A running theme through everything I learn about happiness and well-being is that we as humans need other humans in our lives. In nearly every study I’ve heard about, the happiest and healthiest people are also the people who interact with others socially. They have all three types of social connections: the person or people you can share your innermost self with and be most vulnerable with, friends to shoot the breeze and hang out and have fun with, and connections around a shared belief or interest, like church, or a bowling league, or a book club.
I have all of these people in my life. The problem is that none of them live near me. Excepting my husband and kids who live in the same house with me, and excepting the couple of times a year I get together with family, my girlfriends, or work colleagues for a few short days, all of my socializing happens digitally.
I feel mostly okay about this, but as our kids grow up, and as my time expands while my in-real-life circle of people contracts, I’d really like to have more people in my physical life to hang out with. When our daughter moves out and it’s just my husband and me rattling around the house together, we’ll need other people in our lives if for no other reason that to have something to talk about. But finding friends as an adult is challenging. When I meet and interact with people, it’s too easy to give up because I compare my reserve with new people to the ease I feel with existing deep friends, which isn’t fair because some of those friendships go back 35 years.
But before an interaction can even happen, I have to find people in my town to interact with, and I’m not sure how to do that. I’m not interested in church, I don’t play team sports, and my closest coworker lives three hours away, so I can’t go to a work happy hour for a beer on a Friday night. I don’t need a lot. Coffee or a cocktail would be great. A book club would be excellent. I live in a University town. I should be able to find this kind of thing, right? How do you all meet people?
Butterfly Mind 
I struggle with this too, Andrea. Most recently, I’ve connected with new friends through writing groups. Book clubs have been good, as have connections through volunteer activities. Our local library offers a lot of in-person and virtual events that can connect like-minded people. I’ve heard others mention Meet-up as a place to learn about local group activities—like hikes and trivia nights. I signed up for Meet-up notifications, but haven’t yet tried any of the activities. I think connecting with couples is even harder.
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I wrote such a long comment and WordPress ate it when I signed in. ;_; I’ll try to remember what I wrote.
Ashe and I have been thinking this a lot since we moved to a different state in April. Here’s the top tips that I have from that exploration:
Become a regular at your local library. Befriend the librarians. They love when people engage with them and they have a special place in their heart for techie folks like us. Our local library also has a couple of book clubs and writers’ groups.
Become a regular at a local coffee shop. Become friends with staff and you’ll organically become friends with other regulars.
Take a creative class. Taking a class in something you’re interested in puts you in close proximity with other people who have similar interests. Ashe did a stained glass class in town at a local small business and became friendly with not only other students but the shop owners themselves.
Go meet your neighbors. Bring them baked goods or other food (or whatever). This can be anxiety inducing but it’s so worth it. Even if y’all don’t become friends who hang out a lot, there is an extreme amount of value to building relationships with people who share space with you.
Making friends as an adult is hard and it’s a longer process than we would like it to be. However, the steps are pretty simple as it boils down to “show up to a place and regularly engage with the people around you” – which is exactly what we do online in spaces like Support Driven where we became friends. I hope these ideas are helpful though.
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