I am 24 (F) and feel like I have few close friends. I am in grad school in a technical field and spend much of my time working on research. My advisor wants me to do quite a bit, but I also enjoy what I do and am motivated by my work, so a lot of my time gets sucked into that. I have a boyfriend who is my best friend and whom I love to spend time with (he is also in grad school), but recently I've been really feeling the lack of friendships in my life. My other best friend lives far away so I don't get to see her at all. I have some friends scattered here and there, as well as acquaintances and classmates and such, but few people I would consider myself close to.
I don't have a lot of time (or money) to spend going out, but I have been trying to attend Meetup events and tried to socialize whenever I can. I am frustrated because I'm having a hard time making lasting connections with people in my age group. I don't find it difficult to meet or talk to new people, but I don't seem to find people whom I connect well with, where the friendship continues to grow. I have also found that many girls I've met tend to be superficial and only interested in talking about mundane stuff that I don't care much for. Maybe I'm too picky, but I like to engage in meaningful discussions and have a genuine conversation with someone. I find myself feeling very lonely sometimes...
I wonder if there are other people here who feel the same way, and if people have any advice for someone like me who wants to have more friends in her life. I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on this.
Substitute male for female, and I was you 10 years ago. My advice? Don't compromise. If you dislike superficial friendships, the you're not going to get along with most people by nature. You have a best friend and a boyfriend. Assuming each loves you, then you're doing better then most. It sucks not to have buddies to call to go to the movies on a Wednesday, but grad school kind of ruins casual friendships, unfortunately. The upside is that you get to figure out who the people are whom you can rely on like family.
Haha, yeah I've realized and accepted that I'm not going to have a ton of good friends for this very reason. I am still looking to form some solid friendships though, hopefully have a little group that I can feel close to. But yes, it's something to keep in mind, thanks. I find myself lucky to have such a good relationship with my boyfriend and a strong friendship with my far-away best friend, and try to cultivate any other friendships along the way.
Another option besides networking is going to places where people like you (or people you're interested in) are likely to congregate. So like, I hang out at my local hackerspace, and I also take folk music classes at a local nonprofit, because I like technology and DIY and music. I already have close friends and I'm not looking to add on more, but if I wanted to, I could do it from these places.
Question. Do you have any tips on how to do this if the spaces where people similar to me congregate are either beyond my budget or simply non-existent?
Ah yeah. I forget, my particular hackerspace is one of the cheapest in the nation. First, if you do have a space near you, investigate if they have any kind of starving hacker program. There's no real standard for the particulars of these programs, but they're all about giving low-income people access to the space by waiving or reducing dues. Some spaces have them, other's don't, depending on their financial situation and particular community culture. If you do not have a space nearby, but your near a decent sized population, you might consider starting one yourself! It does require a significant investment of time and effort, but it doesn't have to be a long-term commitment. More like medium-term, assuming you find people who don't mind taking over for you. Here is an excellent guide on how to do so: https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/11/12/how-to-start-a-hackerspace/ If you're not willing to start a hackerspace (and that's totally understandable!), you might set your sights lower, and start a plain old interest group. Interest groups are what came before hackerspaces, and the biggest difference is that they don't have spaces. Most of them don't even dues. It's just a group of people of who meet up on a regular basis at various low-cost or free venues to socialize. And, of course, interest groups can end up morphing into spaces. That's about all I got. After that, the only think I can think of is to choose some other interest of yours which a more active community near you.
I'll try to investigate deeper - but so far, all hackerspaces I found are in the more rich areas of the city, and don't have programs like you mentioned. And as far as interests go - I'll also keep a lookout.
Hmm. I had this problem as well when I was your age and I found that "networking" (I don't know if that's actually the right term or not, but it's the only term I know) really helped out. I found a good friend who had some similar interests as me and after hanging out for a bit he introduced me to more of his friends who all had the same interests. It went on from there. The amazing thing is though, not only did my friendships branch out, but my interests did as well. Because of those guys, I got introduced to cars, boxing, and MMA. Soon enough, I met more people that way. If you can find someone of like interests, it doesn't take much to expand from there. If I could give some advice though? Try to keep your circle of good friends small, maybe five or six max. Otherwise you'll soon find you have as much stress maintaining your new friendships as you did being alone.
Yeah, I should just keep trying to put myself out there and sooner or later I'll find at least one person whom I feel I can connect with, and it can keep building from there. It can be tiresome to try and try and never feel like you're getting something from the effort you put in, but I'm thinking it's better than not trying at all...! A circle of 5 or 6 friends is something I'd absolutely love to have. I agree it would be tiresome to try to maintain many more friendships than that!
I'll be entirely honest here. It might work, sure - but finding that first person is a feat in and of itself. Hell - if I had found that person, I might not even be here.
21/m here, I feel much the same. I look at news, I look around me - and all I see is superficial dunces who look like they can't even fathom thinking about 5 years from now, or beyond their own little bubble. No one is interested of talking about science, physics, ideas. It's all about what happened yesterday, or how Becky's getting new clothes, or how they got a high K/D in the latest COD, or other pointless things. But they don't /think/. They don't imagine. Hell - I feel (and act) so different than people in my surroundings that I had (and still have) a reputation for seeming like I'm always high on something, despite me never even touching any drug - I get fascinated by things right under our noses, like cars (thinking about how they work), the human body, the sky (and the depths of space behind it along with all the stars there). I get off tangents because I keep thinking about things (think of it like an IRL wikipedia link game, in my head). I don't pay attention because while they're blabbering about how they're "so going to stuff their faces with pizza pockets this weekend", I'm thinking and creating fictional universes, machine designs (that I put down later should I ever get the means to produce them), mechanism designs (also put down later), game mechanics for the day I have enough me-time to get started on it, and so on. Everyone wants to talk people and events (but not dramatic events like war or new technologies or officials scandals - no, more like how they're doing that festival this summer or how X and Y street is getting torn up for construction again). It seriously sucks.
It seems like you're building yourself up here a bit. How do you know that the people around you aren't also thinking about "important" things? Who decides what's a worthy thing to talk about? It sounds to me like you're writing off those around you as stupid for superficial reasons.
I know how you feel. Sometimes you just feel like no one understands you, that you have this whole universe in your head that other people don't. But the thing that I've realized is that others actually do have their own universes, it's just hard for me to get to those, because I don't connect with that person very well, or we are too different, or just because of circumstance and inconvenience I don't get to know that person well. I think you just have to accept that few people are going to share the exact same universe as you, but that perhaps you can find people to share bits and pieces of that universe to start with. Just wanted to say I understand how you feel!
Thanks - I'm aware that I'm a side show to everyone else - it's just I wish I had someone to share things with.
I guess you should keep on trying any method you can until you finally hit something you like with people you get along with really well. I had the same problem at around 24. I tried craigslist and I actually made a good friend off it for about year before he moved for a job. Other craigslist experiences haven't been that great. A lot of flakes really. I tried New Jersey reddit meetups and they were always cool and I met some good people but nothing really close even though I still contact some people I have met from time to time. One of the strangest thing that led me to meeting a lot of new people was when I used to leave notes of poetry in random places with my email on it and one day, I was contacted by a slam master of a local poetry slam who told me to try poetry slams as he believed I had the talent to do so. I did and I quickly became a local favorite and I have met a lot of great people. Also I have started to meet some other people I knew from this site I went on for many years called GameFAQS which is a video game website. One day, I randomly found out that some people from around my area were meeting up, so I decided to meet up with them and it was really great and I am starting to get know them really well since we have a groupme chat where we often interacted with one another. If you put yourself out there enough, you should find the people that you are looking for as the world is a big place afterall.
Many churches try to help bring people together with services, classes and activities. Is this an option for you?
Let me chime in, but take what I say with a grain of salt - I have my own issues, as I have a bit of Aspergers. - ignore age, you fit in where you fit in;
- meetups is a good starting place - think of where you might find people you will get along, and go there. If you like meaningful discussions, maybe join a debating club, or try to set up one yourself
- it's unfortunate, but the best place to find people with your interests is to just create that space yourself.
- lasting connections are centred around communication. Don't be bothered if you are the one reaching out for a long time, that's how things sometimes are.
- make sure you network a lot. Get some business cards, hand them out at professional events, add people on Linkedin and other social media platforms. If you enjoy work, make that a comfortable and social space for yourself.
- friendship growing is difficult. Besides everything else, it needs time, often years. Keep casually reaching out to the acquaintances you think you would like to be friends with. Overall, it's not time to worry too much. People move around a lot and you have probably another decade to get grad school/phd, first jobs and whatever figured out until you settle in a place more permanently.
Just a thought: listen to who other people compare you to. I'm trying to avoid giving out too many details here, but: Today, my family met with an old lady who we haven't seen for years. Over the course of conversation, she said that as soon as she saw me, she reminded me of a certain person. Now in this case I had run across that person before and become instantly friends because we recognized each other. But since I am not a very social person, think about how we would have missed each other if we hadn't run into each other on our own.
I think this might be a good opportunity to consider, what are you looking for in a good friendship? Are you looking for confidantes, or for people to go places with? Are you looking for people to hang out with 1-2x/month regularly, and then perhaps occasionally in between - what level of friend-committment are you seeking? If you are looking for a 1-2x/month sort of thing, where you can get to know people through regular meetings first but then begin to engage 1:1 or more regularly after you've learned something about them, what about something like a book club? I have been in a few book clubs in my time and they always provided a good social outlet. I also think that a book club may be a less likely place to find superficial people. Of course, I guess I would advise that you check out their reading lists first before making that call :)
It's not your fault MadEmperorYuri but there's some bugski that makes it look like your comment hasn't posted. I'm also seeing a lot of posts deleted all over the place because people are realizing their stuff comes up multiple times. Since you are an emperor, albeit a mad one. I would allow you multiple comments.
Ah. When I went to post this last night I kept getting server errors. Didn't realize my comments went through until now. Sigh. I'll delete this one anyway, it won't be missed.