a lot of young girls need to realize that keeping friendships alive gets so hard after high school/uni and that you have to actively nurture your friendships if you want them to last yes even the friendships of 2 decades….. your 20s are so disorienting and trauamtizing no one can afford to take friendships for granted… everybody worries about not finding a romantic partner lets start worrying about being friendless by the time you hit 30
hey uh. I didn’t learn this lesson. I’ve spent years and years at a time without the kind of friends that interact with you every week, or even every month. Without the kind of friends that you see often and know well. During my 20′s and into my 30′s I let my friends get to arms length and before i knew it they were all miles away.
I’ve reconnected with some people who have shared the strongest bonds with me, which is good, it’s very good, but those few people all live in different states or countries now, they have kids or intense careers or their time is filled by lots of everyday friends, and so I go months at a time without seeing or talking to friends.
I finally had to schedule weekly phone calls with two or three just so I could maintain SOME kind of friendship.
But it has become a very lonely life.
Don’t assume you’ll always have friends, or that you can always make new friends. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that friendships don’t require purposeful effort to maintain. When you day-dream about your best possible future, don’t forget to include specifics about your friends being there, and then when you work toward those dreams, make sure some of the work is to keep those friendships active.
Up through the middle of the 20th Century, a lot of women in Western culture spent a lot of time purposefully maintaining those social bonds with their friends (and also just with people in the community).
You know how they did it? Luncheons. Tea parties. Ladies’ Aid meetings. Book clubs. Bridge clubs. Formal social calls–fifteen minutes or half-an-hour at one house, then on to the next, all afternoon. Garden parties. “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Now, some of this is class-based; but even working-class women did a scaled-down version of this, usually, in their off-hours.
Men did this too, on a smaller scale; bowling leagues, going to ball games together, playing golf, poker night. Joining something like the Rotary or the Elks or the VFW.
One of the things that got lost over the course of the late 20th Century was this knowledge that social bonds had to be maintained on purpose if they were going to last, and the skills of how to do that. Boomers looked at their parents’ lives, didn’t like them, thought it was so old-fashioned and conservative and empty, and didn’t ask if there was an underlying reason for it. (And what other forms “maintaining positive social bonds” might take in a modern context.) And so set about either dismantling or neglecting those norms and groups until today, when there are only vestiges left.
And now we look around and we’re so lonely and we don’t know why or how to change it, because from Gen Z on down, we didn’t have the examples of previous generations showing us what a purposeful social life could look like. So if you happen to be naturally good at making friends, you’re fine; and if you’re not, you’re in trouble.
But these are fixable things. We can create our own versions of things to help support our own (and other peoples’) social needs! It’s not some arcane alchemy! Here are some things you can do:
Schedule regular meetings/phone calls with friends. This can be a simple phone call, or it can be a game night, or just a monthly “everyone bring chips and dip and we’ll hang out” night.
Find a group that does something you like and join it. Check flyers at the post office, or Meetup.com, or something.
I cannot explain enough the joy of finding a no-audition community choir near you. In my most recent town, I was one of 3 people under the age of 50 in an all woman’s choir and it was so joyful and fun and silly. Join social clubs on purpose just to have a good time, just to connect to your community. People are built to be around other people and finding ways to do it is the best.
What has worked for me:
Build ways to communicate with distant friends. Text them funny photos. Send postcards. Schedule that into your week.
text people a video or playlist you were talking about with them. Let people know you think about them.
Start social dancing. For the love of Pete, there’s a community just waiting to welcome you that might seem intimidating at first but if you find one with music you like, it can be a relatively inexpensive hobby that gives you a) consistent social interaction, b) movement to music, which feels GREAT in my experience, and c) nonsexual touch for those of us who are touchstarved.
Zoom tea party. Zoom knitting circle. Zoom quilting bee. Zoom coloring time. Zoom watercolor.
Read a book aloud over the phone together. I had a friend read me the new Beowulf and it was GREAT.
For local friends, ask if people will go on walks with you. You can phrase it like, “I’m trying to walk more, would you be interested in taking a walk on Sunday afternoon? We can meet up at the park.”
TL;DR: build regular ways to talk to friends with low stakes and find ways to be outside or moving with friends.
I also, listen. I also moved across the country to be closer to my friends who I never stopped missing. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I realize not everyone can do that, but it’s been the best life change I ever made.
