Adulthood Is Lonely
Good friends are hard to come by.
“I realized I don’t like living alone,” said two friends after a friend gathering on a Saturday night. “And for some reason, we both decided to buy houses because it was supposed to be a good financial decision”. The two of them live a 30-minute drive away from each other with a toll bridge in between.
Adulthood is lonely. As we enter the workforce, the time in our lives fills up with responsibilities, work, and hobbies. Fostering a social life becomes more intentional. Forget about dating with the intent of an intimate long-term relationship, even platonic friendships can become something that can be hard to foster and maintain.
College is a Microcosm of the Real World
When most people enter university, it is their first taste of independence. You’re living in a dorm away from your parents and family and are wholly responsible for how you use your time. You choose whether you attend class, do your homework, participate in extracurriculars, or socialize at any given moment. The most studious will find a comfy spot in the library or any building to study the night away. The others will often find themselves socializing, maybe exploring the local town or city and sneaking into bars when possible.
As our time in college passes, our friendships bloom. Through spending 4 years together in a dedicated space, we're forced to interact with our peers through our classes and clubs. Some of us even choosing to date and explore romance and sex for the first time. Others choose to forgo that entirely. The college campus was the oyster. With no real punishments outside of criminal activity, it was a safe space to make mistakes and experiment.
Long-lasting Friendships
For some, it was easy to gain new friends and maintain those from back home. If you had stayed local to your hometown, maybe some of your childhood friends went to school with you. If you decided to go out of state, you kept in touch with folks online. For others, maybe the 4 years of college was the first time you fostered deep friendships. I know I did. Some of my closest friends to this day were formed from my time in college.
As is often quoted, "people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime." I find this to be very true. As we move through life, we evolve and grow. Some people come into our lives to teach us a lesson – maybe to bring awareness to something we need to work on or widen our worldview and introduce something new. Some friendships evolve with us. From friends you chat with every day to the ones who remember to celebrate your birthday every year and send funny memes and little tidbits they come across that remind them of you.
From college, one of the last defined moments of stability in life, everyone is pulled to different corners of the world for work, grad school, or whatever venture they have next in their career. Once this move happens, each of us begins the process of rebuilding our local networks.
Adult Friendships
Currently, society centers life around intimate sexual partnerships. The end goal of starting a family and living in a house with a white picket fence isn't something that is strange to us. Not everyone has the same vision in mind when it comes to their vision for life, but the essence is the same. We find someone physically attractive and build a life with them.
Because of this natural prioritization, friendships often fall to the wayside. We are more selective of how we spend our time. When the bulk of our week is spent at work, and the rest of the non-work time spent on daily chores and errands, it quickly becomes apparent how little time we have for friendship. Some things can make this easier such as working with a friend (i.e. coworker becomes a friend, or friend becomes a coworker) or living with housemates who are friends.
If we choose to live alone and are decidedly not building friendships with coworkers, then the task of having a social life outside of work or other friendships outside of work becomes a dedicated priority to meet people through hobbies or other activities. Meetup groups popped up as ways for people to meet each other. Third spaces like cafés and churches, or other community spaces become the place to escape home for a while.
Even with these groups and spaces, it takes time to build a friendship when two people are meeting as strangers. Frequent attendance within these spaces builds familiarity and trust and allows for strangers to become acquaintances. As time progresses and methods of contact are shared, then these connections can be taken outside of this specific context and a stronger bond can be built. Studies have shown that it takes 40-60 hours of contact to make a casual friend, 90 more hours to go from casual friend to the average "friend", and 200+ hours to become a close friend. If I take those numbers and convert them into days, it'll take around 13 - 15 days to make a close friend. Obviously, we aren't spending 24/7 with people we meet, so even if I give a generous 4 hours to hanging out with people, this will lengthen to 82 - 88 days of contact, and because we aren't meeting up with friends every single day, then this becomes, with a once-a-week half day hang out, 82 - 88 weeks. There are 52 weeks in a year. It takes over a year of hanging out for half a day, once a week, to have a stranger become a close friend.
Now if you were to ask me whether or not that seems easy to do as an adult, I would be laughing at you. I have not met anyone who has the energy to meet up with someone to that level of frequency outside of romantic interests. I have made some really good friends in the 2.5 years that I've left college, so I think in addition to frequency, it is the depth of the conversation topics and the amount of sharing and mutual support that is given that creates a close friend. Simon Sinek has said, "We build trust by asking for [help]." By asking for help, we allow ourselves to test the reliability of our friends, to allow them to come to our side to support us.
Adulthood can be lonely. It takes a lot of dedicated time to make new friends and to foster close relationships. Distance can hinder friendships, but online chats can help people stay in touch between each in-person meet up. Because of the difficulties of maintaining adult friendships, it makes me treasure each new person that I come across a little more. If I enjoy spending time with them and the chats, they'll stay in my network as I move through life.