When did you last make a new friend?
Not just bump into an old one. Not had coffee with someone you’ve known for twenty years. Actually make a brand new one.
If you had to stop and think about that, it isn’t because there’s something wrong with you.
Friendship used to happen by accident
In your twenties, thirties and forties, friendships are incidental. They don’t take much work to gather steam.
You meet people because you’re repeatedly in the same place, at the same time, with the same people, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with wanting friends. Proximity, repetition, and a shared excuse to be there. That’s the sweet spot.
The workplace. The gym class. The school gates. Dropping the children off at their friends’ houses. You see the same faces every week, and you simply become friends with the ones you get on with best. The ones who share your values, or your humour, or your situation.
Making friends when you’re younger doesn’t feel hard, because you aren’t really doing it. It’s happening to you.
Then the machinery disappears
Fast forward to fifty and beyond, and it gets harder.
The children may have left, possibly to somewhere much further away. Friends have moved or are busy looking after elderly parents. Some have divorced and drifted. Some have passed on.
In your twenties and thirties you’re constantly gaining people. After fifty, you mostly aren’t, and the losses don’t get replaced unless you make it happen.
And here’s the part that keeps everyone stuck. Admitting you’re lonely feels like admitting a failing. So, people often keep it to themselves, believing they’re the only ones who feel like this.
They aren’t.
I’ve been there myself
I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve suffered with crippling loneliness over the past ten years.
For most of the reasons above, but for me it was also because we moved a lot. Different towns, different cities, and every move meant leaving behind the few friends I’d managed to gather wherever I happened to be living at the time.
One thing before I go on, and I’ll only say it once. If it’s more than loneliness, if it’s been going on a long time, or it’s affecting how you sleep and eat, that’s worth a conversation with your GP. There’s no shame in that either.
Bill the dog, and the moment I nearly didn’t speak
I’m not one for giving up, and I’ve come to believe you have to take every opportunity to make friends. Just this weekend I put my own advice into practice.
I was at the pub, Jack Daniels and coke in hand. At the other end of the long bench where we were sitting were a couple with a beautiful black dog. Bill, he was called.
Bill came along the bench to say hello, got a little scratch, then wandered back to his owners. I nearly said something about how lovely he was but hesitated a just a fraction too long and the moment passed. I lost my nerve.
It feels a bit odd, doesn’t it, striking up a conversation in that sort of situation. ‘What if they don’t want to talk to me?’ is the thought usually doing a merry dance in the brain.
But then he wandered across again; he’d clearly enjoyed the scratch, and this time I took a deep breath. As he made his way back to his owners, I said how cute he was and asked his name.
That was enough.
Forty-five minutes later we’d had a proper chat about all sorts, swapped phone numbers, and agreed to meet up. They were genuinely interesting people who would have passed us by entirely if I hadn’t taken the leap.
Bill was a portable, and very cute, excuse to talk to strangers. And once you start noticing them, those excuses are everywhere.
Queues. Walking the dog. The woman you pass every morning on your way to buy milk. The class you go to. Every one of them is an opening, if you decide to use it.
The two holidays, and why a week beats a coffee
This year, and it took a bit of guts, I went on two holidays on my own. Both with groups of women I’d never met.
Seven days with each group. Talking, walking, doing yoga and laughing gave me exactly the proximity and repetition I’ve been describing. They were strangers to start with but they aren’t now. I’m going snowboarding with them next year.
Don’t imagine I skipped merrily into those holidays, though. What happened is that I decided earlier in the year that I needed more people in my life. Friends, not acquaintances. And that the only person who could make that happen was me.
I had to dig deep and work my way up to booking the time away but I’m very glad I did. Having no friends is not healthy, and I’m a great deal happier now, even though these women live all over the place and aren’t in my life every day. We have a WhatsApp group, and we chat when we can.
That’s the bit worth holding on to. It isn’t the one-off coffee that builds a friendship. It’s the repetition.
Over to you
Have you been in a situation where you could have reached out to someone and didn’t?
What stopped you, and what might you do differently if it came round again?
Tell me in the comments, I read every one.
Something’s coming in September
I’m building somewhere for exactly this. A community for women over 50, opening in September. Somewhere with a weekly rhythm, because as I said, it’s the repetition that does it, not the one-offs.
And if any of this landed, start with my free guide.
The Invisible Woman’s Rebellion is twenty-one pages on taking up space again as a woman over 50, which is really all that saying hello to a stranger is.
Grab your free copy of The Invisible Woman’s Rebellion HERE.
And you’ll be the first to know when the community doors open.