Hello All! This is a requested post from Naina because she’s dealing with that whole “I’m an adult who just moved to a new city how do you make friends?” thing. And also, because I think it is an interesting thing for all of us to talk about! Bonus: you get to hear how SRK helped me make friends!
We had an earlier similar post talking about if anyone has those lifelong friendships left from childhood/high school/college. And the general consensus was “no”. The really long term friendships started in adulthood. That’s certainly true for me.
Before I get into my story, I wanna talk about when my sister started kindergarten. She had no friends on the playground and didn’t know what to do. And my mother, in one of her All Time Most Brilliant mothering moments said “we are going to get a book and learn a lot of string games”. And it worked! My sister took her string with her to school, sat on the playground and started making patterns, and other kids asked her about it, and she taught them, and BOOM! FRIENDSHIPS!
(I used to be so good at this! Ah, youth!)
Of course, friendships on the playground are different than adult friendships. Not necessarily any easier or harder, but DIFFERENT! However, looking back on it, I think I made my intense friendships in kind of a similar way. Only instead of String Games, I used Shahrukh Khan.
In college, I had friends, but it never felt quite right to me. I had my roommate (assigned by the school), and another friend who lived down the hall. They were sort of my only strong friendships in college. I loved my campus job and hung out with a lot of people there during work, but outside of work it was really just the two good friends. That was okay, in that particular time and place, between jobs and classes and so on I was meeting sooooooooooo many people and talking to soooooooooooo many people, I really didn’t feel like I needed more than two good friends. That’s not true, I DID feel like I should be having different friendships, like I was missing something. But looking back on it now I can see what was happening, by the time I finished all my jobs and classes and so on, I was ready to just hang out with two easy people.
Post-college, I had two really bad years. I think this is more universal than pop culture (especially American pop culture) is willing to say. It’s HARD to make friends as an adult! I worked, I went to general sort of open events, I talked to my college friends, but I didn’t really have anyone else. I had a lot of false starts too, I volunteered and invited a fellow volunteer out for coffee, and it was pleasant, but fizzled. I met folks at a party and tried to organize outings with them, actually went on a few, but it felt superficial somehow. Just didn’t click, didn’t feel right. And then, FINALLY, I got a job with a lot of people in the same place I was and eager to hang out. And at the same time, I met a couple of people through the church youth group that FINALLY clicked with me.
But what really did it was Shahrukh Khan. I almost accidentally asked people over to watch a movie with me. It came up organically while I was talking with them and I said “if you want, we could figure out a time and you can come over and watch a movie”. And they actually did come over! And then we became friends! And that was 15 years ago and these are still my closest friend group.
(Shahrukh is Magic)
It’s the String Games thing again. I needed something to offer, some activity to build a friendship around. But just as important, I needed something I feel confident doing, something that let’s me forget to be nervous and just be the best version of myself. And Shahrukh Movie Nights was that for me.
Once I had my String Games thing, that wasn’t the end. I started inviting pretty much everyone I met to come over to one of my movie nights. And some of those people became close friends and some didn’t, and that’s okay. Out of the dozens of people who came through my living room, only about 5 of them jumped to the level of super close friends versus just pleasant people to hang out with.
So, that’s how I made friends as an adult! Started with the activity and the friendships followed. But boy did it take a long time to figure out the activity! And boy was it painful trying and failing! And mostly, I was very lucky that I fell into a work situation with a lot of people like me right at the same time I fell into the activity that would help me make friends.
For particular tips: 1. it’s okay to go to meetup events and volunteer and stuff knowing you may never see anyone there again, but still enjoying the social time. It doesn’t all have to turn into deep friendships, it can just be fun for an hour. 2. Adult friendships take time, it’s not “weird’ to take literally years to find a friend group. 3. Think about something that is cool about you that you want to share with other people, and I am sure there are things that are cool about you! Gardening, crafts, books, ANYTHING.
Okay, that’s what I’ve got! What do you want to share about Adult Friendships?
