Why Does Making Friends as an Adult Feel So Hard?

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately, and specifically about something I don’t think we talk about enough: Why is it so much harder to make and keep friends as an adult?

When we’re younger, friendship is almost built into our lives. We go to school together, live down the hall from each other, start our first jobs together, and have endless reasons to be in the same place at the same time. Then adulthood happens, life gets busy, people move, relationships change, and suddenly seeing someone you love requires comparing calendars three weeks in advance.

I learned this in a very real way after my divorce. Before then, I would have told you I had a lot of friends, but when my circumstances changed, some of those friendships changed with them. A few stayed with my ex, others quietly disappeared, and some, I realized, had been held together more by shared circumstances than by a deep connection between the two of us.

It forced me to ask myself what I actually wanted from friendship. I stopped caring so much about how many people were in my circle and started paying attention to who I could call when something fell apart, who genuinely celebrated when something went right, and who left me feeling more like myself after we spent time together.

I also had to ask a harder question: Was I being that kind of friend to other women?

There’s a phrase I’ve seen online that says everyone wants a village, but nobody wants to be a villager, and there’s some uncomfortable truth in that. We all want people who show up for us, but building those relationships means we have to show up too, even when it’s inconvenient.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed people for decades, and its research on the relationship between strong social connections, health and happiness made me think about friendship differently. We put so much effort into eating well, exercising and taking care of our health, yet we often treat our relationships as something we’ll get around to when life gets less busy.

My circle today is smaller, but it’s deeper, and getting here required me to become much more intentional about friendship.

In my newest episode of The Tamsen Show, I’m sharing four things that helped me build the community I have today, including what I learned about choosing where I put my energy, showing up for other women, putting myself in new rooms, and one simple habit I stole from my husband Ira.

Listen to 4 Ways to Make Friends as an Adult (And Actually Find Your People) on The Tamsen Show.

Because finding your people as an adult may take more effort, but I don’t believe for a second that your best friendships are all behind you.

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