Are you in the market for some new friends?
In the past couple of years my husband and I became bird launchers (aka empty nesters). It’s been an interesting experience getting reacquainted with one another, finding things we enjoy doing together and almost launching a new relationship. What I realized was that many of our friends were associated with our kids, their activities, their friends and their families. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time with our friends from the mountain bike team. Traveling to different locations for bike races lends itself to camping, hanging out in the mountains, lots of fun time in pits and team dinners during the season. However, when the kid graduated those friendships slowly fizzled as we didn’t have something bringing us together. We’ve stayed friends with a few couples.
As adults, sometimes we find our friends through work. And that’s difficult when you’re a solopreneur or work in a small office with one other person. Other times we find ourselves looking for friends at the activities, hobbies or sports that we may participate in. This can also be difficult if most of the activities you’ve been doing are related to your kids’ activities. It really is important to have some interests and activities that you can call your own.
This year I added to my new year’s vision board that I wanted to be intentional about making some new friends as an adult. And you do have to be intentional. I think a lot of us believe that at this point in our lives people may have enough friends, do they have room for anymore? The answer is we ALL have room for more friends. And a spectacular thing is the having more friends positively benefits our physical, social, and emotional health.
Here’s what I’ve been doing to meet more people, inquire about friendship and get involved. My husband and I started playing cornhole in a league. We’ve met interesting people from all over our community. As part of my role as a board member I was able to join Kiwanis, a service organization dedicated to supporting children in the community. I have a blast volunteering and meeting folks from multiple generations. I decided to try some activities I thought I would enjoy like ballroom dancing, mountain biking, tap dancing, joining non-profit boards and learning about social justice gatherings. I’ve met a plethora of different folks I can safely call acquaintances.
Moving folks from acquaintances to friends is the challenging step, it takes time, effort and energy. When we were 5, we simply said “hey I want to be your friend!” Now we’re filled with all this baloney in our heads, some fear and making up stuff when we should just say “hey, you’re awesome, I want to be your friend!” One of my favorite researchers is Vanessa Van Edwards, she runs the Science of People. She posted an article about “How to make friends as an adult (the easy way)”. Well worth the read if you are in the market for some new friends. Vanessa talks about finding friends as an adult is like dating. You’ve got to explore and flirt a little bit in a plutonic way. He’s the reality…it really does take time, you have to put the effort in and be patient with yourself. She shares that “according to a 2018 study by Professor Jeffrey Hall, it takes about 50 hours of time with someone to move from an acquaintance to a casual friend. To transition from a casual friend to a friend, it takes about 80–100 hours of together time, and to become good or best friends, it takes about 200 hours or more.”
If you’ve been thinking it would be great to expand and grow your friend circle then find your courage, share your time and be intentional.
