Subhead: Making Friends in Anywhere. I’m constantly amazed at the number of thoughtful comments a post I wrote three years ago still receives. The topic: Making Friends in Austin.
Turns out, while it can vary by location and number of young professionals, young singles, so on, making friends anywhere is a challenge. I’ve written in countless Feel Good Fridays about how lucky I feel to have the girlfriends I do, in Austin, in Aspen, and around the country (hi, DC!). But as I stated in the previous Making Friends post, this is not by accident, this is by intention.
I’m constantly reminded that making friends, and being friends, takes work. Fun work, easy work, meaningful work, but work nonetheless! I used to think, especially in Austin, that I made all my friends because I planned things—sports teams, parties, toooooobing trips, whatever. But with a little hindsight I realize that it wasn’t the planning as much as the inviting. Planning those things gave me situations to invite potential friends to join me in with no pressure. They could show up or not and it was no big deal (except on my football team, that is a serious commitment, yo).
This falls in line with generally understood sociological principles of friendship: that it takes 1) proximity, 2) repeated, unplanned interactions, 3) a comfortable setting that encourages people to confide in each other. A party isn’t exactly unplanned, but it’s as close as it gets to a dorm hallway past college.
In Aspen, I’ve had to adjust to planning things with people. Like, texting a friend to plan a hike, or meet for a drink, or just stopping by to say hello. Those proactive outreaches are scarier because they’re more pressure, but they result in deeper friendships, faster, too. Here the intention is clear: we’re going to be friends, dangit.
I think there’s something too to how our generation lives its post-college life: from the ideal of college->marriage->family we’ve expanded to think college->live somewhere new->maybe marriage->travel->live somewhere else new->maybe marriage->maybe kids->follow other dreams … and this new understanding of how to live our twenties makes friendships that much more important. With or without a life partner (“marriage”), our friends are our families.
Austin-based blogger Hipstercrite recently wrote about adult friendships, and there was a giant mildly-negative New York Times article on making friends after 30. Let’s expand the conversation from the previous post: how do YOU go about making meaningful friendships as “an adult”?—you can define adult any way you like.
p.s. – Sunday, August 5 is International Friendship Day. Celebrate your friends!
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