I’m 32 and making friends has never been harder – or more embarrassing

Want to know a secret? I’d really like to have more friends. For most of my life, this was never something I struggled with – until I turned 30, moved out of London and back to my home city. This shift means I’m much closer to my family, but hundreds of miles and an expensive train ride away from my core network of pals. Since I’ve moved, too, many of them have retreated into coupledom. Now I see “we” rather than “I” in their WhatsApp updates, a semantic shift that tends to mean less time available for mates and more for meeting in-laws and mortgage advisers.

The answer to this predicament, of course, is to make new friends. But that’s easier said than done when even admitting that you’re in need of pals feels horribly exposing. Somehow, being open about looking for romantic love feels socially acceptable, even laudable. But confessing that you’re lacking platonic relationships? It sounds weird, cringe, a bit suspect. And that’s despite the vast swathes of research suggesting that strong friendships are vital for wellbeing, and a predictor for longer, healthier lives.

Then there’s the truly awkward bit: actually making the effort to meet new people and, horror of horrors, trying to solidify a promising encounter into a future friendship. “Will you be my friend?” might work for seven-year-olds, but doesn’t cut it for me at 32. I don’t particularly want to end up enacting my own gender-flipped reboot of I Love You, Man, the 2009 movie that sees Paul Rudd go friendship hunting after realising that he has no one to fill the role of best man at his wedding.

There are plenty of apps, events, Instagram communities and groups, all designed to facilitate connection. And yet I often feel a stubborn, cynical resistance that stops me from signing up. Will it be squirm-inducingly awkward? What if there’s icebreaker games? What if all the people at the friend-making event are secretly judging me for also attending the very same event?

It’s easy to fall into believing that you’re the only person who feels this way, that the present scarcity of your friendships indicates some horrible, deep-rooted personal flaw. But when I share a few posts on social media asking if I’m the only one who finds the process of making friends as a grown-up to be utterly cringe-inducing, I’m inundated with responses. Mums tell me they struggle with school gate small talk. The child-free, meanwhile, feel that parents aren’t interested in befriending them. Men point out that many friendship meet-ups and activities are geared towards women. Others are finding it difficult to put down roots after moving somewhere new, or to fill the gaps left by friends who’ve fled the city.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mia Ford lives alone and has a handful of close friends rather than a sprawling group. “When you get older and you realise that your circle has got so much smaller, you think maybe it could be a reflection of yourself, and you think ‘why do I not have as many friends as I did?’” she says. For her, the cringe factor of making friends can feel a bit like dating. She spent “a glorious 24 hours” on Bumble BFF, the platonic off-shoot of the dating app, before giving up. “I came across lots of really amazing women that I thought looked really cool and I’d want to be friends with, but it was the same fate as with dating apps, where you match with someone and then no one talks,” she recalls. “I wasn’t going to be the first! So that’s the trap I fell into.”

Sociologists tend to agree that there are three important factors when it comes to forming close friendships. The first is proximity, for obvious practical reasons. The second is repeated, unplanned interactions – think extended periods of organic hanging out. The final one is a setting that allows us to let our guard down and be vulnerable. When you break down the recipe like this, it’s not surprising that so many of us struggle. A 2018 study from the University of Kansas estimated that it takes around 90 hours to convert an acquaintance into a friend, and a staggering 200 hours to foster a close friendship. Adult life, with its never-ending carousel of responsibilities and obligations, doesn’t exactly give us plentiful opportunities for spontaneous socialising. It can be difficult enough to eke out the time to tend to pre-existing friendships, let alone allocate hundreds of hours to making new ones.

Dr Jenny van Hooff,

Childhood, in contrast, provides us with the conditions for friendship to flourish. When we’re young, “everything is structured around friendship being the most important kind of relationship to develop”, says Dr Jenny van Hooff, reader in sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Long days at school, followed by sports, other extracurriculars or a shared journey home, mean that we’re constantly interacting with our peers in a way that feels organic (I got to know one of my oldest friends over the course of hundreds of journeys on our constantly delayed school bus, for example). “There’s not really any effort involved – being a friend is at the forefront of our childhood personal life,” she notes.

If you head on to university, your student experience will likely be “very much structured around friendship as well”, van Hooff says. Following the same schedule (for lectures or nights out) as a massive group of your peers provides plenty of common ground. But once we emerge into adulthood, it’s assumed that our priorities should shift. “The couple norm starts to take precedence, and people prioritise couple relationships,” she adds. Plus, “it’s assumed that you’ve established all your friendships and they don’t need any more work”. If you think about the traditional “markers of success” in adulthood, they tend to be “structured around our career, romantic relationships and having children – they’re the normative things, and there’s no space for friendships”.

Friendship coach Cally Stewart agrees that grown-ups aren’t always encouraged to see platonic bonds as valuable. “I really believe that as a society, we see friendship as a trivial thing, as something that we do as children, that we grow out of when we become adults,” she says. And if we’re collectively receiving the message that these relationships aren’t worth prioritising, it’s hardly surprising that none of us are investing the (vast) amounts of time required to consolidate new connections.

We also tend to underestimate how warmly others feel about us, thanks to a phenomenon known as the liking gap. In a Cornell University study, 34 students had one-to-one conversations, then rated the interactions afterwards. The participants underplayed how much their partner liked them – and the shyer the student, the bigger the gap. If our natural impulse is to assume we’re disliked, then it’s no wonder that we avoid putting ourselves out there, friendship-wise. “I think we’re really scared of risk in our personal lives,” van Hooff says. “We want certainties.”

No one likes being rejected, but being turned down is a natural part of trying to find a romantic partner, and therefore easier to brush off. “If someone doesn’t want to date you, you just move on to the next person,” Ford says. “Whereas if it’s a [potential] friend, that feels more like a personal attack.”

Unfortunately, though, there’s no getting around the fact that trying to make friends as an adult requires us to be pretty forthright. “We have to be really intentional,” Stewart says. If she meets someone and feels a platonic spark, she’s currently “forcing [her]self [...] to say: ‘I think we’d be great friends, can we connect?’” I’m impressed by her bravery – even if I can imagine few things I’d like to do less.

Tricky conversations like these feel like a major hurdle for adult friendships – and Stewart admits that a straightforward overture like this doesn’t always go to plan. “Even as somebody that can strike up a conversation with a stranger and have a really good laugh, the moment I then say, ‘can we connect somewhere?’, there’s a real shift in the dynamic,” she says. Take one instance when she was chatting happily with a woman she’d met on a crowded Primark shop floor, then asked if she could follow her on Instagram. “It was very noticeable instantly that she had felt like there had been a boundary crossed.”

Encounters like this one can turn awkward, she suggests, because “there’s no set societal expectation for friendship, and so it’s probably one of the only things that we’re actually navigating blindly”. If Stewart had done the same thing at, say, a networking event, “the expectation is already there that you will swap contact details”. Somehow it’s less embarrassing for us to endorse someone on LinkedIn than to slide into someone’s DMs (but in a platonic way).

Cally Stewart

And yet, these risks are worth taking, because for every person who stammers awkwardly when you make a straight-up approach, there’ll surely be one who appreciates your openness. “Strangers respond to vulnerability,” says Lee Thompson, the co-founder of Flash Pack, a social travel company for solo travellers. “While the idea of asking ‘will you be my friend?’ is just too cringeworthy for some people, for others it strikes a chord.” If you’re going to put yourself out there, he adds, “there’s no half-measures, [and] you might as well come straight out with it, as awkward as that feels – people respect it.” After making a concerted effort to prioritise friendship in his forties, Thompson says he’s now “a lot more open to people early on”.

His tactic echoes some advice passed by my friend and former colleague, writer Edwina Langley, who, like me, has recently moved to a new area and embarked on the tricky task of making new connections. “Being absolutely yourself is also a good approach,” she says. “I met someone in the park who told me, in the first minute, something that felt very personal. I was dazzled by her honesty, and sheer lack of pretence. She is now one of my new good friends.”

Ford, meanwhile, decided to take action by thinking about what she loves – watching films – and setting up screenings for people with the same interests. “I was so desperately craving community, with being single, living alone and not really having a big friendship group, that I ended up having to create my own,” she says. She launched Bad Gals Film Club last year, and has organised events in Manchester and London. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, no one is gonna come in person to the screening, and the first one I did sold out, which was insane. It was just a room full of young women all like me, and I thought, ‘I think I may have just found the ultimate hack to make friends.’”

Finding common ground in smaller ways can be a good way to spark an initial connection too. “The first thing that we need to try and do is establish some similarity,” says Stewart. “People are really comfortable when they see themselves in you.” That can be as simple as a compliment, which then sets off “a connected conversation”. And if broaching the friendship question head on feels too much, it’s worth looking out for interest-specific groups (think book clubs, art classes, running groups) that meet regularly, so you can gradually and organically meet people with a guaranteed shared passion.

Wanting more connection in your life should be something to celebrate, not a source of shame. We need to “update our friendship ideals to reflect modern life”, Van Hooff believes, and to acknowledge that not everyone has a built-in group of pals, sitcom-style. “It’s not normal for people to have a gang they hang out with all the time,” she says. “So if someone’s in the same space as you, whether that’s a running club or an app for making friends, then they probably want the same thing too. It’s just [about] recognising that and also being a bit kinder to ourselves and other people as well.”

Friendship coach Cally Stewart’s five tips for making friends in adulthood

Go solo and make it a habit

Don’t be afraid to go places alone, whether it’s a local café, a book store or the gym. And once you’ve picked your places to hang out alone, make it a habit to go regularly. Familiarity builds connection and by making these places part of your routine, you’ll start noticing the same faces and they’ll start to notice you.

Get used to small talk

Small talk isn’t meaningless, it’s the bridge to deeper conversations. Start with something positive and easy, like “I always see you here, what’s your day been like so far?” or “I love your coat, where did you get it?” By using familiarity and compliments as a way to naturally open up the conversation, you’re less likely to face that dreaded rejection and more likely to enter into a conversation that just flows

Get intentional about your friendships

Stop waiting for friendships to magically fall into place. Start looking at the people you already know and take intentional steps to turn those acquaintances into friends. Instead of saying something like, “let’s grab coffee sometime”, get intentional with specifics, like “I’m going to this market on Saturday, want to join me?” Be clear, direct and follow up.

Don’t shy away from asking for friendship

It might feel awkward, cringy even, but saying “hey, I love your energy. I think we’d make great friends because…” can be a real game-changer. Acknowledge the connection you feel and suggest something casual to solidify it. Most people are flattered by this kind of honesty and it cuts through the small talk to lay a solid foundation

Be the one that initiates and invites

If you want to make friends, stop waiting for others to take the lead. Create opportunities to connect by organising something simple like a coffee meet-up, a casual walk or even an online catch-up. People love being included and by being the one to extend the invitation, you’ll naturally attract others who value connection.