How To Make Friends In Later Life
Friendships come and go throughout a lifetime. When we’re little, we can feel that making friends is easy. But what about adults? How to make friends in adult life? In this article, we’ll give you some ideas for meeting new people. Perhaps lack of time to socialize, stress, responsibilities, or the loss of childhood friends can make you think it’s hard to make new friends. However, it is not impossible!
Making friends, at any age, makes our empathy soar, as stated in a study by the University of Virginia (USA).
Psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, from the Brigham Young University of Utah, says that “not having a supportive social network is a more powerful mortality factor than being obese or living a sedentary life without exercise.” Still have questions about the importance of making friends? Don’t miss our tips for making friends in adult life.
How to make friends in adulthood
A study carried out by the organization Realte revealed that, in the UK, one in eight adults does not have close friends. However, while it’s not always easy to make friends in adulthood, it’s not impossible. Here are some ideas for getting it:
Sign up for activities
One of the great forms of socialization is group activities. You can choose to enroll in a course, workshop, activity, group, association… Surely in your city there are many activities to do! If you live in a very small town, you can choose to attend activities in the nearest town.
This option is a good way to meet people and, in addition, to learn new things or devote yourself to that hobby you have abandoned. It’s also an easy way to meet people your own age with whom you share hobbies. On the other hand, you can also opt for a new activity that you never did before. This will help you get out of your comfort zone, providing new experiences. If you think about it, all you have to do is win!
Do exercises
In line with the previous point, another idea that can help you make friends as an adult is playing sports. Whether at the gym or joining a running group, these are options that can help you meet people your own age. Of course, you’ll have to try to put out your most extroverted part.
There are also several groups that aim to play sports together (for example, skating, running or hiking…). On the internet there are pages – like Meetup – that allow you to find people to do certain activities (not just sports). You can do a little research on their website and see which groups are of interest to you. You don’t lose anything by experimenting!
Sport is never too much in our lives. The sports psychologist Miguel Morilla highlights the importance of exercise to improve our individual and social well-being, which can also help reduce the problems of anxiety or depression in some people. So, this is not just a door to meet people, but also a resource to improve our quality of life.
keep an open attitude
Of course, not all of us are equally extroverts. However, keeping an open attitude towards people can help you get to know them and make friends. If you are a shy person, it can be positive to try to progressively introduce yourself to groups, or to look for a new group or activity with a trusted person at the beginning.
Extraversion is a personality trait that some people manifest naturally and others less so. However, you can also “learn” to be like that.
In this sense, a recent study, published in the Journal of Experimental , led by researcher Margolis S., suggests that extroverts are happier, even when they are, in fact, introverts.
As we can see, this characteristic can help us break the ice and connect with people, which would make the task of making friends in adult life easier.
Keep in touch
Keeping in touch with the friends you make is a way to nurture those friendships and allow them to continue to exist over time. Not only is it important to make friends, it’s also important to keep them.
How do you manage to stay in touch when you have a thousand responsibilities? Simply looking for little moments to chat or find these people. It is not necessary to have contact for hours or many days at a time. You can send a message to your friends, accept date invites when they propose, etc. In a nutshell, make them realize you’re still there.
