Help Is there any hope in making friends?

[Unhirable]

I am 22 and I have not had friends since my sophmore year of high school (7 years ago).

I cannot think of any situation in which I could make real, strong friends. There won't be anything like school or college where I spend a lot of time with people.


most people in their twenties already have friends who they have spent lots of time with, and they aren't looking for anymore. The people without friends are fucked up weirdos (myself included).

But I'm open to suggestions.

 

[hopeless302]

Apologies in advance if this sounds super cliche, but have you tried meet up apps? You can find people with similar interests near you. Additionally, you can try volunteer work if there's a homeless shelter or animal shelter or something like that fairly close by. Also, I know you said there's nothing like school or college, but you can take a random class in stuff that you or other adults might be interested in like dance, karate, cooking or something like that. You probably might not be interested in any of those things, but idk... going out of your comfort zone can lead you to encounter some interesting people I think. The thing is, in my experience, even if you make like just one acquaintance, they can introduce you to other people or bring you into situations where you're forced to meet other people. Next thing you know, you have a pretty decent social life or at least a solid group of people you can spend time with.

Also, pls don't feel too weird about not having many/any friends... it's a rising problem in the world, tbh.

Massive meta-analysis finds loneliness has increased in emerging adults in the last 43 years

According to a meta-analysis of 345 studies, loneliness levels have linearly increased between 1976 and 2019, suggesting loneliness may be of rising concern in emerging adulthood. This research was published in Psychological Bulletin. ...

www.psypost.org

 

[Smart No More]

Have you considered things like like meetup? It's a decent substitute for school environment and has the benefit of never having to meet the people again. It's based around doing activities you might already like or things you might like to learn or try but in groups. Loads of free options. Another great benefit is that there are ao many things you can do you so you never really run out of chances. Plus there's no expectations on social stuff there. It's all about the activity you go for and at the very least it's good 'practice'. Obviously covid kind of killed group activity for a while but things seem mostly back to normal on that front ao there's probably tons of options again. I think the site is called meetup dot com. Activities all over the world as well as locally.

 

[Zegers]

most people in their twenties already have friends

you have a skewed perception of this. People want to meet new people, make new contacts, a lot of people dont have any friends, but if you don't take the first move you'll never meet anyone (just like me)

 

[Rounded Apathy]

It depends on the type of friend you want. "Meeting people", in my experience, is not particularly hard. You just need to do or go to the same place or thing regularly enough, and it helps if it's some kind of directed thing, like events or meetups have already said. Even something like a weekly hike, bar trivia, or whatever could help. These people won't be your best buds immediately but it's a start.

Making strong deep connections is fucking hard. Especially in any industrialized, individualistic/capitalist nation. People are complicated and don't have a handle on their own shit, have different/ridiculous priorities, poor emotional intelligence, whatever. Look at most families and how there are always even a small number of moderately twisted dynamics in the best of cases, let alone full on abusive with the people you should be closest to in the world.

Friends are different cause they're self-selected, but humans are humans. I don't really go to meetups and such cause of a few other reasons too, but also because I want a small number of very intimate friendships, and the likelihood of getting even one out of those kinds of things so I minuscule, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I don't want to pretend to be happy and normal and into just hanging out with people doing dumb whatever kinda stuff. I want to be real, raw, loved and able to love. I'm too tired to dance the dance.

 

[Achromatix]

I am 22 and I have not had friends since my sophmore year of high school (7 years ago).

I cannot think of any situation in which I could make real, strong friends. There won't be anything like school or college where I spend a lot of time with people.


most people in their twenties already have friends who they have spent lots of time with, and they aren't looking for anymore. The people without friends are fucked up weirdos (myself included).

But I'm open to suggestions.

I'm also 22 and lack friends. Trust me I getcha. It's one of the loneliest places to be. I feel like if you lose friends from school, it's over unless you find friends at work

 

[TiredLostHope20]

Your not alone, i struggled with making friends. I make acquaintances i "know" but once we haven't talked in a while were back to being strangers.

 

[theboy]

Yes, you can have friends :)

 

[Sardonia]

I think so, and I felt really lonely when I was growing up and especially after upper secondary school. When I started studying a few years later, I found a lot of new friends. Most of them are gone now though, but I kept one that i talk to regularly. If you have an interest you can pursue, such as playing some kind of sports, playing music, playing chess or something (it can be anything) it can really help to join some group for it if there is something like that where you live.