer the phone looking like that.’ She’s right, of course. Molly and I have been friends for over a year now. We meet up one on one and chat about some of our shared interests; Instagram, blogging and fitness. When I started trying to build my photography business, she even became like my own personal influencer by showcasing my work on her Instagram.
The event we met at wasn’t about making friends for me though. It was just a happy bonus that I met Molly. By that point, I’d been living in Bristol for about 7 years having moved down from Scotland in 2012. I had already made my Bristol friends and didn’t really feel like I needed any more.
Unlike Molly, who moved here with her boyfriend, I moved here on my own. I didn’t know a soul in this city and knew that in order to make a go of this life down south (and retain my sanity) I needed a social circle. So I dived headfirst into my summer of ‘yes’. If anyone asked me to do something socially, I had to say yes. I was lucky enough that the rent I was paying was minimal, so I had no financial barriers to this plan. I started with my work colleagues, who were the best people I could have asked for during this time, they really made an effort to befriend me and show me around.
But while work colleagues were great, they all had social circles of their own outside of work, and I knew I needed that too. So I went in search of a hobby and ended up a member of the City of Bristol rowing club. I turned up on the taster day on my own, out of my comfort zone and terrified. I knew this was a prime opportunity to make friends, but it isn’t as easy as that is it? Sure, there’s all these people here, but what if they’re not my people? And if any of them are my people, how do I move them from someone I met at the rowing taster day to someone who would come for a pint with me? In many respects, I think it’s a bit like dating. Do I ask for their number? Do I suggest a coffee date? What if they say no or our coffee date is super awkward… I think our first friend-date was brunch, wasn’t it Molly?
Molly: Brunch and coffee, if I remember correctly. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I asked for someone's number. More frequently, I find myself asking "are you on Instagram?” But at least in this instance, I was fairly certain, having the benefit of a photographic insight into Gem’s life through her Instagram, that a brunch date would probably go well.
It seemed to be so easy to make friends when we were younger. I remember I used to make friends with pretty much every kid around the pool when we went on holiday. It didn’t matter who they were, how old they were, or where they came from - being in the same place, at the same time, was enough. School friends too became friends through circumstance, more so than through careful consideration. Your shared interest, whether you liked it or not, was school - and all of the experiences (good and bad) that come with it.
But as adults those artificially manufactured social situations, in which you’re thrown together with other people and expected to bond with them enough to form a friendship, rarely occur. Even making friends in the workplace isn’t necessarily guaranteed. And I think this is because, as adults, we are much fussier about who we make friends with.
I’m not looking for ‘any old friend’. I have enough past experience to know the type of people I should be looking for. They will have similar values to me. They will enjoy some of the same extra-curricular activities. They’ll ideally have a similar postcode. The same outlook on life. Be roughly at the same stage of life when it comes to things like marriage, babies, houses. Must like dogs. And then when I come to think of it, my ‘ideal friend’ category is actually pretty niche - which isn’t going to make this any easier.
Gem: If you’ve seen the film ‘How To Be Single’ you will be familiar with the ‘peanut analogy’, used to explain how difficult it is to find a husband in New York. After pouring a bowl of peanuts out onto the bar, Lucy proceeds to take peanuts away based on gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, attractiveness, etc. Long story short, she ends up with one tiny piece of a shattered peanut - her ideal husband. For me, I think the same analogy can be used for finding friends. As an adult, you’re looking for a particular peanut who shares the same values and interests as you. You’re not surrounded by lots of peanuts anymore like you are as a child. There’s even lots of peanuts around in your 20s. But then they start settling down, don’t they? You suddenly find that you have fewer people to go out with on a Friday night or maybe you have settled down and had kids, but none of your friends have.
It wasn’t until we started writing together that Molly and I realised how different the motivations, which led to our first meeting, really were. Ask Molly, and she’ll tell you that going to that event was a decision based on finding “her people”, whereas I will tell you that we met by chance. While ours was a real-life first meeting, this doesn’t always have to be the case.
Molly: Collaborating on this article during lockdown has meant relying heavily on virtual means of ‘meeting’ and writing together - which isn’t too dissimilar to how our friendship flourished in the early days. As cliché as it may be, our friendship was nurtured via Instagram; sending DM’s and commenting back and forth until we confidently ventured into another real-life mate-date. Much like the dating world, finding potential new friends has been made easier in the age of the internet and social media. Whether “your people” are the ones who like circus acrobatics, heavy metal, boujee brunches - or like for Gem and I, writing and blogging - there will be established communities you can connect with online. The online world may not be the ‘fairytale’ story for you and your new friends, but it does come with the distinct advantage of a “try before you buy” system; maximum opportunity to test the conversation virtually, before introducing that budding friendship to the real world.
So yes, it is harder to make friends as an adult. The stakes are higher, the criteria tougher, the time available less, and therefore the sea of potential friends starts looking more like a very small pond. But all hope is not lost, because whilst it may seem like an unfathomable task, I have found that the connections and friendships I have made as an adult have been real, rich and more fulfilling than I ever would have expected. And that is a wonderful thing.
Written by Molly Williams & Gemma Grieg
Hello! I’m Molly - or ‘Moll’ to most. I’m a 26-year old, originally from Devon, currently living in Bristol. I work full-time in social media marketing, but I am also a qualified personal trainer. It's this knowledge which I now use to inform my writing, where I try to share a slightly different, more positive, approach to fitness and wellbeing.
I’m Gemma, an aspiring PT, photographer and writer by night and editor by day. When I’m not lifting heavy things in the gym, I’ve got my head in the books studying, or making yet another attempt to write that elusive novel. I’m originally from Scotland, but I’ve been living in England for over 8 years.