What are your best tips on how to make friends as you get older, readers? Have you found that there are certain phases of life where it’s much harder to make friends? (How do you think the pandemic changed existing friendships and created or inhibited new friendships?)
How Jane Fonda Says to Make Friends as You Get Older
I just saw this great clip of advice from Jane Fonda on how to make friends as you get older. The clip is kind of adorable, especially the way Sally Fields reacts to her advice, so do watch it — but her advice basically boils down to “be really intentional.” Tell your acquaintance you’d really like to be better friends! Make dates! Pursue the friendships!
My Tips on How to Make Friends As You Get Older
I think Jane Fonda’s advice is great! At least one good friendship of mine came about in that manner — there was some cocktail party or some after-work thing I attended with a group of people from my law firm, and one of the other women and I really hit it off. “Let’s hang out more!” she said, and we cheers’ed to that and decided that night what our next hangout would be.
(We decided to see the Affordable Art Fair together. Spoiler alert, it is not that affordable!)
I wound up being a bridesmaid in her wedding, and had I had any bridesmaids in my wedding, she would have been one of them. (I had a really small wedding; my brother was my man of honor.)
This kind of takes us back to our discussion about where to meet people to date — but all of those tips apply to meeting new people to see if you hit it off. Alumni events! Charities! (Readers always recommend the Junior League.) Networking groups! Hobby groups and classes! Athletic classes and groups!
{related: how to make new friends and network}
The other tip I might offer is to let existing friends know how much they mean to you. I just had a phone call last week with a good friend, and at one point said, “you know, this is going to sound really weird because we haven’t talked in like a year, but you’re one of my closest friends.” And she immediately said ME TOOOOOOOOOO!!! And we laughed about how it can be kind of hard to say that stuff to friends!
(I’ve also seen a meme on Facebook — something along the lines of “Tell your friends you love them. Make it weird, you say it so often.”)
For my $.02, I think there have definitely been phases of life where it’s been easier — and harder — to make new friends. Among the easiest:
- School!
- Doing the 2L summer associate thing and then going back to that firm to work — at my old firm I think our summer group was 50 people, and the group of people we started with was something like 40, with about 98% overlap.
- New parenthood – there are soooo many opportunities to talk with other parents, either among the interminable “mommy & me” classes, or the period where you’re hanging around waiting to pick your child up from daycare/school. Plus, all of my sons’ playdates also had at least two parents present, at least up until the point where you feel comfortable dropping your kid off at someone else’s home. (Even Lamaze class was great for us — one of my closest newer friendships is a couple we met in Lamaze. Plus — bonus! — our kids are almost exactly the same age, so we’ve even been able to do some family outings together.)
- I can also see it being easy to make new friends when you move to a new city, if only because you have to put yourself out there and be really intentional with friends.
- (Readers, I’m curious if you’ve found other times when it’s really easy to make new friends!)
Times when it hasn’t been the easiest to make new friends:
- Almost every time else, I think!
So readers, what are your best tips on how to make friends as you get older? Do you think there are differences between making friends (the logistics of how you make friends, that is) at age 20, age 40, and age 60?
Stock photo via Stencil.
Kat
Source link