3 Reason Why Making Real Friends Is (Almost) Impossible. Especially As You Get Older.
#1. You have privatized your entertainment
“Stand near an extrovert and hope they adopt you”
This is the top comment on Reddit on how to make friends.
But this suggestion takes a huge assumption. That you’re already outside with other people.
And that’s not the case nowadays. We spend a lot of time alone and on the move.
In the book Billy No Mates, the author talks about why it’s so hard to make friends. The top 3 reasons are:
Private entertainment
Geographical mobility
Working from home and switching jobs
Let’s dive into each of them.
#1. You have privatized your entertainment
When I talk to people in their 60s about their childhood, it’s all about community.
Life was miserable for most. But their stories revolve around being part of something. The support other people gave them. The life everyone had together.
“The neighbors were crazy. I used to hang out a lot with their kids. We played the entire day.”
People back then seemed more connected. And it’s not hard to figure out why.
If you didn’t have Netflix at home, what would you do with your time?
You would do the same as them. Spend time outside your home. And with other people.
But now houses are comfy. You can get all the entertainment you want from the comfort of your sofa. And that includes food as well, delivered straight to your door, without having to look at another human being.
Now, the priority is:
Privacy
being our own person
enjoying the inside of our homes.
And spending more time at home means less time outside with other people. And less time with other people means less time connecting. And less time connecting makes you feel lonely.
For example, I’ve been living in Ireland for 6 years. 3 years in the same apartment building.
Guess how many people I know in my building.
…
That’s right… 1! My next-door neighbor.
1 person in 3 years. It’s almost embarrassing to say this, but the truth hurts. And I only have myself to blame. Just look at my favorite activities:
Gym (alone)
Writing (alone)
Spending time with my wife at home. Occasionally going out to restaurants.
It’s the opposite of what I did in high school.
Back then, I made friends because I chose not to go home and stay locked in my room right after classes finished. I chose to stay in school so I could hang out with people. I had fun with other people. And all that time I spent with them translated into great friendships.
I also asked my wife about her experience in high school “How did you become friends with your friends?”
And her answer wasn’t shocking. She made friends the same way.
She would ask her parents to pick her up from school way after classes ended. That gave her a lot of time to spend around the same group of people. And that’s key for any friendship to develop.
By privatizing your entertainment, you don’t depend on other people to have fun. And by spending more time at home, you hope it can be a:
substitute for a community if only it is spacious enough, entertaining enough, comfortable enough, splendid enough… – The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg
#2. You are always looking to move to a better place
Nobody is happy about where they live.
There’s always something to improve. Weather, security, green areas, walking distance to places, etc.
In their eyes, their situation sucks. Even if it’s not that bad.
And you probably feel this way because you have options.
If you buy a house and choose to live in the same place for the next 30 years, you settle down. Your brain doesn’t need to keep looking for better alternatives anymore.
But houses are expensive now. So everyone is renting. And renting means you have to accept your reality for only 12 months. Then you can move again.
And being able to move every year makes you less likely to make friends.
Because why would you make friends if in 12 months you’re never going to see these people again?
When I decided to move out of Brazil, this happened to me. When I decided to move to another country, I stopped reaching out to most people. I was leaving, so why make an effort to see them?
Right now I live in Ireland. Not a bad place. But I won't retire here. That means I’ll move at some point. Maybe in a year. Or maybe in 20 years. But I’ll eventually move. And this decision makes it easier for my brain to justify not trying to make friends here. Even if it’s (very) far into the future.
But it’s not only new friendships that suffer. Old ones suffer as well.
Because when you move, you don’t take your existing friends with you. So now you need to make an extra effort to see them because they’re all now 1 hour away from you.
Being able to move as you please is great. It gives you a sense of power and independence. But not building roots anywhere makes you lonely. And the further you are from your existing friends, the harder it is to maintain that friendship.
#3. You work more from home. And you change jobs more frequently
You’re moving more. And spending more time alone at home.
What’s left?
Making friends at work.
Before 2020, it was natural to make friends in the office. It just happened. You spent 40+ hours per week with the same people. You shared personal things. You joked with them. You talked about random shared interests. Friendships emerged from all that.
After 2020, everything changed. Face-to-face time in the office disappeared. Now, working from home and Teams calls are the norm.
And when you substitute conversations in real life by Teams calls, your attitude changes. No one has patience to stick around in virtual calls for small talk.
I’ve seen companies try to fix this “impatience” by implementing virtual coffee breaks. It has never worked. Because it doesn’t substitute face-to-face conversations. And people are already spending 10+ hours working in front of a screen. Nobody needs another 30-minute Teams call in their schedule.
Add to that people switching jobs every 2 years or so, it’s hard to imagine how they’d build a lasting friendship with they have very little face-to-face time. It would probably take 20 years to get to know someone. And given that people stay in the same company for about 2 years… Yeah, you won’t be making any real friends anytime soon.
And even if you manage (somehow) to make friends at work, this friendship won’t survive for long because, as the author says in Billy No Mates:
C.S. Lewis’s crucial insight is that our friendships need to be ‘about’ something – and that something needs to be more than the past.
I’ve seen so many people get sad when their coworkers leave.
“Let’s keep in touch”. I do think they are genuinely saying this. But people never keep in touch. Because what held their friendships together was working at the same place. So when you leave, the glue that held the friendship together is gone. And as the quote above says, friendships need to be more than just retelling funny corporate stories from back in the day.
And with you and everyone changing jobs faster than ever, your brain starts to ask the same question: “If I’m moving, why build roots?”
What this all means
We all suck a little at making friends.
But it’s not just your fault or mine. It’s everyone’s.
Because between everyone moving and staying more time at home, there’s just less time for other people. And the self-checkout era keeps going, where you need less and less human contact for most things.
And I’m not saying that from my high horse. I’m guilty of preferring that.
But seeing why it’s hard to make friends is the first step into doing something about it.