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💬 Community Echoes

• Friendships in Adulthood
• Creating Positive Community Takes Effort
• Links: Apocalypse meh and more
• The double-edged sword of social happiness ✍️
• The Thursday Dispatch - 14 August 2025
• Aug 16, 2025
• Friendships in my life
• Espresso Shots 8-17-25
• Week Notes: 33|2025
• Weekly Roundup
• Friends? Friends
• The Hardships of Online Friendships

Keenan: no not at all what ever could you possibly mean I am kick ass people love me and I’ve never been lonely 😭

(but also very yes, this post is extremely relatable.)

BennysLittleThings: Yes, all of this rings so true!!! Adult friendships are a struggle!

Alex W.: Working from home throws up all sorts of challenges when it comes to meeting people regardless of then trying to form a friendship with someone. It really does come down to meeting people elsewhere through other means.

Pratik: Wait, you’re trying to make friends as an adult?

Eric S: Another banger of a post! I think work often is a good built-in source of friends, although I’m really hesitant to give out my personal number to work acquaintances after it being abused too much in prior roles (after-hours work-related questions or even going around typical means to reach me about work things.)

I think so much is due to the loss of third places and so you’re forced to pick a hobby or something else as an excuse to meet people you may not even click with anyway…

…Thankfully I’ve kept in touch with a lot of my close friends over the years, so we’re scattered, but check in every now and then.

I think the other split that makes it tough are a lot of people with kids shifting priorities towards their household. I’ve known a lot of interesting people that seem to have zero interest or time outside of household tasks (or they just don’t want to hang out with me 🤪)

Courtney: I'm in this picture and I don't like it at all.

Moderate Peril: It's a good post it's also a diplomatic one. One of the reason's I make less friends as an adult is that I very "picky" about the people I hang out with etc. Children are more easy going.

Cam R: I'm probably going to get criticism from this but even if people are busy and have their own lives, it's probably still good courtesy to actually engage with whoever wants to engage with you even if they are a stranger. Unless they're harming you, but that's only if it's obvious that's their intent. I mean, it's what my family taught me.

I make an effort to interact with tons of people on various places (internet and IRL) and have joined various clubs, and I STILL get crickets.

I genuinely don't understand why my expectations are all of a sudden considered unrealistic.

soft teeth: I can count on two fingers the amount of friends I have so uh yeah just a bit 😂

Aubrey S.: I've moved every few years as an adult, which means I don't have many real life close friends. I totally feel this.

At least I’m great at meeting new people and making acquaintances? I just don't know how to turn them into friends, and once I figure it out, I move again.

Eric V.: I make tons of friends…who live nowhere near me usually lol thanks internet!

Skoo.bz: I’ve written about this topic a few times this year. I agree, you’re most likely going to meet people through work or some kind of activity or organized group. Most of my friends came from karaoke outings and later going to hockey games. But, that group now lives 50 miles away from me. I’ve tried connecting with my coworkers, but there’s been different levels of difficulty with that. People have lives and you have to give a lot of grace and not try to take so much of it personally. Frankly, writing has kept me sane and allowed me to be connected with myself in the interim. But it would be nice to have a reason to leave the house from time to time.

Michael: Men in particular seem to struggle with the problem of making and keeping friends as they age.

As someone in his fifties with an eye on retirement, I’ve learned that “community” is an absolutely essential quality in any potential living situation, for exactly this reason.

I’ve also learned to appreciate the benefits of so-called “50 and over communities,” which at one time seemed anathema to me.

Jessica S.: As everyone says, it's really not easy! I feel like the only way is to join some kind of club or affinity group where you see the same people regularly. Otherwise it really is that treadmill of "wow, we really should hang out more often!" and then months or maybe even a couple of years pass where you can't get your schedules to line up 🫠

Scott J.: Guess it’s time to finally finish this “how to make friend as an adult” draft I’ve had forever 😆

MX Autumn: with children I get to chat to other parents at school pickup, at the irregular kids parties or random parents when at play parks but those are little more than acquaintances that so far haven’t grown past providing conversation.

Moving hundreds of miles from where I grew up and working full time remote has taken it’s toll on my friendship circles and having children I have very little time for the kind of social activities where friendships are forged.

Tyler S: Getting a dog helped so much with this. All my most recent friendships were forged while walking our little four-legged ice-breaker.

Lulu: The struggle is real 😞

jtr: Yes, making friends through work happens almost naturally, but also yes, it’s those weird acquaintances situations where it doesn’t really become friendship, at least for me.

I found that I made good friends through dating apps as an adult. I ended up having chemistry with a person who also tends to hang around some weird-in-a-cool-way folks. That’s what been filling my social aspect for the most part - the rest are some friends that I have maintained for years and years, and I see them now and then.

I don’t have kids and am not planning on having kids, so I have the luxury of hosting close people more often. Working from home helps with that too; we got a comfortable sofa here for that reason, and sometimes I have someone hanging out while I finish a meeting. It’s cool and pressure-free. I understand I’m an oddball here, perhaps. This has been working out for me for years (or maybe I have been working out for it? I sometimes feel it’s this lifestyle that found me, not the other way around).

Hollie: Hobby groups get me to the "hey, you seem cool!" phase, but then getting future-meeting logistics to line up can kill those little sparks quick.

Region plays a role, too. I've spent my whole life in the Pacific Northwest and there is definitely an invisible border, right before Chehalis, where "it'd be so great to get coffee sometime" south of that line means exactly what it says, and north of that line means "I very much hope we never meet again." This is very confusing to me.

Sara Joy: I was fine at it while I was swing dancing regularly. That's a kind of hobby that comes with its own ice-breaker :)

Since COVID and having young children who tire me out, the last thing I want to do of an evening is go out and expend more energy - so I've fallen out of the social circle. I hope to be back in there some day.

Until then - I have made TONS of friends online. Some know some very personal in depth parts of me. We've never physically met - but online friends are real too <3

Thejesh GN: I relate to this post. I’ve had some success making new friends as an adult, and they’re worth it. Its filled with empathy than expectation. So even though we meet less they are more memorable.

Emily: I’m late to the party here, but YES! A MILLION TIMES YES!

Although, to be fair, I had issues as a kid too. I couldn’t figure out how anyone ever hangs out when no one would actually schedule it. It was always this “go with the flow it will happen when it happens” stuff that blows my Autistic mind.

And I thought “surely, when I’m an adult, people will be into scheduling things.”

Nope. Now it’s even worse. And I’m still that weird little kid trying too intensely to schedule friendship🙃

Shine: It's really quite challenging to make new friends as an adult, especially if you're mostly working from home (like me). I'm just glad that the small circle of friends I've made more than a decade ago has become my constant.

But surprisingly, I've also met a few people online whom I consider as friends, so that's pretty cool.