Why making friends as an adult is harder

> Having to have everything scheduled weeks in advance

I don't see how WFH makes this worse, in fact it probably makes it better (less time spent commuting, more ability to end the day early with a flexible employer, etc)

> For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two.

I wonder if this would vary by country and culture?

I wonder if there is a statistically noticeable difference in experience between places like the US and Northern Europe that seem to be more more work-focused compared to Southern European countries like Spain and Italy which have a reputation for having a better work/life balance.

I do WFH for about 9 months now and i’m not a big fan of it in general (for myself). I can’t go back in the office because i moved too far away, and would have to find a new job to work in an office (quite ironic, isn’t it?). There are some pros, like i eat a lot healthier, sleep a lot better, save a lot of money on gas. But two days without leaving the house is not uncommon, because I don’t have to and since i don’t know anybody around here and don’t do any team sports I haven’t made any friendships or contacts in any way.

I really liked being in the office and have the ability to talk to people which share your interests (which is just my work currently)

I solved that joining a coworking space. It changed my life, made a lot of friends since we see each other everyday. We have coffee/lunch chats which lead to friendships.

The great thing about it is you get to choose the space so it can fit what you're looking for (quiet, programmer heavy, artsy, walking distance, with a cafeteria, next to the gym, etc), you also don't have the pressure of them being colleagues so your relationship can be about other things (sports, games, music, pottery, going out)

I WFH since pandemic. I have it good with current company and my home setup is a blast.

But next year resolution is that I will be renting a desk in a coworking space.

While I don’t have problem as I have enough fiends and family to hang out with.

I believe that I leave business opportunities lying somewhere there on the table and if current contract ends I will be on much worse bargaining position than when I will having more business connections hopefully created by sharing co work space.

> For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize. It works for folks who were either already inclined to "go out and do things" or those who already had established social groups. We will see how this pans out in a generation or two.

Right on all points, I think.

>For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize.

I think it's the opposite. The standard where people commute to the office, spend all day in the workplace, and commute home with barely enough time to tend to their needs is the failed social experiment, creating unprecedented levels of isolation and entire generations of people who can't form relations outside of work.

I also don't think it's all that healthy for people's primary avenue for building friendships being in a venue where layoffs and transfers could disrupt that process suddenly and without any real recourse.

One thing the marketing of industrialization (I want to say propaganda, but I know how people are...) was quite successful at was in erasing memory of the period just before, when piece-work at home (and farming, lots of farming) was the primary form productive labor took. There is quite a lot of documentation of industrial bosses complaining about such set-ups because they allowed workers to set their own hours and modulate their output to their needs (excuse me, "be lazy").

I don’t think I’d have agreed to volunteer at church as much as I do without WFH.

Isn’t factory and office work the social experiment? Just a couple centuries ago most work was done at home, or out on the farm, with only the owner/tenant and his family around. WFH is somewhat of a reversion to the historical mean.

If it weren’t for church services and semi-regular in-office work, my in-person contact would be just wife and kids.

I believe the Japanese have a near analogous term for this: Hikikomori.

I completely disagree, and think work from home (which most of our ancestors did until the industrial revolution) is infinitely better for making and sustaining healthy friendships. There's not 90-120 minutes of commute time sitting alone in a car. There's not the very common occurrences of layoffs and promotions making you directly competing with each other. Instead you've got all that extra time to just spend time with your neighbors and make friendships.

You can choose to work from a co-working space, coffeeshops, libraries, or just stay at home. But instead of getting home exhausted at 6-7pm needing to cook, clean, chores, etc, you can get that stuff done during your lunch break and then pop around to a friend's house by 5:05pm.

It's so much better I can't imagine going back to an office where I'm sitting alone and sad in a cube all day trying to focus while people yammer on the phone right next to me.

If we are going all “risky social experiment”, one could argue that almost all of humanity worked from home/neighborhood until passenger rail showed up in the mid 19th Century, and thus the actual anomalous human situation/experiment has been the last 150 years of commuting to work from home. A time of two World Wars and many major bloody military conflicts, breakdown of the family, weakening of community, growth and spread of colonialism, etc.. Perhaps Africa could have been spared the blessing of European colonialism if Nigel, Jacque, Fritz etc. had stayed at home making shoes. (Or maybe not.)

Humans and associated social institutions evolved out of a WFH culture for hundreds of years, and perhaps those time-proven institutions would work better in 2024 if we returned to a WFH culture. Commuting culture may have been the “massive risky social experiment” of the last Century.

For games stuff, you can go to game stores and competitions. There are book clubs too. The trouble with a lot of these things is that most people don't actually want to make friends who are all about either of those things. They want to make demographically matched friends that are willing to do more than one thing. If your game group is a bunch of 18 year old dorky dudes, and you're in your 30s, you are likely to feel out of place. If you're single and want to date out of your friend group, you might have to broaden your horizons to include stuff that the opposite sex tends to like. You won't be welcome in many of those contexts either.

I agree, sailing is a particularly good sport for making friends… however it tends to be mostly older people. I just decided to make friends with people my parents age, and I’ve made a lot of good friends that way regardless.

> so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots

Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there?

(I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really the question is even more pointed!)

> I think too many people think friendship is what happens between people that are the same

This is so true. Just think, why is it that as children we often become friends with the kid who lives next door or across the street? Is it that we magically have the same tastes? Or is it just that we see them all the time?

That's a very big generalisation. While people here will tend to be in tech we all come from different places, have different experiences and work in vastly different things

> You are aware, that you are on a board of grinding workaholics, who work hard to have nobody escape the gulag of modern labor - by forcing everyone to grind their lifes to dust to compete with them?

As Pat Paulsen might have said, "Picky, picky, picky." Threads about social disconnection come up pretty often on the front page for all that. I don't think the people being ground into dust (and I agree with you that there are an increasing number of them) are on HN. People posting here seem to have the financial wherewithal to break the bonds of work at least occasionally and often more than that.

Sheesh. A little nihilist much?

Yes, modern capitalist society is really great at making human needs scarce (friends, relationships) and human wants abundant (junk food, video games).

But I don't think there's really a point in stewing too much about the society we live in, it's easier to accept that this is our reality, and that we have to work extra hard for the things in life that matter. Giving up only creates a much worse situation for yourself.

People back in the day had to do extremely difficult manual labor all day long, think of it as though the "extremely difficult labor" has changed into social labor - from making friends to dating to maintaining relationships.

And you know you don't have to be a workaholic, right? I work 9-5, I have time for other things in life. I have a few friends at the office but I'm not thinking "work is life" ever.

I’ve found most of my new friends in my 50’s by going to little local museums that interest me, such as a small clock museum and a military history museum, and inserting myself into them by volunteering to help out.

Make your own meetup. Honest advice, everybody sort of sees you as the guy to become friends with if you're the leader.

> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying

There is a wide range of sports :) My mom always tried to force me into team sports like football, hockey and alike, which never really was my thing. But as an adult, I enjoy things like skiing, water-sports, table-tennis and a bunch of other sports, that I see less like "sports" but more like "enjoyable activities", but also really makes it easy to meet people with similar interests :)

> but most groups don't organically sprout around interests.

If you are only looking for people with the same niche interest, it will probably be more difficult to find local groups. But if you're open to meeting new people that are interested in social connectivity, local sports teams are the way to go. I've meet friends through co-ed sports that work in fields I would rather not come into much direct contact with: police officers, tsa, tax auditor, etc. People I never would have met otherwise (turns out they are just like other humans; who knew!) Seriously though, they don't all become best friends, but mostly social acquaintances and that works for me. I did get a couple best friends out of it some time ago.

> Sports, especially, are something that I have a very difficult time imagining enjoying.

Kickball. There are no high school/college/main pro leagues, so you avoid that one competitive team that all played on a school sports team. And get a bunch of people looking to socialize while playing a rather silly game no one is expected to excel at. To shore up that reality, join co-ed sports teams. I have witnessed games in both Mens and Womens leagues and they are much more about the competition.

Local library. Recreation centers. Local board game shops. Events and activities in the community. Volunteering. Religious groups. College campuses often host groups and events from the community. Art classes. Dance classes.

Check the local newspaper as they often list events and activities.

Go mentor a high school robotics team, or volunteer to help run events. It's 100% sports, minus the athletic dimension. I see tons of lifetime friendships being made.

With websites and social media accounts being simple to create, just search google and instagram for “<x thing you’re interested in> club/meetup/group”. Lots of small groups make one for this purpose. It’s worked for me!

Book clubs, art clubs, movie club... Lot of options

Specially having same sports interests, does not help in finding people with more or less same values/ world view. I cannot really make good friends with people on the opposite side of my thinking.

Have you tried DnD? My father has a biweekly DnD session where he’s met a ton of people.

> imagining enjoying

Try it and find out if you really don’t like it. Maybe you’ll hear about something else you will like more.

Climbing gyms

I’m 36 and my new daughter (8 months) has helped me come out of my shell. It’s given me something to connect with other people about.

With the caveat that you need to be in a setting where the other “kids” are doing it full time too. If that were the case, I do think it would be easy. Interesting insight.

> They have a clear vision of the meaning of life

What you describe is probably a minority amongst folks who claim to believe in a religion.

I've been further down that rabbit hole that most, so believe me when I say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Look into the Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. I'm a recently retired atheist and moved to a new city. My wife was brought up UU and they welcome all beliefs. We started attending services at a local fellowship a month ago and have been welcomed and are starting to make some friends there.

Skill issue.

Plenty of atheists are capable of finding both meaning in life and social groups to join.

That depends, as the comment you replied to shows, on how they respond to that. I'm an atheist, but one of my wife's best friends is a dyed-in-the wool catholic, and we get on really well despite that fundamental difference. He has a great line in self-deprecating humour, where he talked about "going Taliban" during lent, of which he is very observant. Not all religious people - and, I would suggest, probably very few in fact - are nutters. They're just the loudest ones.

Yes and no, if you join a group that is not overzealous you can just skip the religion talk altogether and involve with community projects instead.

I thought so too, until I realized that if atheists see God as a deep aspect of the human mind, that evolved that way for reasons, then we don't miss much of the Judeo-Christian story. I stopped by a local church for Bible study just in order to challenge my assumptions and found that they had no problem with that formulation at all. I expected way more awkwardness and even pushed the issue, to no avail. The result was a delightful experience of people sitting around interrogating ancient texts and being attentive to each other's life challenges.

I found that the structure of the Christian congregation is equivalent to the anarchist affinity group. I realized that, unlike us, Christians build infrastructure to support their organizing, and we should probably adopt that.

I'm still the same atheist, just a churchgoing one. I don't go to mass often or ever recite the Nicene Creed, but otherwise it's been a fantastic social outlet, great intellectual company, and the organ festival is off the hook.

Eh, some of my good friends were boyfriend-of-my-girlfriend's-girlfriend and while both girlfriends are long gone, we stay in touch.

I have a sneaking suspicion if you walked your house plants you'd meet many new people.

If I didn't already have a dog, I might build a robotic platform so that I could wander to the park with a dwarf fruit tree in tow.

Yes and you aren't necessarily going to be friends with all of those people around you. The challenge is not being near just anyone but rather being near a group of people with significant overlap in values and interests. I live in one of the highest density cities in the US but I still have very few friends who live within a twenty minute walk and I frequently have to commute an hour each way to social gatherings.

You’re fortunate. At least in a lot of the US people live insular lives and only rarely run into people at the grocery store.

There are obviously some adults who have severe limitations on their ability to socialise and nobody is implying they are lazy.

But a wider social scene I have been part of has people with evident learning difficulties, people with obvious neurodivergence, people with physical disabilities.

If you show up and show interest in sharing a common goal with a large enough circle of people, then those people will find you a way to participate at your own speed.

If you have a way to show up for social activities, or assistance to show up, you could show up, you have a desire to show up, and you don't show up... some of that really is laziness at worst and avoidance at best.

Their comment is on a specific kind of person ("those that treat life as 'working and slacking'"), not all people.

I don't think that's exactly what they were saying. I read it more like "people who divide life into work-that-you-should-pour-your-energy-into and recovery-where-you-try-not-to-spend-energy", and that maybe we should pour less of our energy into work and use that energy for socialising (which can result in an overall net energy gain).

That is my thinking too. Joining a group of 10 people, maybe with luck I make 1 friend out of it.

I’ve done it in the past, with mixed results. My father would roam through different groups, rotary, lions club, church, fathers of my friends… that resulted in a say 1% friendships, which would last from 1 to 3 years. And boy there are dangers there too! Nobody is talking about them! Was I the only one who got a manic hanging every day at my door? I had many experiences where people I didn’t want to be around would stick to me in a stalker way…

Do you have any curiosity at all about the world around you?

Skill issue. As long as you aren't an asshole, very few people actually care. And even if they do smell weirdness on you, why do you care? If you do, you're probably not actually weird as you think you are.

> But let's be honest, you normal people can smell when someone isn't part of their tribe, even with a good mask on.

I am a long way from normal and it worked for me. People genuinely thought I was confident and outgoing simply for turning up and chatting, and eventually it began to be a lot more true. Even if I had to leave earlier than most to find some quiet.

Any shared activity that has enough participants has a role for people like us -- helping set up/tear down, organising, making coffees and snacks (the kitchen is an easy place to be), taking photographs, shuttling messages between organisers. Any shared activity has little bubbles of social grouping, fun and friendship around these functional parts. At a music thing: sound engineers, merch tents, collecting donations on the door -- lots of little bubbles of odd people finding their own speed.

As long as you take time to relax and enjoy it as well -- I find this part difficult -- then there is a life for you. For me, I was a photographer, I helped with the web and email side, I helped with AV, whatever. I became indispensable. And then I found my people around the edges of it. I struggle again now, post-lockdown-fragmentation and a bout of depression, so I stepped back from active involvement in the same way, but I know my people are out there and they still value me just for turning up.

Try not to assume there are "normal people" who want to lock you out. It's cynical, a little rude frankly. It is also a form of fundamental attribution error. Any large social functioning/gathering of adults is a gathering of people who have the same need for adult friendship and connection as you; many of them are lonely at other times. Why else would it even be happening?

Side note: as true as the "sportsball" clichés might be, stop thinking that. Never, ever, ever say it out loud.

If it's not for you (it isn't for me), so what? Never murder an enthusiasm. It's rude.

I wouldn’t want it to fall victim to the same phenomenon as running clubs—people just use it for dating. Men need a space of their own.

If so, it seems odd that it would happen at a social time of year for many if not most.

Yeah, I was quite happy it wasn't AI. Glad I wasn't alone. Merry Christmas. :)

I think there is value in following the causality and moving closer to the root cause. It can help people take meaningful action.

QED