• 00:00 Can Happiness Really Be Found Through Friendships?
  • 00:19 Why Your Friendships Are More Important Than You Think
  • 04:58 The Hidden Challenges of Building Friendships as an Adult
  • 12:55 What Actually Defines a True Friendship?
  • 15:40 Friendship Experiments: What Works and What Doesn’t
  • 22:33 The Biggest Lessons We Learned About Friendship
  • 25:45 Vulnerability Hangover: Ever Felt It? Here’s Why It Happens
  • 25:56 Turning Points: When You Realize You’re Doing Friendship All Wrong
  • 27:45 Discovering the Power of Friendships with People Who Are Different
  • 28:19 The Comfort and Complexity of Long-Term Friendships
  • 29:53 Bumble for Friends: Can You Really Make Friends on an App?
  • 32:01 How Internalized Shame is Holding You Back from Friendship
  • 43:57 Why We Crave Community—and How to Build One
  • 47:01 Modern Loneliness: Why Life is Designed to Keep Us Isolated
  • 53:44 Final Reflections: How to Create Real Friendships That Last

Why It’s So Hard to Make New Friends as an Adult

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Why It’s So Hard to Make New Friends as an Adult

Having solid, supportive friendships is one of the keys to an authentically happy life, and is the noble goal of many people in coaching or therapy. And, let’s be real: making new friends as an adult is tough. Whether you’re deep into a career, busy raising a family, or simply trying to juggle all the responsibilities of adulting, finding the time—and courage—to build new friendships can feel like climbing Mount Everest.

 In a recent episode of Love, Happiness & Success, I dove deep into this exact issue with Kelly Stout, a fantastic writer and journalist who explored the challenge of making friends in her essay, I Gave Myself a Month to Make One New Friend: How Hard Could That Be? That was published in Esquire magazine. Spoiler alert: it’s harder than it sounds!

Kelly’s experiences got me thinking about why we struggle to make new friends as adults, and what we can do about it. In this article, I’m sharing not only what we discussed on the podcast but also insights from psychological research on adult friendships to help you better understand what’s really going on—and how you can make it a little easier to connect with others.

The Science Behind Why Friendships Matter

Before we jump into the how, let’s talk about why friendships are so crucial to our happiness and well-being.

Research consistently shows that the quality of our relationships is one of the most important predictors of long-term happiness. It’s not necessarily about what’s going on inside of us (although working on ourselves is always a good idea). What really matters is the quality of our connections with others, especially our friendships. A study by Harvard Medical School on adult development found that strong relationships, more than wealth or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives.

Loneliness has become a public health crisis. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General has even declared loneliness an epidemic. Feeling isolated can have serious consequences, including increased risks of mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and physical health problems, such as heart disease and a weakened immune system. The antidote? Meaningful friendships.

Why Is It So Hard to Make Friends as an Adult?

As we discussed in the podcast, building new friendships as an adult isn’t as simple as it was when we were younger. In our twenties, we may have had more unstructured time, fewer responsibilities, and the convenience of running into people regularly—whether it was through school, work, or social gatherings. But as we grow older, life circumstances change, and so do our opportunities for making new connections.

One of the biggest challenges is time. Between work, family commitments, and managing daily responsibilities, most adults simply don’t have the bandwidth to engage in the unplanned, spontaneous interactions that tend to nurture friendships. As Kelly pointed out in her essay, making a friend requires more than just bumping into someone you like—it involves creating the space for shared vulnerability and consistent interaction.Dr. Marisa Franco, author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends, emphasizes that continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability are two key ingredients for forming deep friendships . The problem is, most of us aren’t in situations where those conditions naturally arise anymore. We’re busy, we’re tired, and in many cases, we’re also a little anxious about putting ourselves out there.

Unlock the Healthy Relationships Collection

Create more meaningful, balanced, and joyful connections today!

The Emotional Barriers: Fear of Rejection and Vulnerability Hangovers

Another thing that came up in the podcast—and something many of us can relate to—is the fear of rejection. As adults, we’ve had years of life experiences that can make us more cautious about opening up to new people. We might wonder, “Am I coming across okay?” or “Will they like me?” That internal chatter can create a sense of self-consciousness that prevents us from being authentic in new social settings.

Kelly shared a moment from her experiment where she and a potential new friend decided to share secrets. While it initially felt like a bonding moment, Kelly later experienced what Brené Brown calls a “vulnerability hangover.” This is the uncomfortable feeling that follows after you’ve opened up, only to question whether you went too far . Vulnerability is necessary for building deep connections, but too much, too soon, can make us feel exposed and even more anxious.

How to Make Friends as an Adult: Practical Tips

So, if it’s so hard to make friends as an adult, what can you do? Here are a few strategies we discussed on the podcast that might help:

1. Give It Time—Friendships Take Effort

Friendships don’t develop overnight. In fact, research shows it takes about 50 hours of socializing to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and even more time to build a deeper bond . Be patient and give yourself (and the other person) grace as you invest in the relationship.

2. Be Intentional About Where You Spend Your Time

One of the biggest barriers to making new friends is the lack of opportunities for spontaneous interaction. If your daily routine doesn’t naturally bring you into contact with potential friends, you might need to create those opportunities. Join a club, take a class, or participate in a group activity where you’re likely to see the same people regularly.

3. Embrace Vulnerability (In Moderation)

Building trust with someone new requires opening up. That said, it’s important to pace yourself. Start with small disclosures and gradually increase the depth of what you share as the relationship grows. Don’t jump into the deep end of the pool immediately, over-disclosure can also turn people off. But making small steps in the direction of mutual intimacy allows both you and your new friend to feel comfortable and safe in the connection. 

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Make the First Move

As we grow older, many of us become more hesitant to initiate social interactions. But here’s the thing: everyone is busy, and most people are likely feeling the same way you are. Don’t wait for someone else to invite you out. Take the initiative to reach out, whether it’s for a coffee, a walk, or just to catch up. Don’t like feeling rejected? Welp, it’s part of the experience. For some support on this topic, check out this podcast on rejection.

5. Use Technology to Your Advantage

While making friends online or through apps like Bumble for Friends might feel awkward at first, these platforms can be great tools for connecting with people in your area who are also looking to make friends. Be open to meeting people this way—it’s just another avenue for creating the connections you crave.

Conclusion: Building a New Friendship Circle

The truth is, it’s not impossible to make friends as an adult, but it does require intention, patience, and a willingness to be vulnerable. We all need meaningful relationships to thrive, and it’s worth the effort to invest in building and maintaining those connections. Whether it’s through joining a new group, reaching out to an acquaintance, or simply making space in your life for unplanned interactions, you can create the friendships that will enrich your life.

Thanks for joining me on this journey into the psychology of adult friendships! Let’s keep this conversation going. What strategies have worked for you in making new friends as an adult? Let me know in the comments!

And of course, if you feel like you could use some support and accountability in crafting the full and vibrant social circle you want and deserve, we are here for you! Book your free consultation with one of the amazing coaching therapists at Growing Self to talk about your hopes and goals and how we can help.  (link to schedule now)


Lisa Marie Bobby: Everybody wants to be happy, right?

You do too. And if you’re like most people, you’re probably investing quite a bit into this. Maybe you’re in therapy, working on yourself in a variety of different ways and honestly trying to get yourself straightened out from the inside out, which is a fantastic thing to do. And yet research consistently shows that one of The keys to authentic, enduring happiness is not necessarily related to what is happening inside of you.

It is related to the quality of your relationships, particularly with friendships. And this is such an important facet of not just well being, but of life. And so that’s why on today’s episode of love, happiness, and success, we’re going to do a deep dive into how to attend to this part of your life with intention.

And so for this conversation, my guest is Kelly Stout. She is a writer, journalist, author who recently had a fantastic outing. essay on this topic published in Esquire magazine. And the title of this intriguingly was, I gave myself a month to make one new friend. How hard could that be? And some mayhem ensues, but Kelly is here with us today to talk about her experiences of researching and writing this piece and the big takeaways from it.

And we’re going to be talking about how you can apply this to your life. too. So Kelly, thank you so much for being here with me today. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. And for your nice words about my essay. I have to tell you, I had such a good time reading this essay. I read all kinds of stuff online, just like randomly, and I can’t even think of the last time I laughed out loud, even once, reading something that I just stumbled across online.

And your article, it had me rolling. It was It’s just so much fun to read, and honestly, after reading it, I was like, I want to be friends with her, because she’s fun. For saying that. As I am in the market for new friends, so you’ve come to the right place. Let’s be friends. All right. I’m sold.

So tell us a little bit, let’s just Start with some of the backstory. To, to some you got to this place in your life where, maybe moving into more of a midlife experience and you were like, where did everybody go? And just tell us a little bit about what happened?

Yeah. So I pitched this story after a, I had just finished up a long essay about productivity. I had put myself to the test trying to become more productive and I had driven myself a little bit bonkers trying to produce more and more work. Oh my gosh. I need to read that one. I’ll send it your way.

And then you question the concept of productivity and I had an enjoyable time. Trying to decide what I valued and what I didn’t in the sphere of work. And I realized that I hadn’t really thought too much about what might be going on outside of work. And self health is something that I think is a fascinating field.

The intersection of like humility and humor and a real earnestness and wanting to improve yourself. I think there’s something really universal about that. At the same time, there’s a sort of like wanting to embrace a certain level of cheesiness that goes into wanting to improve yourself. There’s just no way to be cool while you’re improving yourself.

And so I pitched this is a long way of saying, I pitched this essay because. Esquire is a men’s magazine and the Surgeon General a couple of years ago declared loneliness an epidemic. And this is something that affects men in particular, but it affects all people of all genders. And I’d had this on my mind for a while.

And I wasn’t really sure why I idly saw a bunch of articles answering the question of why. And they answered from all different perspectives. Phones are an old chestnut. Oh, we’re all addicted to our phones. Not that there’s not a ton of truth in that. I don’t know if that answers the whole question.

I saw one one article, I think it was in the Atlantic that blamed a lack of dining room tables in apartments, and I really appreciated that one is your environment impacts your behavior. Of course it does. I liked that explanation. There were a million out there and I couldn’t help but notice that I hadn’t made a new friend in a while, not a real friend.

I had a lot of friends and in the essay, I make fun of myself quite a bit for how many times I say this. I’m going to go ahead and say it again for the record on this podcast for your millions, if not billions of listeners, billions. But I realized I could draw a really thick line around who my friends were.

I had very few questions about who my friends were. And I wasn’t really making new ones not really. I had friendly acquaintances, people who I was totally psyched to see when I bumped into the street, into them on the street, not the types of people who I would really want to share any vulnerability of any kind with.

And that started to bug me. And I realized that I hadn’t really been trying, and so I almost as a joke, after I had finished this productivity essay, I pitched this to a few of the other editors here at Esquire and our editor in chief Michael said, yeah, okay, assigned. It’s assigned.

And I thought, okay, I guess I have to do this now. And the conceit I gave myself was a month, honestly, just because I thought if I can’t do this in a month, I’m never going to be able to do it. What everyone always asks after they hear I recently finished an essay on this topic is did you succeed?

And the answer is yes, no. But that’s the thing, though, is that it is actually more difficult and more complex, particularly as you. Get out of your twenties and into your thirties and beyond. And that’s why it’s something that we all need to like pause and take stock of and think of, how do we want to put energy into this?

Because it’s really not just going to happen on its own. I was gonna say that one of the things that I did was start reading because I have a little bit of a nerdy personality. And so I thought might as well read some books first. And one of the books I read was called platonic, how the science of attachment can help you make and keep friends by Dr.

Marisa Franco. And I picked up the book because I heard her give an interesting, interview in which she said that continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability are two preconditions necessary to make a friend. That really struck a chord with me because I realized I didn’t have a ton of moments in my day when I was having both.

At work, I think for most people in most work situations, you have a lot of unplanned interaction, but Rare is the moment of vulnerability that sort of goes beyond a man. Can you believe that the boss man is making his work this weekend? Or ah, can you believe that memo that just went around?

It’s just, it’s vulnerable, but it’s not really at all. It’s like a sort of safety zone that you have to construct around yourself at work in order to thrive there. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

And so to set this up, because I’d love to dive deeper into what you’ve learned would it be okay with you if I just, I read a passage from your article that I think and this is a little bit of a longer excerpt, but I think that this really, helps set this up. And I think you did such a beautiful job of putting into language this thing that many adults experience, but it is difficult to articulate what is going on, but almost to make sense of why.

And so I thought that this was so beautiful. Okay. So you wrote, in my twenties, I had a friend that used to show up at my doorstep uninvited with a six pack of red stripe. She had a terrible job and a worse boyfriend, and whenever either was bumming her out, she’d plop down on the orange couch that my roommate had gotten from her dead great aunt and tell us everything.

Everything. And in 2017, she moved to Montana. And I suppose if I had to pinpoint it, I’d say that’s when the trouble began. One day, it became undeniable that I had a friendship void in my life. I didn’t lose my friends. There was no big dustup or disaster. No romantic rivalries or fights about politics had gotten in the way.

And they didn’t go missing exactly. I knew where they were, but after Red Stripe landed in Missoula, the couple whose deck we used to grill sausages on decamped to Vermont around the same time, LA started acquiring my friends at an alarming rate and the ones who remained all seemed to have colicky babies or punishing home renovation projects on their hands.

Yeah. And that’s what happens, isn’t it? Like you, we have friends and we have this friend group and we have these lives, but then people evolve, life circumstances evolve, and it’s this gradual thing, you, you look up five or 10 years later and you’re like where did everybody go?

And you write about this experience of, I, I don’t have anybody to call on a two, a random Tuesday and be like, Hey. Let’s go have a beer. Yeah, absolutely. I sure do know. And, it happens slowly and I think for a long time I thought of this as a geographical problem. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It’s a big country and half my friends moved to L. A. Like the passage that you just read from. But I realized that there was more than that, which was that I wasn’t really acquiring additional friends that were feeling as deep as the ones who were moving across the country or who were renovating their home.

And the that’s to say that the circumstances matter quite a bit. And what life stage you’re in has all of these practical implications. I get into what having kids or not having kids does to friendships also. I’m very happy to talk about that. But I realized that there was something a lot deeper than that.

And so what I was looking for in this essay was in part to try and figure out what was going on. And I didn’t really. set out to provide the reader with instructions or advice of any kind. I’m not an expert on this, but I did hope to provide the pleasure of recognition to readers, the feeling I’m not alone in this and maybe even make them laugh along the way.

That was the goal. Because I don’t really know how to make friends, not to spoil the essay, but I don’t really know how it’s done. There’s a real there’s a real skill to it and sometimes breaking things down into their component parts and viewing them as a skill set can make things a little less scary, and a little funnier.

Definitely. And you definitely did. You had some strategies that you deployed for sure. We could talk more about those. And I, and maybe this is me reading through the lines, like definitely were learning some things along the way but let’s just start with this experiment, right?

So you gave yourself. a month to make new friends and there were rules you had defined your terms. Tell us a little bit more about your definition of the friend and how that is different from, an acquaintance. Yeah, absolutely. So I you are right. I absolutely I’m referring to the piece now because I want to make sure that I get this right.

This does not have to be factually accurate, by the way. Okay. So the first thing I had to do, I realized, was define friend. What would that mean? Because, I have plenty of people who I can you know,

who I might casually call, Oh, my friend, so and yeah. He’s great. But would that count for the purposes of this essay? And I basically decided, no, it has to be something really special. And after hemming and hawing for the first week of this, I was driving myself totally bonkers and I realized, okay, this is just, I’m just looking for somebody who I truly love hanging out with and whose problems I can take on.

And who will take on mine. It’s as simple as that. And shared enemies. Shared enemies. We have to have some shared enemies. Yeah, very important. Yeah, that’s right. Okay. Who do we hate? Some shared friends or people we admire somehow. I think so. Yeah. Defining yourself by counterexample, so that was the definition we were working with.

And my editor Brian O’Keefe was really helpful. We talked through all of this. And I also had to set up the rules for what. We could do. And I found myself wanting to do this after hanging out with an old friend of mine and we had a blast. We had a hilarious afternoon and. I realized, Oh no, she’s all, I think she already is a friend.

I don’t think this counts. And so I realized that I could do anything. It could be any recreational activity. Kickball was fine. Trivia was fine, whatever. But they had to be in town and it had to be somebody who I wasn’t already friends with, like an acquaintance would be fine. The best possible scenario was that I met an entirely new person.

I decided, Oh, the other thing is I decided it was okay to be set up like a blind like on a for friends. Yes. Which I did. Oh my gosh. To do. And so yeah, so those are the terms. Okay, good deal. And then you armed yourself with some strategies. So you’ve read DeFranco’s book. Is that her name?

And also Franco. Okay. I want to put a in front of that. But Dale Carnegie. I did read Dale Carnegie. So Dale Carnegie is a, is pretty famous. He wrote how to win friends and influence people, which came out in the 1930s. And it’s a hilarious book. If you haven’t read it all due respect to him.

It’s a little bit silly. I read it a little bit as a set piece, but the reality was that there was actually some stuff in the book that really spoke to me and something I’ve carried with me a lot. I say this as a sort of side note is that he talks a ton about feedback and criticism and how no one really wants to hear criticism.

And so if you can just shut up. You absolutely need to give a criticism, it’s a good idea to, for the most part, make peace with people. This sounds like so obvious, and I’m a little bit of a. I guess they, they’d call me a people pleaser. I’m a little bit of a people pleaser to begin with.

So this didn’t strike me as something revolutionary. But I guess at the time and for the target audience of this book, which was mostly men looking to succeed in the business world. I don’t know. I guess it was bestseller for a reason, yeah, definitely. The title to end all titles, how to win friends and influence people.

Oh, it’s the best. Yeah. I thought about calling this how to win friend. And influence people. Yeah. Just what? But, and I read that book a long, I think probably it’s some point in high school. It was like, what am I doing? And so read that book. And I haven’t looked at it for a long time, but certainly around the criticism, but you know what?

I, as I reflect on it, I think one of his main messages too, is just Empathy, like to be able to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. And I know that there’s many, things that are dated now in the message. But I think that sometimes has been lost a little bit as well. We, it’s very easy to become extremely self focused to the point where, it can be problematic, but but that empathy is I don’t know.

That’s, Yeah. That was the book that really stuck with me. And that felt like a good lesson. Why not? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So you had this experiment, you had rules, you, you had these experts from self help books and whispering in your ears. And off into the world you went, I was like, I’m going to try hard for a month at making a new friend.

And what happened? Tell us about the winds the pitfalls maybe that surprised you? How did it go, Kelly? I had no idea how hard this was going to be. I thought this was going to be such a fun assignment. Make a new friend, right? How fun could that be? And I could not have been more wrong.

Truly felt so vulnerable the entire time. And I would have these little report backs during our editorial meeting and they were just excruciating because everyone would want to know, so how’s it going? Have you made a friend yet? And it always felt like this binary between didn’t make a friend and did make a friend.

And it was like something that would. Flip overnight one day. And I kept sending little text messages to my editor saying things like, I did it. I think I made a friend. And then I would never really hear from them again. And I, during the process, one of my confidants was again, this is ironic because it was about making friends, but it was one of my closest friends.

And I kept asking her, Is this a stupid thing to say? Is this normal? I found myself to your point about being self involved, I was so self absorbed the entire time, which I realized is the opposite of what I needed to be doing. I was constantly asking myself, how do I come off? Do I seem normal?

Do I seem fun? And it was really not at all about, What the person in front of me was giving me and I’ll give you an example of that. In the piece, I go out to drinks with a friend of a friend who was the director. Was this the blind date? Yes, it was on a blind date. A friend of mine said, hey, I told her, hey, I’m doing this story, do you have anyone?

And she said yeah, I think I know someone good for you. And I met this woman at a bar. We had a blast together. But she wanted to know all about the project and she wanted to know all about me. I had this inner monologue going that was like so neurotic about how I was coming off. Was I talking about myself too much?

And it was really the opposite of what it takes to get close to somebody. Like I was getting closer to myself, but I was not getting any closer to this stranger and I had to cut that out, and I was talking to a very close friend who said and we’re totally close. I love her so much. We have different lives in a lot of ways. She doesn’t have any kids. I have a kid. At the time that I was writing this she was coming off a period of her life where she’d been dating a lot and she compared making a friend To dating totally, which was an obvious comparison, right?

But it hadn’t really hit me that way. I haven’t dated in a very long time. I’ve been with the same romantic partner for years, like over a decade. And my friend was not in that boat. She’d also moved a bunch of times. And so she’s really good at making friends. And so I asked her for some help and that was her big tip.

Think of it like dating. This obviously. made me even more neurotic and weird. But understandably I was like, oh great, this won’t exactly lower the stakes here, will it? But as I thought about it, it makes total sense because my friendships are passionate and deep and loving and not all that different from romantic relationships in certain ways in that they’re like really intimate and it takes a long time and you can’t just snap your fingers and make it happen.

So that perspective shift. Was very helpful to me. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally get that because and I can also just wanted to highlight what you started going through internally related to that. Self awareness is one thing to call it, but it can be so difficult to connect and it’s almost impossible to not be like, what am I doing wrong?

How am I coming across? Are people liking me or not? And getting that focus on yours. And I think that happens a lot to people who are dating and who really want more than anything to have this intimate, emotionally intimate connection that feels like their person. And then it’s just what are the obstacles to making that happen?

And it turns into a performance issue, so to speak. Yeah, but one of go ahead. Sorry, but I was just going to say so, but that one of your takeaways over time was that I, when I am moving into the space when I’m like very focused on my own performance and what I’m doing or not doing, it actually becomes a barrier to me creating that kind of connection that I want to have with people.

Can you take us into that? Like just what you observed there and what you wound up doing with that. I think some of it,

my working theory while working on this piece was that really intense self consciousness comes from a pretty understandable desire, which is to be seen and understood by the person across from you. One sort of shortcut to that is to tell them all about yourself and hope that they’ll reflect some part of that back to you in a way that feels accurate.

Yeah. And

wanting to take an express train to intimacy was something I found myself wanting to do a lot. So to put it in real terms something I wrote about in the essay was that on that same blind date I was just telling you about the, Woman I was on it with suggested that we tell each other a secret.

And I loved that idea because I was like, oh, this is great. We’re gonna have something with each other that nobody else will ever have, she said, okay, I’m gonna tell you something that I’ve never told anybody before. And I said, okay, I’ll do the same. And told some really charming secret and I told something that made me sound like a total freak

In that moment, like it really felt like we were so close, we both had a couple of beers. We were like talking about our parents divorce. We were like getting into it. Yeah. But it was actually really fleeting. And as soon as we left the bar, actually that warm feeling of Oh, I’m getting really close to somebody evaporated pretty quickly.

And I, it was replaced with embarrassment. Like I had gone a little too far. Yeah. Brene Brown calls that the vulnerability hangover. Okay. That’s a really good term for it. There’s a word for that experience. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what I was experiencing. And I don’t know if my companion was feeling it too, but that was an experience where I realized, oh, okay.

So That’s not really the way to do it either. It’s like in, in politics, you talk about the difference between earned media and paid media and that was paid media a little bit, I was like, okay, so that’s not the way either. And that was a turning point for me in the project because I realized this is going to take way longer than a month.

It does but there’s that tendency, and just again, drawing that parallel to dating. I think a lot of people will do that. They’ll do this big fat cannonball right in the deep end of the pool, and on the first date, they’re like going into all the open and the closets and the bats are flying out and the thinking that is this fast track to emotional intimacy.

But that, that can almost create its own set of, But it’s understandable as a strategy, but you’re like, I don’t want to do that again. Yeah. And, she suggested it and I was like, Oh, this is perfect. She’s on board. And the other thing I should say is that I I told everybody, like I was very public about this, it wasn’t like This was not like a never been kissed situation where I went undercover or whatever.

And I also wouldn’t call this a reported piece. This is just an essay. This was just for fun. But I also found myself gravitating towards people who were like me. That was another observation that I made. Or I would ask friends of mine who were like me. Who I flattered myself to think were like me to suggest someone else who I assumed would be like them.

And on that same friend date, I realized that the person I was sitting across from was nothing like me in some key ways. And my like knee jerk reaction to that was to say, oh, this will never work. We’re just not really the same. But the longer I sat with her, the more I realized, Oh no, like I, I like the way she’s different.

I like that she’s opening up my world. My friendships that I have already are so cozy. And the friend I told you about earlier, who the one who lives in LA and has this big dating life, we’ve been friends for so long and we are so close that there are some times when. I can forget where I end and she begins and vice versa and we as Gen Z says, we know each other’s lore.

And she doesn’t need to tell me her story because I know everything and I don’t need to tell her mine. And as a result, I don’t really know what my story is anymore. And to hear somebody else’s and identify, Oh, that’s not my story was a little bit helpful in saying, Oh, this is who it turns out I am at age 30 redacted.

Yeah. No I get that. When you, there’s not enough contrast in some really deep enduring friendships because it’s It’s like you don’t even have to talk about it, but to be in situations where you’re hearing other people’s stories and considering how they’re similar or different to yours, but also being in a situation where you have to articulate your own, it helps I would imagine, re clarify for yourself who you are now at this point in your life.

But also can I just bring up in, in your article I think that you, Also shared an experience that I thought was super interesting related to here, let me find it. I took some notes here at one point on this. This growth journey or whatever you want to call it. You went on to Bumble for Friends. I did, yeah.

There is a Bumble app for friendships. I was worried you might bring that up. And here we are. No, but it’s, this is part of the, what made your article so fun is just like all of, I don’t know, anyway, it was very entertaining, but I loved this piece because you were, as you were swiping through profiles, you were having this experience of the ways in which we can say, Oh, no, that, that won’t be my person.

But then having things, what you wrote was swiping. I was swiping through profiles of nurses who loved house music and dog owners who reported that all their real friends had just moved to Austin. It’s like this kinds of thing, but like talking about these obligatory things and profiles, like wanting to go see the city and have great restaurants and go to yoga.

And you’re like yeah. But internally. Coffee and hiking, travel, right? But then having this experience like, but I actually, I like coffee and hiking, but like these the reasons that we have, I think, to What is the word I’m looking for like? Build these imaginary barriers between ourselves and other people.

Is that the right way to say it? Yeah I mean I wanted to be I didn’t mind being a person who liked coffee and hiking but I did find Being the type of person who would tell other people that I liked coffee and I think Because to do so is to admit that I needed something and I admit that you needed something.

Yeah. That I needed a friend. The whole reason I was going on this Bumble app was starting from a really humble premise. And I realized that I had a problem, which was that I was really closed off and I didn’t want to appear uncool. I didn’t want to appear to be the type of person who needed friendship.

Which, of course, was completely ridiculous because why else would I have downloaded the app? But actually, can we just pause right here for a second? Because that was actually one of the key things that I had wanted to talk with you about. Because, one of the reasons that I really wanted to connect with you and have this conversation for the benefit of our listeners is because I believe that there is so much internalized shame around the internet.

This experience that we all can cycle through. I think it’s part of the experience of evolving and like moving into adulthood and different phases of life, but that people don’t talk about it. And they also, I think that the shame does something where it creates this resistance to doing something about it because it means admitting to yourself and to other people that you want to have more positive relationships in your life, but that there’s, we have so much attached to it.

Can you speak a little bit more about that? Because I feel like this is a big part of the puzzle.

It’s such a good question because this is something that I grappled with a lot in the writing of this essay that I think if I had been doing this project, if I had been trying to make friends without attaching the essay to it. Yeah. I’m doing this for work. Yeah. It was a really good barrier. And I think that, I tried to make the essay as honest as possible, but there’s something inherently dishonest about presenting it in this way, because it’s like, Oh, this is just for entertainment purposes.

It was protective. Yeah. I really use that as a shield. And now that it’s gone I have definitely missed having it as a protective ship because I’m still trying to make friends, not having the, Oh I’ve been writing about the work. Yeah. And I think that is about shame a little bit because

with this particular, I don’t know, like metric of adulthood having functional friendships. It feels so central to my sense of self Oh, I have these great friends. I have these great friendships. That’s part of the story. I tell myself about who I am and to realize that where the practice came in, which for me is like a last minute plan.

Other people want different things in friendship, but that for me, I’m right there with you. Yeah. I just want someone to grab a coffee with or to grab a beer with or whatever. If that is something that. I really need. And I realized that like in my friendships were becoming way more theoretical, they were all in the group chat.

They were all like, I have a group chat with my friends from college who are some of my closest friends in the world. That’s always ongoing. I know all these details about their lives, but the truth is we hadn’t sat in a room together in about a year. Yeah. And to admit that’s a problem,

is a challenge for me because it calls into questions all of these decisions that I’ve made about how to structure my life. Yeah. That have precluded us sitting together in a room. And it brings up everything, job choices, family choices, lifestyle choices. And I had always taken my friendships.

So for granted Oh, these will endure no matter what. Choices I make and to reach my, mid thirties and discover that the choices I had made resulted in discomfort. And the way I discuss it in the essay is I put like a little bit of a gloss on it, which is, Oh, should I move to Portland?

Should I move to Austin? Maybe I could start fresh, I don’t actually want to move. Like I have this great job here. I have a whole life in New York. I don’t want to move. But it was code for what mistakes did I made make that got me to this point. And yeah. I think that’s sort of part of any come to Jesus moment in your 30s.

Yeah, like what you’re beginning to the seeds that you planted are bearing fruit and you’re looking at some of this and you’re like, Oh yeah, I guess I did create that reality. But yeah, it will. No, it does. But it’s that I think I’m hearing that you, it was almost a surprise in some way because the seeds that you planted the values that you were expressing, the life that you had built the kind of longer term outcome of that looking at, you’re like, Oh, like aspects of it surprised you and that felt a little bit unwelcome, but I, can I also just say though, that it’s we all need to make choices, like it is so hard to, Have intention and energy going into all of these different things.

Like you, you have this amazing career, you’re working at Esquire magazine, you’re married, you’re a mom, you, I’m sure have all of these different facets of your life and things that are going really well, but it’s like, we can only juggle so many balls or so many It’s been so many plates, but, and it’s oftentimes that friendship one that does get dropped because it’s like, but that as time moves on and again, going back to what we were talking about at the very beginning, how research shows that is one of the most important things when it comes to that longterm wellbeing and happiness, that’s the one that, that gives.

And I think for understandable reasons, like you mentioned that this piece had given you some insight into the phase of life pieces and like kids, no kids, some of those metrics. I think that has something to do with it. I know for my own life. It certainly does. I think in both a practical and a sort of more squishy sense, it has a lot to do with this.

From the practical, there’s what you’re talking about. There are only so many hours in the day. Having a kid, especially a young kid or kids is exhausting. Having a full time job is exhausting. Just being a person in the world is exhausting. Like a homeowner, like dishes, yeah. I’m not a homeowner, but I am a dish owner, and so I know what that’s like.

You have a dwelling to maintain, I’m sure. Okay. And like you, so yeah that’s so real. And, my sort of anxiety around that I think is what motivated me to pursue productivity as the sort of precursor to this and thinking, there’s gotta be a way to jam it all in.

Spoiler on that one, there really isn’t a way to read them at all. I should definitely read that article then, because you’re telling me it’ll make me feel better about my own inability to, yeah. Okay. The emotional piece of it is real too. Making decisions is just part of growing up.

And there are so many parts of life that require an affirmative decision. It you can’t just wait for it to happen to you, whether that’s okay, I’m gonna have kids, I’m gonna decide to have kids, or I’m gonna decide not to have kids. I’m gonna take this job or this one instead, or No job at all.

And live out of a van in some cool way. In the Pacific Northwest. To not make those decisions is also a decision. That’s a cliche that people say all the time. And I, there definitely was a part of me in writing this that was really nostalgic for the days before I had made these decisions.

Like when Maxine used to come over with Red Stripe, we were at a point in our lives where we had made some decisions for sure. We just graduated from school. We decided to move to the big city together, but. We hadn’t really done anything that couldn’t be undone and so that, which is not how it felt at the time.

It felt oh, I, like most of my life is already behind me and I’ve already screwed it up in 80 different ways, but 15 years later I can look at that and say, oh no, like I hadn’t really done anything. I could have gone in any direction. I could have moved to Montana and had a toddler or I could have stayed, like the, that apartment.

Where my red stripe friend used to come over my husband and I, 10 years later moved right across the street, we didn’t go anywhere. She moved all the way to Montana, and those are two ways of doing adulthood. Yeah. And now here we are in our thirties and we’re like living with those choices. And I think on some level there was a part of me that felt like, oh, if I don’t ever move. I won’t ever have to change anything. I won’t have to make any choices, yeah. I’m probably overanalyzing myself a little bit right now, but. No, but I think it’s a really interesting reflection and something for all of us to be aware of that, that even if you’re not realizing it, every time you walk through a door, particularly a big one like how Maxine did, maybe it closes behind you.

And a lot of times you can’t go back again, but that even if you stay in place that other people are going through their own doors and that. the river is evolving, right? Even if you’re standing in the center of it, it’s never the same. And just grappling with the reality of that that’s really powerful.

But I think it is an important awareness in this context. conversation about how to develop new friendships, especially in adulthood, is because it’s almost like you have to be part of the river again. You have to move and almost find a different community, that work of who am I now and who do I fit with and where are my people that you have to swim.

It also puts you in touch with where you are in the river. Yeah. When you’re in touch with your friends from a million years ago, that’s such a comforting feeling, it, there’s so much work behind those friendships. But when you jump in the river to use your metaphor, you have to contend with where you are right now.

And sometimes where you are right now is not, is Oh, I’m in the middle of something here. I’m not ready for prime time or whatever, but yeah, there you go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was interesting. And just what, so to take us to the end of your story here one of the things that I took from your experiment is that you’ve realized through it that it wasn’t even a singular friendship that appealed to you the most, as much as it was this experience of being part of a really vibrant.

community like that, many of us have had at different points in life where it’s, college or traveling with people or just there’s certain chapters that just have this relational energy around them. And can you say more about that? I’m glad you brought this up. This was the most important recognition for me in writing this.

I think it was my editor referred to the piece taking an anti capitalist twist toward the end in the sense that it became clear to me that I don’t just want one friend who I can gab with and like info dump on and receive their info. I wanted the feeling of being like supported and held and seen by a bunch of people.

And I see a bunch of people every day in my office and I love the people I work with. I really like the people I work with. And that is a community of a kind, but friendship is really special. There’s no, you don’t have to influence people. In order to be friends. Yeah, but it’s voluntary all the way around.

And that is not the case in like most of the spaces that adults inhabit. I was told, Oh, you’ll have a kid. You’ll make a bunch of friends with their parents. That’s true and not true, but it’s not like a completely. exchange free space. I think there’s status wrapped up in being friends with other parents in a way that, someone you connect with just cause you’ve connected with them is hopefully, an environment where status doesn’t quite matter so much.

But I really realized that I needed like a lot of people. Like I wanted a friend group basically. And that’s a hard thing to maintain. When you’re like working all the time and doing dishes all the time and taking your kid to school and most of this essay was really fun to write. But the part that made me actually really sad in an enduring way was my realization that desire for friendship, whether that’s, whether you’re the type of person who likes a one on one friend or, community, that’s like a near universal yearning.

But the way that life is set up for the vast majority of people makes it almost impossible to have that. Yeah. And that made me feel a lot of sadness Oh, we are structurally like betting against ourselves in this regard.

That is a realization that sort of, goes, It’s far beyond the scope of the essay and beyond the scope of this conversation, but it is something that has influenced my thinking. I would say that, We can’t do this all alone, and in a way, me hopping from, my 4 p. m. meeting to a 5 p.

m. friend date is a lonely endeavor. That’s just me trying to make my life better through my own energies instead of out of any sort of structural change that might help that. We’re living in a moment that’s really you talked about being focused on the self and that has emotional repercussions.

But it’s also something I think that happens because we go to work and we go home and we’re alone in our apartments and we’re alone with our devices and that’s not something that I could fix in a month. That was a part of it that I think I had a harder time grappling with because it didn’t feel like something I could come up with a solution to.

Everybody said when I started this, just pick up a hobby. And I think that’s good advice in many ways, but it also, I think falls really short of the real problem here. Which is that we’ve made life a little bit lonely structurally. And, there’s no amount of like woodworking classes is going to fix that.

I hear you. You know what? This is actually making me think of a similar realization that I had personally a number of years ago. And this is connected to a much larger story. But when our son was we’ve actually done this a couple of times, but the time that I’m thinking of our son was five and six.

And my husband and I took the show on the road and just traveled for a year and wound up. It was great and connected though, with a community of people, of other families, other travelers who were doing the same thing. And it turned into this like very. Tight knit collective like a diaspora moving from place to place, but it was frequently on my mind.

The fact that human beings are actually designed to exist in, in, in tribes and collectives in these Units of, 25, 30, 40 people is about the max size of these, but for the entirety of our evolutionary experience, like this is how we operated in the world. And I remember enjoying this experience of being part of this community so much.

And it just felt so natural, like hanging out with each other’s kids or like doing different things or coming back for meals. And I, after leaving that lifestyle, that so much personally and it’s been very difficult to recreate in a different type of lifestyle, but that the way that we are living now, structurally, each in our little individual homes and having to make appointments with each other in order to see somebody or hang out.

It is in opposition to the way that human beings were literally designed to exist. And I think that we do all have this hunger for that kind of not a singular connection, but to be part of this collective that you were describing in your story as a, just hearing you, you talk about this a little bit more, made me think of that.

And I wish that there was a way to have more of that as part of our, Life experience well, it’s something that you get a lot of if you’re lucky enough to go to college or whatever That’s yeah, that is built into college in a sort of non eccentric way I have found that the older I get the more,

Phrases like living in community There’s a certain sort of outside of the mainstream Yeah Mouthfeel. I hear you. Like I think most people might be like I, I don’t know about that, but that doesn’t eliminate the desire for oh yeah, I do. I do want a community. I do want that.

Yeah, I don’t want to live off the grid. I’d like to still, have the internet running water, but it would be nice if someone else could make dinner tonight and we could just shoot the shit around the fire. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. This has been my communist manifesto, that’s right. But but that’s a nice, way to, to end on it and going back to what are the, the pieces of advice from the author that you mentioned is just like a lot of just unstructured time, where nothing is planned necessarily, but you have opportunities just to be with people and get to know them and share experiences.

And that maybe that is one. Takeaway for our listeners to is, where could that be in, in your world if it’s a, to be able to connect with people, but also to be thinking about it more broadly is like where is there a community that you could plug into that would feel congruent with who you are in this phase of your life and and work on that.

Yeah. Although if only or as easy as plug into that community. I know that’s right. That’s the thing. I didn’t even get into this, how to infiltrate a friend group, but Oh, wait, there’s more. No, in the something that sort of ended up on the cutting room floor was this idea of approaching an already established friend group and trying to Yeah.

Add myself to it. But that, that’s a fantasy, too. But also a strategy to connect with an existing pod to use a pandemic term. Yeah. But anyway it was a good experience. And yeah, I did. It was all about the friends I made along the way. Definitely. All right. Then in closing, any last pieces of advice, if somebody’s listening to this and being like, yeah, this is important to me, I want to have more friends in my life.

Do you have any tips or things that you’re like, don’t do that, but try this or is it just that you have to have your own? I

don’t think I’m qualified to give anybody advice about anything, but I, if I could give myself some advice, myself a month and a half ago, when I first started writing this, it was think about yourself way less. Oh my God. Think about other people. Yeah. Think about yourself less. Dale Carnegie was right, basically.

Okay. It pains me to admit it after all the clowning on him I did, but yeah, he was right about that. All right. There you have it. Kelly, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. This was such a fun conversation. And is it before we end this where could our listeners learn about you?

Check out this article or other pieces that you have coming out or anything else that you guys are up to there at Esquire. Yeah, check out Esquire. com. We’ve got it all. We’ve got politics, fashion, style, celebrity lifestyle tips on how to make a friend. We’ve got it all. Check us out. Definitely. There’s more of my writing there and more of our legendary writers going all the way back to 1933.

Amazing. Including Kelly Stout. All right. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much.

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