At some point, making friends stopped being easy.
When you were a child, you could become friends with someone because they had the same favourite toy. In school, sitting next to someone for a few weeks was enough to turn them into your best friend.
As an adult, there are people that I know for three years and I still say, “We should definitely hang out sometime”. We probably won’t.
It isn’t that we suddenly forgot how to make friends as adults, we have fewer places where friendships can happen naturally. School and university put hundreds of people around you every day. You saw the same faces, shared the same problems and had plenty of time to talk.
Adult life is different.
We meet someone interesting at work and discover they live an hour away. We meet someone at the gym but never speak beyond “How many sets do you have left?” We meet someone at a party, exchange numbers, and then we both become mysteriously terrible at replying.
EVERYONE IS TIRED. And its not even our fault sometimes. Its the human condition intertwining with realities of modern life.
There are bills to pay, work to finish, relationships to maintain, families to look after and approximately 47 things sitting on your mental to-do list.
Friendship has somehow become another appointment that needs to be scheduled. I attended the concert of global RnB superstar The Weeknd in London less than 3 weeks ago with two of my friends, but you wont believe we planned and scheduled that over 8 months ago. It was either that or we would all be engaged and too busy to come, genuinely.
But maybe that’s the part we need to accept.
Adult friendships often require effort
You have to send the message. Make the plan. Follow up when someone cancels. Suggest another day instead of quietly assuming they don’t want to see you.
And yes, sometimes you will feel like you’re trying too hard.
You probably aren’t.
Everyone else might be waiting for someone to make the first move too.
Maybe making friends as an adult isn’t about finding people who magically fit into your life.
Maybe it’s about finding people you like and making a little more room for them.
Because if we keep waiting for friendship to happen naturally, we might spend a lot of adulthood wondering where everyone went.