The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html?_r=1
304 comments
I've long been of the opinion that the decline in local socializing (in the physical realm) is due to the advent of air condition, radio, and later television.
Previously people sat on their porches in the evening to escape the heat of the house and thus saw their neighbors nightly. Now we're all in our climate-controlled cocoons.
After moving to this city a few years ago where we had no friends or family, I just started stopping at neighbor houses when I saw them working on something and offered to help. Establishing this pattern of behavior triggered most of them to do the same not only to me but also to other neighbors and now we have a very tight-knit group of people whose only real initial "shared interest" was physical proximity.
When one of the neighbors was diagnosed with terminal cancer, some of the others were wondering what we could do to help. I suggested we ask him what things he wanted done for his house so that he could not worry about such things and focus on his last months with family. So we spent a lot of summer weekends painting, roofing, doing general house repairs. Along with that his teenage boys got to hang around a group of men in a setting where we would naturally banter and tease without any social climbing or the like. Close to the end of his life my neighbor told several of us that he was happy to know that there were going to be men around his family that would take care of things and serve as role models for his boys. I can't think of anything that would give me more comfort if I was in his position.
So basically, get off your butt in the evenings and walk the neighborhood. Look for someone doing something and offer to help. If nothing else you'll feel good about being able to help someone out and it just may start the chain reaction necessary to build an entirely new social group.
Previously people sat on their porches in the evening to escape the heat of the house and thus saw their neighbors nightly. Now we're all in our climate-controlled cocoons.
After moving to this city a few years ago where we had no friends or family, I just started stopping at neighbor houses when I saw them working on something and offered to help. Establishing this pattern of behavior triggered most of them to do the same not only to me but also to other neighbors and now we have a very tight-knit group of people whose only real initial "shared interest" was physical proximity.
When one of the neighbors was diagnosed with terminal cancer, some of the others were wondering what we could do to help. I suggested we ask him what things he wanted done for his house so that he could not worry about such things and focus on his last months with family. So we spent a lot of summer weekends painting, roofing, doing general house repairs. Along with that his teenage boys got to hang around a group of men in a setting where we would naturally banter and tease without any social climbing or the like. Close to the end of his life my neighbor told several of us that he was happy to know that there were going to be men around his family that would take care of things and serve as role models for his boys. I can't think of anything that would give me more comfort if I was in his position.
So basically, get off your butt in the evenings and walk the neighborhood. Look for someone doing something and offer to help. If nothing else you'll feel good about being able to help someone out and it just may start the chain reaction necessary to build an entirely new social group.
In hindsight, I realize that I took the relationships in my life for granted when i was younger because I always had an abundance of them in high school and college.
Back then I was very involved in church, went on ski trips, camping trips, kayaking, and participated in weekly extracurricular activities. Friends were just around all the time.
Also looking back, all of my good memories are people an experiences, not money, projects, or things - all of which education and the real world focus you on.
Now that I'm 28 and have a family, it is difficult to spend time with friends - even the ones with families as well. Everyone has jobs and lots of other commitments.
By now most of my college friends have moved away and even the ones that haven't I rarely see.
These days I make a conscious effort to attend anything I possibly can with friends, and it certainly helps.
My point is that if there are any high school/college aged people reading my advice is that you take advantage of every opportunity with friends now. Focus on quality and quantity of relationships. If you have a choice between a "B" on a project if you go out with friends and an "A" if you stay home and study, pick the former. The relationships you build will be far more useful to you in life that getting the "A."
Not saying all the fun stops, it just becomes less sporadic and further between visits with friends.
The reason I am saying all of this is because I wish someone would have told it to me...not that I would have listened anyway.
Back then I was very involved in church, went on ski trips, camping trips, kayaking, and participated in weekly extracurricular activities. Friends were just around all the time.
Also looking back, all of my good memories are people an experiences, not money, projects, or things - all of which education and the real world focus you on.
Now that I'm 28 and have a family, it is difficult to spend time with friends - even the ones with families as well. Everyone has jobs and lots of other commitments.
By now most of my college friends have moved away and even the ones that haven't I rarely see.
These days I make a conscious effort to attend anything I possibly can with friends, and it certainly helps.
My point is that if there are any high school/college aged people reading my advice is that you take advantage of every opportunity with friends now. Focus on quality and quantity of relationships. If you have a choice between a "B" on a project if you go out with friends and an "A" if you stay home and study, pick the former. The relationships you build will be far more useful to you in life that getting the "A."
Not saying all the fun stops, it just becomes less sporadic and further between visits with friends.
The reason I am saying all of this is because I wish someone would have told it to me...not that I would have listened anyway.
I don't really get much out of friendships. There, I said it. The desire, let alone the need, to initiate and maintain such social rituals is simply not there. The whole concept of connecting for connectedness sake without a tangible goal to go after has always been foreign to me. Thankfully, growing older makes it easier to hide one's lack of social bonds, needs and desires.
I've often wondered if an adult fraternity scheme would be practical. I suppose this is why country clubs exist.
You don't even need to me approaching middle age. I'm in my 20s and moved halfway across the country recently, and am continually amazed at how hard it is to make good friends of the same gender. Given all the websites/events/groups dedicated to meeting people to date I've found it far easier than ever to get dates, but more difficult to make friends. It's a weird reversal. There's probably an opportunity for a little business there, but I haven't quite worked out how it would work.
There has got to be a writing style rule somewhere out there that says you should not capitalize the entirety of a word at the beginning of an article if doing so forms a common acronym. It took me almost a solid minute to make sense of that first sentence.
This is much better than the average lifestyle piece, or at least I guess it is. I couldn't read it - it's too painfully accurate. I'm very sad that our society works this way.
I think I'll go walk the dog.
I think I'll go walk the dog.
Wasn't there a movie with Paul Rudd based on this premise?
Sorry, I don't agree with the premise of this piece. I'm finding it easier to make connections and friends since I've left school and the place I grew up. Are these BFF-type connections? Not yet since they haven't had the time to really flourish. But with time, I anticipate they will since we share common goals & interests. When you're in your teens/early 20's, you're at the mercy of a small pool of individuals (classmates, neighbors, people in town) that you may have absolutely nothing in common with other than sharing the same space or a passing interest in the same music, tv show etc. These passing commonalities aren't indicative of a friendship that will last.
Maybe I've just always been pickier about who I've associated with. I don't know.
I also think it's got the vibe of one of those pieces that make you feel guilty for getting older, i.e. the nonsense of entrepreneurial "peak ages"
Maybe I've just always been pickier about who I've associated with. I don't know.
I also think it's got the vibe of one of those pieces that make you feel guilty for getting older, i.e. the nonsense of entrepreneurial "peak ages"
> Thayer Prime, a 32-year-old strategy consultant who lives in London, has even developed a playful 100-point scale (100 being “best friend forever”). In her mind, she starts to dock new friend candidates as they begin to display annoying or disloyal behavior. Nine times out of 10, she said, her new friends end up from 30 to 60, or little more than an acquaintance.
Whoa. I would never want to be acquaintances with this person.
And yet that's not too far off from what I - and I think most people - are doing. Sure, I don't have a scale. But I'm sizing people up. If I had that cynical, narrow-minded approach back in high school, I don't think I'd have the life-long friends I have now. I'm working on shutting that inner voice up, but I think it's something that slowly creeps in over time.
But that's just part of the problem - the other is that, especially with big moves, there's no obvious support structure for making new friends. Having moved across the country a few months ago, I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any idea HNers?
Whoa. I would never want to be acquaintances with this person.
And yet that's not too far off from what I - and I think most people - are doing. Sure, I don't have a scale. But I'm sizing people up. If I had that cynical, narrow-minded approach back in high school, I don't think I'd have the life-long friends I have now. I'm working on shutting that inner voice up, but I think it's something that slowly creeps in over time.
But that's just part of the problem - the other is that, especially with big moves, there's no obvious support structure for making new friends. Having moved across the country a few months ago, I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any idea HNers?
I have been thinking about this as well. I often wonder that it is not only my friends that I got pickier, as the article suggests, but I also changed, became more withdrawn, more introverted, and thus maybe less fun to be around.
Then of course there is the problem of time. That coupled with priorities, make it very hard to balance friends with family with career. After having children, I just want to spend more time with them than making friends, even though I might say that "yes, having more and better friends would be nice" my daily actions and attitudes probably don't reflect that.
I have also realized that being friends with co-workers doesn't work. They switch jobs or there is often competition for the same bonus pool, same cool projects and this turns things sour
Then of course there is the problem of time. That coupled with priorities, make it very hard to balance friends with family with career. After having children, I just want to spend more time with them than making friends, even though I might say that "yes, having more and better friends would be nice" my daily actions and attitudes probably don't reflect that.
I have also realized that being friends with co-workers doesn't work. They switch jobs or there is often competition for the same bonus pool, same cool projects and this turns things sour
I'm 21 and having just moved across the country for a job this isn't resonating with my life so much, since I already had a lot of friends where I am. But looking back, it's pretty clear that 90% of my parents' good friends came from two categories: people they'd known since college, and parents of me or my sisters' friends.
I think the expected reaction to this is to be afraid of it, especially given I don't make friends very easily my best friends today are all people I've known since elementary school, and already I'm only in contact with a handful of people from college. But somehow I find it reassuring, my takeaway is that if I work at it I can stay good friends with all of these people, and maybe that'll be enough. Plus someday I'll have kids and hopefully their friends will have nice parents, I know my parents are as good friends with my friends' parents as I am with them (wow that's a badly written sentence!).
I think the expected reaction to this is to be afraid of it, especially given I don't make friends very easily my best friends today are all people I've known since elementary school, and already I'm only in contact with a handful of people from college. But somehow I find it reassuring, my takeaway is that if I work at it I can stay good friends with all of these people, and maybe that'll be enough. Plus someday I'll have kids and hopefully their friends will have nice parents, I know my parents are as good friends with my friends' parents as I am with them (wow that's a badly written sentence!).
I hadn't really ever given this much thought, but now if I categorize the overwhelming majority of my friends, they fall into the following buckets:
High-School Friends (who I still stay in touch with, although only peripherally, as I don't still live where I grew up)
College Friends (which includes a subset of High School friends, who I do a better job of staying in touch with, but who also mostly live back where I went to school)
Work Friends (the overwhelming majority of my friends are people I've worked with at one time or another. Reservations about mixing work with pleasure aside, people in my line of work tend to have a lot in common)
Photography School Friends (I suppose similar to college, but they are more recent, and local. This group is unusual in that the entire class ended up becoming really really close)
For whatever reason, I've never had trouble meeting people. What has proven to be a lot of work is actually committing to spending time with people (as my natural state is to never want to leave the house under any circumstances).
I've found online presence exacerbates that, as it's easy for me to convince myself that I'm being social merely by responding to people's Facebook posts (which doesn't really cut it).
High-School Friends (who I still stay in touch with, although only peripherally, as I don't still live where I grew up)
College Friends (which includes a subset of High School friends, who I do a better job of staying in touch with, but who also mostly live back where I went to school)
Work Friends (the overwhelming majority of my friends are people I've worked with at one time or another. Reservations about mixing work with pleasure aside, people in my line of work tend to have a lot in common)
Photography School Friends (I suppose similar to college, but they are more recent, and local. This group is unusual in that the entire class ended up becoming really really close)
For whatever reason, I've never had trouble meeting people. What has proven to be a lot of work is actually committing to spending time with people (as my natural state is to never want to leave the house under any circumstances).
I've found online presence exacerbates that, as it's easy for me to convince myself that I'm being social merely by responding to people's Facebook posts (which doesn't really cut it).
It's definitely challenging.
One part is actually meeting people with whom you click. Unless you go to a lot of meetups and similar events, overall, you won't be meeting that many new people besides co-workers. And meetups tend to have a theme other than just having fun, whereas that's what most college activities are about. So you meet people in a serious context, and you need to bring the fun with you.*
So, you first need to come across someone with whom you click, and then you have to fuel that relationship. What's difficult there is that you need time. Once married with children, grabbing a beer after work is not as simple. You also have that awkwardness as pictured in "I love you, man" (and I believe a Louis CK sketch in his TV show): you have to acknowledge pretty fast that there's something going on and that you feel you could indeed become friends! It's one meetup, you're awkward now with that guy who seems cool, or you might never see him again.
But as you grow older, you also lose a lot of that casualness that you had before: you don't just invite them over after work to play video games. Now that you're a "grown-up", it's "a dinner". And since you're a grown-up, your home has better be somewhat clean, and you can't just serve pizza. What was a spontaneous interaction before is now a whole event that needs planning, some cleaning, some cooking, etc. (until of course, you become real friends) So these happen less, and friendships can be like making mayonnaise: if you don't make it go right now, you'll never make it go at all.
* I'm not saying meetups are no fun, just that it's not the end-game for everyone. Some people are there only for "professional" reasons and you need to figure out what people are looking for.
One part is actually meeting people with whom you click. Unless you go to a lot of meetups and similar events, overall, you won't be meeting that many new people besides co-workers. And meetups tend to have a theme other than just having fun, whereas that's what most college activities are about. So you meet people in a serious context, and you need to bring the fun with you.*
So, you first need to come across someone with whom you click, and then you have to fuel that relationship. What's difficult there is that you need time. Once married with children, grabbing a beer after work is not as simple. You also have that awkwardness as pictured in "I love you, man" (and I believe a Louis CK sketch in his TV show): you have to acknowledge pretty fast that there's something going on and that you feel you could indeed become friends! It's one meetup, you're awkward now with that guy who seems cool, or you might never see him again.
But as you grow older, you also lose a lot of that casualness that you had before: you don't just invite them over after work to play video games. Now that you're a "grown-up", it's "a dinner". And since you're a grown-up, your home has better be somewhat clean, and you can't just serve pizza. What was a spontaneous interaction before is now a whole event that needs planning, some cleaning, some cooking, etc. (until of course, you become real friends) So these happen less, and friendships can be like making mayonnaise: if you don't make it go right now, you'll never make it go at all.
* I'm not saying meetups are no fun, just that it's not the end-game for everyone. Some people are there only for "professional" reasons and you need to figure out what people are looking for.
[deleted]
This adds something to http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html. The dying would like to not just have kept in touch with friends, but also to have made more of them. PG's edit captures the generalization, but I hadn't noticed that before.
The why is so much more interesting. Part of it is a product of topology, visualize this pattern: home, car, work, car, home. There's not a lot of surface area in there to meet someone. This is a product of America's lack of streets, we have roads not streets. Roads are for cars, streets are for people. Some good reading on this subject is, "The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community", and of course "Streets for People, A Primer for Americans".
I've found that joining clubs (either informal, like the climbing club I was a member of) or formal (like the Odd Fellows or Masons or Kiwanis) is a great way to meet friends. You still have to deal with the time issues, but at least you don't have tensions of work--and as a plus you get to meet people with different types of employment and age.
However, the main issue is that when you are in college and your early 20s, you tend have gobs of time to make friends--once you hit a certain age (or marital status or child status) other activities come first. Might as well celebrate the closeness with your family or your work achievements as kvetch about the difficulty of making friends.
I'm in my mid 30s.
However, the main issue is that when you are in college and your early 20s, you tend have gobs of time to make friends--once you hit a certain age (or marital status or child status) other activities come first. Might as well celebrate the closeness with your family or your work achievements as kvetch about the difficulty of making friends.
I'm in my mid 30s.
[deleted]
something hinted at but not made explicit is the relentless filling of your calendar as you get older. it's simply harder than ever to get together with people on short notice, which is one of the major ways of nurturing nascent friendships.
This reminds me of a time, last year, when I needed to fill out some paperwork that asked me to list four friends and I couldn't list one (I ended up listing my wife's friends instead).
Sadly, these days, I don't often meet anyone with similar interests. The people who I do meet and find interesting are often female, which leaves me confused about how friendly to get without causing people and my wife to think I am cheating.
This definitely used to be easier.
Sadly, these days, I don't often meet anyone with similar interests. The people who I do meet and find interesting are often female, which leaves me confused about how friendly to get without causing people and my wife to think I am cheating.
This definitely used to be easier.
This rings very true. In fact, I turned 29 eleven months ago and I moved here (to another country, albeit culturally similar) eight months ago.
I have zero friends.
My coworkers are vastly different from me. I work with two people the most; one is a younger guy who goes clubbing and is interested in getting laid, and the other is a 40-something woman who is most likely menopausal and hates everything in her life.
I'm married to boot.
All my friends and wife are back home. My immediate family is here but we couldn't be any more different. My situation is complicated, but for all intents and purposes, you can say I was adopted.
I moved here for a better job, yet it happens to be a city I hate; a city in which driving and huge cars is a fact of life, yet I absolutely despise cars. I am used to taking public transport, cycling, walking, and even running. I run 5 times a week. The air is so bad here I had chest pain yesterday after running. I still do it.
I observe the people in this dreadful city and feel they are either extremely superficial, cliquey, and stereotypical or go-getters who do nearly anything to go up the corporate ladder in a dog-eat-dog 'world'.
Where is the substance?
If you've not guessed already, I'm trying to get out of here, but it would be nice to have meaningful conversations or form some type of meaningful relationships along the way.
Most Americans (and maybe Canadians) will guess what city I'm in, and as others have mentioned, the American west coast just works differently, especially the southwest. It's definitely not me.
(Sorry if this sounds like a soapbox, corny or like I'm wearing my 'heart on my sleeve' - I know it's not a social norm. It wasn't my intention and I hope someone can extract something useful out of it.)
I have zero friends.
My coworkers are vastly different from me. I work with two people the most; one is a younger guy who goes clubbing and is interested in getting laid, and the other is a 40-something woman who is most likely menopausal and hates everything in her life.
I'm married to boot.
All my friends and wife are back home. My immediate family is here but we couldn't be any more different. My situation is complicated, but for all intents and purposes, you can say I was adopted.
I moved here for a better job, yet it happens to be a city I hate; a city in which driving and huge cars is a fact of life, yet I absolutely despise cars. I am used to taking public transport, cycling, walking, and even running. I run 5 times a week. The air is so bad here I had chest pain yesterday after running. I still do it.
I observe the people in this dreadful city and feel they are either extremely superficial, cliquey, and stereotypical or go-getters who do nearly anything to go up the corporate ladder in a dog-eat-dog 'world'.
Where is the substance?
If you've not guessed already, I'm trying to get out of here, but it would be nice to have meaningful conversations or form some type of meaningful relationships along the way.
Most Americans (and maybe Canadians) will guess what city I'm in, and as others have mentioned, the American west coast just works differently, especially the southwest. It's definitely not me.
(Sorry if this sounds like a soapbox, corny or like I'm wearing my 'heart on my sleeve' - I know it's not a social norm. It wasn't my intention and I hope someone can extract something useful out of it.)
Where's summer camp for adults?
At this point they're just trolling the "The [New York] Times Is On It" twitter feed: https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt
I think part of what makes it harder to make "true friends" when you're older is that everyone is more independent and it takes a lot of work to get a person to consider you for a true friend.
What I mean is, when you're in high school and college, everything just seems bigger, and any help from anyone counts a lot. Helping someone pass the exams, get a girlfriend, restore their dad's car (which they wrecked :-) can be instant reasons for that person to start considering you a true friend, and that sticks around for a looong time.
When you're an adult, you support yourself, and it takes much more to get to that point: heck, I don't even know what it would take to make a best friend - help him/her get out of jail, get a green card, buy a house or something?
Everything else are just little things that don't count for much in the minds of most adults...
What I mean is, when you're in high school and college, everything just seems bigger, and any help from anyone counts a lot. Helping someone pass the exams, get a girlfriend, restore their dad's car (which they wrecked :-) can be instant reasons for that person to start considering you a true friend, and that sticks around for a looong time.
When you're an adult, you support yourself, and it takes much more to get to that point: heck, I don't even know what it would take to make a best friend - help him/her get out of jail, get a green card, buy a house or something?
Everything else are just little things that don't count for much in the minds of most adults...
Making friends as an adult can certainly be difficult, although I do think some of it may be self-inflicted. I find that I definitely am one to prefer quality over quantity, so a lot of times, I just don't go looking for new friends. The last time I did, I happened to get lucky. The last new friend I made was almost exactly a year ago, but in that year, he's become one of the best friends I've ever had.
He's an HN regular, so maybe he's reading this and will chime in and offer his view on the subject. :)
For me, there are all sorts of practical reasons, but a lot of it just boils down to the fact that there aren't a lot of people around me that I share common interests with. So most of my lasting adult relationships have started as online acquaintances that grew into real, meaningful, "offline" friendships (that's also how I met my husband 16yrs ago).
He's an HN regular, so maybe he's reading this and will chime in and offer his view on the subject. :)
For me, there are all sorts of practical reasons, but a lot of it just boils down to the fact that there aren't a lot of people around me that I share common interests with. So most of my lasting adult relationships have started as online acquaintances that grew into real, meaningful, "offline" friendships (that's also how I met my husband 16yrs ago).
Just going to share a little anecdote here.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. The next year I organized a softball team, mostly coworkers at the time. There are six of us that have been playing since we started, going on seven years now, even though we've almost all since changed jobs. Even though it's "just softball" (and our league is about as uncompetitive as possible without being totally beer-league), we've all made attempts to make it to games that bordered on absurd. I'm talking like, having a game end like 90 minutes before a flight I had booked, so I brought my luggage to the game, planned for a cab to arrive right as our game ended, and changed in the back seat of the cab on the way to the airport. Sure, I could have just skipped the game. I don't know if it's as contrived as "not wanting to let the team down." But these guys were my friends and I wanted to be there. Outside the six of us, we've had countless guys come in for a season or two, and then kind of fall off and stop playing. Almost all my post-college "good friends" -- the kinds of guys I invited to my wedding, for example -- have played on this softball team.
So I've thought about this a lot. I guess I've concluded that male friendships in particular are more easily forged in some environment of "commitment." In the "you've been there for me, so you're a good guy, so I can feel comfortable about opening up to you about subjects you only bring up with your good friends," sense. Also, I don't think this happens overnight, at least not for me. We were playing for two years before we'd do something like get dinner after the game. It was another long while before we'd talk about deeper friendship stuff like career advice, girlfriend problems, etc.
Hopefully I'm not making this sound like you can only make friends when you're a "bro" who plays sports. When we're younger, these organizations exist everywhere: high school, college, school clubs, sports teams, whatever. Just any place where you're expected to give more than what may be convenient and everyone else does the same. Going back to the softball team, let's say I get two emails the day of a game. One guy says, "hey my boss wants to pull me in a meeting that probably run long, I managed to tell him I have a hard stop at 7:00pm, but I may be like 10 minutes late to the game." Another guy says, "hey, I had a big lunch, I'm gonna skip the game." Which guy am I going to end up being friends with?
So I suppose my conclusion, at least for me personally, is that it's usually not enough to find people I have something in common with, but something in common that we're both committed to. It's tougher to find that after high school and college, but it's not impossible.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. The next year I organized a softball team, mostly coworkers at the time. There are six of us that have been playing since we started, going on seven years now, even though we've almost all since changed jobs. Even though it's "just softball" (and our league is about as uncompetitive as possible without being totally beer-league), we've all made attempts to make it to games that bordered on absurd. I'm talking like, having a game end like 90 minutes before a flight I had booked, so I brought my luggage to the game, planned for a cab to arrive right as our game ended, and changed in the back seat of the cab on the way to the airport. Sure, I could have just skipped the game. I don't know if it's as contrived as "not wanting to let the team down." But these guys were my friends and I wanted to be there. Outside the six of us, we've had countless guys come in for a season or two, and then kind of fall off and stop playing. Almost all my post-college "good friends" -- the kinds of guys I invited to my wedding, for example -- have played on this softball team.
So I've thought about this a lot. I guess I've concluded that male friendships in particular are more easily forged in some environment of "commitment." In the "you've been there for me, so you're a good guy, so I can feel comfortable about opening up to you about subjects you only bring up with your good friends," sense. Also, I don't think this happens overnight, at least not for me. We were playing for two years before we'd do something like get dinner after the game. It was another long while before we'd talk about deeper friendship stuff like career advice, girlfriend problems, etc.
Hopefully I'm not making this sound like you can only make friends when you're a "bro" who plays sports. When we're younger, these organizations exist everywhere: high school, college, school clubs, sports teams, whatever. Just any place where you're expected to give more than what may be convenient and everyone else does the same. Going back to the softball team, let's say I get two emails the day of a game. One guy says, "hey my boss wants to pull me in a meeting that probably run long, I managed to tell him I have a hard stop at 7:00pm, but I may be like 10 minutes late to the game." Another guy says, "hey, I had a big lunch, I'm gonna skip the game." Which guy am I going to end up being friends with?
So I suppose my conclusion, at least for me personally, is that it's usually not enough to find people I have something in common with, but something in common that we're both committed to. It's tougher to find that after high school and college, but it's not impossible.
Anyone for whom this story seriously hits home, but who has success stories to share?
I think this shows how important it is to have interests outside of work. Most of my real friends are people I've met through shared interests, and earn less money than me and it matters little. Pity is that most middle aged people have little energy left in their lives to devote toward hobbies/self-improvement after work, kids and whatever they call recreation.
So here he was, a multimillionaire who'd spent the last five years or so working and playing the market to the exclusion of everything else. He was one of those people who had unconsciously believed if he just had enough money he could find a way to be happy. When he finally had the money he realized relationships with other people are what make you happy. But at that point he didn't have any friends and didn't know how to make them.
He was, without a doubt, the most miserable guy I've ever met. He was always willing to buy a round or lend people money. He'd go to Vegas and pay for five or six people to go with him. So there were always people around. There were always women willing to sleep with him. But they were there for the money and he couldn't delude himself into thinking otherwise. The money actually added to the problem, because it meant even when he wasn't paying, people had a motive to hang around. So he became cynical and a bit paranoid.
Eventually he got into drugs and ended up eating a whole bottle of pills. I've always wondered if any of those hangers-on went to the funeral.