There’s no easy way to make new friends as an adult – and sometimes our friendships can feel like a chore
Iwas lucky enough that the girl sitting next to me on my first day of primary school took the relentless and effective approach of repeatedly asking “Will you be my friend?” until I caved in. To this day she knows that my biannual suggestion that we play a game of tennis is not to be taken seriously and that I can be talked into following a whole season of The Bachelorette or Married at First Sight with no effort whatsoever.
But once we no longer have the ease of a classroom filled with people who live close by and are the same age, how are you supposed to make friends? If you move, go through a divorce or simply start feeling lonely, there’s no real way to expedite the process of making new friends.
It’s fascinating who we choose to spend our time with, where we find them and why sometimes maintaining our hard-won friendships, which are such a joy, can seem like a chore.
During the depths of lockdown, it wasn’t just missing the big stuff that shattered us, it was friends and even acquaintances people longed for. The vibe at the pub, the small thrill of running into an old mate on the street, the friendly exchange at the supermarket.
Friends are the people in your life who you choose to be around, tell your secrets to, who you’d risk going to a bad movie with just to be around. Unlike partners, they don’t care about bills or leaving towels on the floor. Being deprived of seeing mates face to face in the pandemic felt like living in black and white rather than in full colour.
Before the pandemic, loneliness was already at pandemic levels. Forty percent of people in aged care homes receive no visitors. One in three adults suffer from social isolation. Loneliness is such a severe health risk suffered by so many people that the Australian government is spending tens of millions to combat it.
Loneliness wrecks havoc on people’s physical and mental health. But even if you are motivated, making new friends is unpredictable, awkward and requires an uncomfortable vulnerability.
I’ve made most of my new friends through work – there’s nothing more essential to surviving the inherent alienation of work under capitalism than a work wife. But so much of the intensity of work friendships is going through the ups and downs of kooky managers and work drama that makes no sense outside of the building.
Some of these friendships are forever, some are circumstantial. Some people work on their own.
Kids also bring people together at the park or birthdays. There’s something sordid about eyeing off other parents at the playground, sizing them up as potential friend candidates, hoping your kid doesn’t belt their kid, and sussing out if they believe in vaccines.
But the process of having kids is also allergic to keeping your existing friends. When I became a mum my friends had to adapt to me as their mate who had to be dragged out of the bar on a weeknight to the person who suggested a 9am Saturday coffee catch-up. I’ll be nominating each of the friends who made this switch for Australian of the Year.
Even with the best of circumstances, maintaining friendships can be a task that falls off the to-do list. God invented FaceTime yet most people my age would sooner have a panic attack than pick up the phone.
As busy schedules, long distances and the length of time between catchups grow, it can be easier to let people drift off. Even if they are fantastic, you found them among the riff-raff and you share a history. Not every friendship is or should be forever, but surely maintaining our hard-earned friendships should be more of a priority?
We shouldn’t need the risk of catastrophic health conditions in our future to stop us casually letting our friendships fall by the wayside. But as we get older and further away from the classroom, maybe that could be the nudge we need to pick up the phone, turn up to a mixed netball game with strangers, join a club and survive the agony of putting ourselves out there and asking “Will you be my friend?”
Emily Mulligan is head of campaigns at GetUp