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Making Friends as an Adult

Paraducks

This is, perhaps, not the best place to ask this question but maybe if we bang rocks together we can make sparks.

It feels like when you're an adult, your opportunities for socialising in general begin to fall off a cliff-edge. I was having a chat with my parents about it recently, and they expressed a similar sentiment: "Most of my friends are from work. I don't really have the time to look for new ones anymore." It feels like that's where I am at right now, twenty odd years earlier than them in the timeline. 

I was curious if that is the experience many of our older folks on this forum experienced as well? Obviously the struggles of being Autistic doesn't help our case in any way, but I can't help but think this might be a universal issue among people just in general now that so many of our relationships are conducted through the screen. (Heck, i'm even asking for help online right now!)

I'm happy to bring up where I think Autism plays a role in this in replies, but i'm curious on how people try to make friends once they have left higher education. (College/Uni)

  • I personally did not find it easy to make and keep friends when I was at school, and I didn't go to uni.

    As a young adult, my few friends were the wives/girlfriends of my partner's friends, and a girl I had been to school with who I later ended up working with. Those friendships ended either just before or just after we moved to a different town 23 years ago.

    After the move there were a few years when I had no friends except my partner, although to be honest because I was working full time and by then was in my forties, I didn't have the energy to socialise. When I changed to part time working I did start seeing a woman I used to work with for coffee occasionally, although that has stopped now. However I retired recently and have started having lunch once a month with a couple of ladies I worked with in my last job, so I think I can call them friends now.

    I don't know what use this information about me is. Basically, in the past friends have let me down, made me feel bad, or the friendship relied on me contacting them most of the time. It's only now that I'm in my sixties that I seem to have people who are consistently nice to me and seem actually interested in seeing me. Perhaps It's because I finally discovered who I am and stopped masking so much, so I seem more genuine. I dunno.

    So, to finally answer your question at the end, I don't try to make friends. If it happens it happens, if not I'm not really that bothered. I don't value myself by how many friends I have.

  • My friends from school don't have time for me in their lives anymore and it is very upsetting for me, I see them posting things on social media, and then not even opening my messages on the same app... I don't know how to make friends, and being agoraphobic I can't just get out the house and start making new friends. It's tough honestly. 

  • As JD-on-sea said, hobby groups help. 

    I actually don't retain any of my friends from school, bar one. All my current friend group are people I have met after leaving uni. Mostly friends of friends who became my friends. I used to have just one 'best friend' when I was a kid, but now I realise that you can have different friends for different things. So I have friends that I meet up with once or twice a year and do things with, and a friend that I see after work and we sit on the couch and eat dinner and watch TV, and friends that I occasionally go out to the pub for a drink with, etc.

  • I remember as a child my mum telling me to enjoy the opportunities I had then to make lots of friends because it would be harder once I was a grown up. Didn’t believe her at the time, but did find that to be true after school. Not that I was the most social of people because I wasn’t. First year of uni was horrible - assumed I’d make friend but honestly didn’t and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Struggled ever since, but have found that hobbies help - when you’re in a group doing stuff you have in common (in my case that’s running) you end up making friends and don’t have the pressure of having to sit and make conversation (which I’m bad at).