How To Make New Friends As A Grown Up & Make Old Friendships Better

Last year was a hard one because, against my wishes, I had to leave my home of 17 years in Muir Beach at the same time as I had a new empty nest, my housemate and chosen family of 15 years moved to New Hampshire, my daughter’s father, who lived next door for the decade after our divorce, expatriated to Portugal, and I lost my local community. This put me far away from my previous friends.

What I got in exchange was my partner Jeff and a new life in West Sonoma County, after Jeff quit his job at Harvard and took a psychiatry job in Santa Rosa to be closer to me. We’d been bicoastal for three years, so that was a huge boon, because a long distance relationship was hard. I literally never knew what was in which refrigerator where, and I felt like my heart was split—between two sets of friends in two locations. I kept missing important milestones with both, and I felt like I was a sucky friend on both coasts.

And now I’m far away from all those friends, East Coast and West. Some of them will make the drive and come for a sleepover, and I’ll do the same. But it’s not the same as walking next door or meeting up halfway for a daytime activity.

So now I’m new here in West Sonoma County and I don’t have a single close friend or family member within easy driving distance for lunch, an art project, or a hike. And that’s tough. I never truly comprehended what it felt like to be “placed” until I was displaced. I still get teary when I write that.

Here in West Sonoma County, I don’t know my neighbors. I don’t know the plants or animals. It’s far enough north of Muir Beach that many things in my coastal environment are different. In Muir Beach, I knew where every patch of bloom lived and what time of year it would bloom. I knew many of the animals, some of them by name—the fox babies, the bobcat that liked to sit on the cliff and gaze at the ocean, the two owls in the eucalyptus tree on the Owl Trail, the whales that breached as they passed by.

Here, I’m meeting the swallows nesting under my roof and there’s far less fog, so I can actually grow tomatoes! But the hardest part is that I went from living in community, in a small town where I’d know at least half the people if I walked down the street, where I could walk next door for coffee with Nicki to process how our “parts” are doing with IFS work. Now, I’m mostly alone all day until Jeff gets home from work, and if I do walk down the street, it’s busy coastal highway that’s not safe to walk on, and I won’t see a single person I know.

I don’t mind being alone. I’m a writer. Writers can be entertained anywhere there’s a computer or empty note pad. But I’m realizing it’s too much pressure to put on Jeff to expect all of my needs to get met in one place. And so…after a year of settling in, of moving twice, of getting my daughter off to art school and thriving, of making some big changes in my business, of finishing up two books I’m publishing, of teaching myself how to sew (very badly), I’m finally prioritizing trying to make new friends and embed myself in the local community. I’m ready to feel “placed” again.

Trying to find my new people feels soooo vulnerable. Especially after lots of therapy and realizing that my previous ways of connecting were sometimes fawning trauma responses or controlling and rescuing people I deemed in need of help. Especially after being onto myself for sometimes selecting as friends either individuals high on the narcissism spectrum who I could look up to or those too low on the narcissism spectrum who I could control, I want to be intentional about how I go about this after lots of therapy.

So now I’m starting over again, and I’m wanting to be very intentional about my new friend-seeking journey. I took a weaving workshop at the Sebastopol Center For The Arts and vibed with the woman at the table next to mine, who is a middle school art teacher. At the end of the workshop, I approached her and said something messy like, “I’m new in town and I don’t have any friends here yet. Do you want to be my art friend?” I felt like an 8 year old on the schoolyard, shy and awkward and hoping she’d like me. She smiled and said she’s love that and gave me her number. We met up for a live outdoor concert with both our daughters and spent a couple days going to open art studios with our kids before she went off to vacation for the summer. Both Mira and I had a blast with them and I miss her already and am looking forward to her return, but feel too shy to tell her that.

I met another woman through the Empty Nest Supper Club I started. She invited me to come over to lunch at her new home in Occidental, to plan our next supper club. She made me this gorgeous lunch—lentil soup, the best bread with beet hummus, a salad with just the right salad dressing. Curiously, when I entered the home, I realized it was the same house Jeff and I had considered moving into when we were trying to find our next home! She gave me some great advice about making new friends later in life, namely, that you have to make it a real commitment, because once you’re not in school any longer and once your kids are not in school, it’s just so much more challenging to make new friendships work. She told me to be persistent, to push people for actual dates on the calendar, to refuse to settle for text friends, who aren’t really friends at all. We’ve had several fun friend dates, and I really like her. I said “I hope we can be friends” and she said “We already are.”

I’ve been going to Stitch & Bitch on Tuesdays, a handiwork circle at the Community Market in Sebastopol, where I met another girlfriend whose art studio I recently visited. She makes the coolest felted witchy hats and Dickens Fair-eque capes and shawls. We might join up at my Art Barn to participate in open studios for Art At The Source next summer, with my new upcycled clothing line Wilderloom and all her amazing hats and capes and woven treasures.

I’ve already tried on a few other potential friendships that didn’t quite work out, so not every friend date turns into a friend. I’ve realized I’m way more picky at this phase of my life. I met one woman who seemed cool, and we hung out a few times. But after inviting her to an event I had to buy tickets for, and after she cancelled without any explanation and didn’t offer to even pay for her unused ticket, I realized I don’t have a lot of patience for flakiness or for making and breaking plans for no good reason. I also pick up real quick whether someone lacks much capacity for empathy, and I’m allergic to that.

I had another friend date that quickly soured when she started killing living things in a protected sanctuary that she wasn’t planning to eat. As the “squirrel girl” who spent my childhood taking in injured baby squirrels and birds, and as the one who throws back the starfish and sand dollars when they’re stranded on the beach, this behavior made me question whether she lacked empathy. Empathy and a love and protection of living things is a key quality I’m looking for in friends. Both of these realizations put me in touch with parts of myself that are important to me and also parts of me that don’t like it when someone else doesn’t share those values.

When I found out I was going to have to leave my longtime home and I told my literary agent Michele Martin, she asked if she could connect me with another client of hers, Shasta Nelson, who calls herself the Chief Friendship Office and is the author of Frientimacy. I was a quick yes and hoped she’d live close enough to me to be my new bestie. She too had just moved and was writing a book about friendship after relocation. She asked if she could interview me and I said it was too soon! I’d only just moved weeks before. I hadn’t made a single new friend and didn’t have a lick of advice to give her for her book.

But a year later, we just reconnected to compare notes on how building our friend circles is going. She was font of knowledge about friendship! When I told her what I was doing, she started spouting off research and reassuring me that what I was doing—bonding through play and shared interests—was actually the most successful way to make new friends of all six strategies.

We started talking about the vulnerability of making new friends, and I told her a story about one woman whose number I asked for. I said, “I’m new in town and I don’t have any friend, and I enjoyed dancing with you. Would you like to share numbers and consider being my friend?” She got a little weepy and said, “You have no idea how lucky you are that you have that excuse.” And then I got a little teary, because I imagine she’s right. It’s maybe what’s motivating me to bring casseroles to my new neighbors quickly and take advantage of being new in town.

But that got me thinking. How many of us are not new in town, but we’ve lost friendships because they weren’t healthy or because we got ghosted and don’t know why or because we never really knew how to make friends that weren’t transactions to begin with or because when inevitable ruptures happened, we didn’t have the relational skills to repair or to own up to our mistakes and hold other people accountable for theirs?

In Navigating Changing Friendships When You’re Healing Trauma, I wrote about how we might no longer feel like we belong in our friend group once we’ve healed old relational patterns in therapy. But then what? What do you do if you best friend insists on controlling you and isn’t interested in learning how to share power and negotiate needs reciprocally? What if you’ve only attracted people who expect free listening, caregiving, and emotional support but don’t have any interest in returning the favor?

How many of us never got taught how to relate without transacting? Or how to have good enough boundaries not to lose ourselves or drive people away? How many of us had a friend group but those friendships were trauma bonds we outgrew when we got therapy or started doing our healing work? How would we even know how to discern whether someone new we’re meeting is a good fit?

Shasta and I talked about how to go on friend dates and get to know our own parts and practice what we’ve learned in therapy, to spot our tendencies and try something different. Like what if we don’t have to choose friends who are injured birds we can rescue or find someone powerful and competent we can give our power away to? What if we don’t tolerate one-way friendships and only accept reciprocal bonds? What if we don’t sell ourselves as someone useful to another person but just have enough self confidence to know and trust that we’re lovable just as we are? What if we also aren’t engaging in magical thinking and assuming people will just show up at our door, introducing themselves as our new bestie?

All this got me and Shasta excited to collaborate. She’s a super busy jet setter, so we can’t do a whole class together. But she’s agreed to be a special guest in a class I’m hosting Make New Friends As A Grown Up & Make Old Friendships Better.

Learn more and register for the early bird discount here

We can get so obsessed about dating, finding a partner, making our marriages and long term relationships better, building a family, and establishing a career. But friends often get relegated to the back burner, even though the statistics show that it’s more often our friend group that gives us the greatest joy and ease and the longest, healthiest lives.

I’m super psyched to teach this IFS-informed six week online class about friendship and hope those of you who are awkwardly shy alongside me will feel inspired to join me (and an awesome bit of Shasta) live on Zoom starting August 24 (or listen to the recordings.)

I'd love to hear about how you make new friends once you're no longer in school. What has worked for you? Where have you found your people? What tips would you give to someone new in town or someone who finally stopped being a workaholic or someone with a new empty nest or someone who did a lot of therapy and no longer fits with their former friend group because they've healed unhealthy relational patterns?

*Image credit Nicolay Kreidler

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