Do you have 90 hours to be regular friends?
New adult friendships and the loneliness epidemic.
Late by a day because Substack was down yesterday!
Last week, I was feeling intensely homesick. Not so much for where I lived, but I was homesick for the company of my friends and the comfort of knowing my loved ones were near me. Moving continents isn’t easy by any means, but the toughest part is starting from scratch when it comes to making a social circle.
Turns out, I’m not alone1. Adult friendships (new and old) are so hard to navigate that there’s a loneliness crisis happening in the world. In fact, it’s being called a loneliness epidemic because of how awful it can be.
I’ve already talked about how maintaining friendships as an adult is hard work.
It’s because we all have a limited number of hours in our day. Unless you’re lucky enough to work or live with your friends, the time and energy you have to meet your friends or chat with them decrease the busier you get. The bandwidth we have gets lower and lower every year, as does the amount of free time you have — babies, elderly parents, partners, jobs — so many things dictate our lives now.
But you know something even more difficult?
Making brand new friends as an adult.
Let’s look at the facts for a quick second —
As a child, you could make friends at school, and at any of the various activities, your parents forced/cajoled/let you do.
As an adult, you can make friends at work and then come back home to spend the rest of your waking hours alone or with whoever you live.
But what if you work from home? What if your colleagues are friendly but not friends? What if you’re unemployed?
Where do you go to befriend people? How do you go about it?
Level up the challenge by moving to a new city, country, or place. Add another difficulty level to your character if you don’t speak the common language wherever you are. One more if you’re not into group activities like hiking or walking.
Networking can’t replace friendships
If you blindly throw an arrow at your LinkedIn timeline, you’ll hit a post about the importance of networking. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves the only reason we need to get to know another person and ‘network’ with them is to potentially help ourselves in the future.
Now while I’m not saying that’s smart planning, it’s also a lost opportunity. I don’t blame anyone for being cautious and having foresight, especially in this collapsing economy, but what if we could reframe networking a little bit? Perhaps, we give it another name but change the crux of the idea to mean making a proper connection that could even go beyond professional spaces.
Does it sound too ridiculous?
Well, why can’t we emphasise adult friendships and meaningful connections as much as we do on networking? We’re a lot more open to being a part of someone’s network but so much more scared to try and befriend them on a common interest.
In the freelancer community, even though outsiders consider us all competitors, people are actually friends. And they’re automatically a network, but the friendship part coming first is more important. I’ve seen people rally around someone who lost a loved one, another who welcomed a new life into the world.
Can you spare 200 hours?
A couple of weeks ago, the NYT explored the research behind a check-in. A simple text message or call to say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’
[...] Those who initiated contact significantly underestimated how much it would be appreciated. The more surprising check-ins (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful. [The researchers] kept the bar for what counted as reaching out intentionally low: a brief call, text or email, or a small gift, like cookies or a plant.
Don’t you think we’re all so lonely as adults because, even with the bar so low, people were so touched by a brief, unexpected check-in?
Research shows that it takes 200 hours of good quality time spent together for people to become best friends. That’s a long time. It sounds like it’s a week and a bit more, but it’s sustained, consistent effort and work put in by two or more people into a relationship that turns them into best friends.
Wanna just be regular friends? That’s 90ish hours. Casual friends? 50 hours. Everyone else is an acquaintance or a stranger.
I don’t think it counts if you put in 200 hours over two decades. You have six weeks to find 200 hours to spend time with a prospective new best friend.
Now, try finding those 200 hours in your adult life. Between a full-time job and seven hours of sleep, you’ve got a third of your day to do chores, life things, errands, and other things for yourself. More complications if you have a family to take care of.
“Half the struggle is finding someone who wants the same thing you do, and at the exact same time.”
Okay, so where do I find the time to go from casual to regular friends with people once I’ve found people who want to befriend me and vice versa? The way our society is structured, people are burning out at work, exhausted at home from everything they’re managing, checking in on existing friends, and searching desperately for a genuine connection with others — how do you fit new friendships into this?
Now, by some miracle, if you made new friends — there’s the question of fitting into an existing group. When I spoke to friend after friend on video calls and showed them my new home, my housemate commented, “Most of the folks who live here already seem to have their own established social groups and friend circles from college and uni, you do too, yeah?”
You got included on this thread by mistake, but we’re happy to be chatting!” the librarian texted, followed by an emoji that looked to me to be chortling. Only then did I realise that I had greatly underestimated the difficulty of breaking into a long-established group. I get it: I, too, used to think that I had all the friends I needed.
As a new friend to people here in this new country, I’ll now feel like they have their own circles, too, and I’ll never progress past acquaintance or casual friend.
It’s hard to put yourself out there, but we move
All the articles I used for researching this issue had one bit of common advice — to keep putting yourself out there again and again.
“You had this one negative experience. It had sucked. Someone said they had too many friends, right? But that certainly doesn’t mean that everybody has too many friends, and that certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there that are just waiting for you to connect with them.”
Which, of course, is easier written than done. First, I’ll need to find like-minded people who speak English. Then, I’ll have to find time on their calendars and mine to schedule something.
And then, if all goes well, I can start counting down the hours.
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I wrote about adult life changes and friendships on my blog. It's free-flowing writing straight from my brain. I also found Katie Morwenna's post about adult friendships really nice to read.
Damn, that's a huge jaw.
Email safety tip: When signing up somewhere, use abc+xyzplace@gmail.com. Gmail doesn't recognize the +xyzplace, so if your data is leaked, you'll know exactly who lost it. h/t setupspawn
I woke up, found out an artist I love was touring, found tickets, and went for a concert — all in one day. Extremely spontaneous and very unlike me.
I've been sending all my friends this page, and since I consider you a friend too, here you go:
(Meant to be taken in jest, not actuality, thanks.)
Leaving you on a wholesome note. 🐌
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to hit like and share this issue if you enjoyed it. 🖤
I never am because there’s rarely an original expression, idea, or feeling in the world.
What you need is an addiction. 12-step programs are a great way to make new friends fast. I am dead serious.
This is so good. I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot because I still believe in the “Friends” ideal where we are all at each other’s houses all the time. I did have that for awhile when my husband and I moved into an apartment complex that had a pool and rooftop bar. We always met people in the social spaces then hung out all the time. We even had that when we moved into a house (big front porch culture here in Utah) until they all got really into mountain biking and I was left wondering where all the creative people were. Now I’m trying to figure out how to create that again. Your post has given me a lot to think about!