Why Making Friends Feels Harder Than It Used To

by Juliana Mott Fabio, LCSW

Since COVID, I have found myself thinking more and more about how much harder it seems to connect with other people and make new friends. I don’t think the pandemic created this problem so much as accelerated something that had already been happening for a long time. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg used the term “third place” to describe the informal gathering spaces in our lives outside of home and work. These were the cafés, churches, parks, bookstores, neighborhood markets, town centers, malls, libraries, and other places where people regularly crossed paths. They were not necessarily places we went with the intention of making friends. We simply showed up, often at the same times and around the same people, and over time familiarity developed.

For much of our history, everyday life required us to leave the house and interact with other people. We went to stores instead of ordering everything online. We stood in line at the bank, went to the grocery store, stopped at neighborhood shops, knocked on our friend's doors, called people on the phone and talked with their parents, attended church or community events, and relied more heavily on the people around us. We saw the same faces and had small conversations that may not have seemed important at the time but were part of the social fabric of daily life. Today, much of that has changed. We can have groceries delivered, work from home, bank from home, exercise from home, watch movies from home, and order almost anything we need without speaking to another person. Texting lets us communicate without actually having a conversation, and social media allows us to know what is happening in someone’s life without really interacting with them. There are enormous benefits to all of this, and I appreciate the convenience as much as anyone, but I also think we have lost something along the way.

Convenience has quietly removed many of the ordinary interactions that once connected us to one another. It may also be contributing to something I hear people talk about more and more: the feeling that making friends as an adult is unusually difficult. Recently I listened to an episode of Jay Shetty’s podcast about adult friendship, and several ideas stayed with me. One was his observation that many of the systems that once helped people develop friendships have disappeared, even though the basic way friendship develops has not changed very much. I found this especially interesting because when we are young, friendship is built into the architecture of our lives. We go to school with the same people every day, sit beside them in class, participate in sports and clubs, live in dorms, and spend repeated time together without having to organize any of it ourselves. We rarely think of ourselves as intentionally building community because the environment is already doing so much of the work.

At some point in adulthood these environments no longer exist. No one places us in a room with the same thirty people five days a week, and yet we may still expect friendship to happen as naturally as it did when we were younger. This is something we aren’t taught and can feel personal if we don’t see it happening. We go from everyone we know being in the same places at the same times to on our own with an individual schedule that might not include the same people or people are at different stages in their lives.

The idea of repetition resonates with me so much. We tend to think friendship starts with chemistry, that we meet someone, immediately click, and somehow know this person could become important to us. Sometimes that happens, but I suspect many friendships form much more quietly. You see someone at the same yoga class every Tuesday. At first, you smile. A few weeks later, you have a short conversation before class. Eventually you learn her name. Later you discover that you both love hiking, or that your children are similar ages, or that you have something else in common. There may be no dramatic moment when a friendship begins. You simply keep showing up, and the person becomes familiar.

That is one of the things I think we underestimate about connection. Familiarity matters, and familiarity takes time. If we attend something once and decide we didn’t meet anyone interesting, we may be expecting too much from a single interaction. A weekly farmers market, the same coffee shop every morning, a book club, an exercise class, a volunteer shift, or a walking group may not lead to an immediate friendship, but they create something increasingly rare in modern life: repeated exposure to the same people. This may be why becoming a regular somewhere matters so much. You do not have to enter the room asking yourself who might become your friend. You simply give relationships enough time and space to develop naturally.

There is, however, another part of this that is much more uncomfortable. At some point, someone has to take initiative. Someone has to say hello first, introduce themselves, ask a follow-up question, suggest getting coffee, or walk into a room where everyone else seems to already know one another. This requires us to move toward what I think of as our uncomfortable edge. There is always some risk. You might ask someone to coffee and they may be too busy. You might go to a group and feel awkward. You might start a conversation that does not go anywhere. The possibility of rejection is often enough to make people hesitate, especially if they already feel lonely or unsure of themselves.

I think this is where the subject of confidence becomes interesting. We often imagine that we need to feel confident before we take a social risk. We tell ourselves that confident people walk into rooms without anxiety, strike up conversations easily, and naturally know what to say. But confidence may work in the opposite direction. I recently listened to Mark Manson discuss psychologist Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy and the idea that our belief in our ability to handle something grows through experience. We become more confident after we do something uncertain, have some degree of success, and gradually build evidence that we are capable of handling that situation. 

In other words, the sequence may not be confidence followed by action. It may be action, followed by experience, followed by competence, followed by confidence. You do not become comfortable walking into a room full of strangers by thinking about it. You do it while still feeling uncomfortable. The first time may feel terrible, but maybe someone smiles at you. The second time you recognize a face. The third time someone remembers your name. Eventually your brain begins collecting evidence that you can handle the experience, and what once felt intimidating becomes familiar. Confidence develops because you acted before you had it. Confidence is a byproduct of competence in a certain domain. You build enough success in several domains and it becomes more generalized.

This has important implications for friendship because waiting to feel ready may keep us waiting indefinitely. Sometimes we have to act without the reassurance that things will go well. We may have to go to the class before we know anyone, attend the group before we feel like we belong, and make the invitation before we know whether it will be accepted. Each time we do that, we stretch the boundary of what feels familiar. Not dramatically, but enough to create a little more capacity for the next attempt.

Another idea from Shetty’s discussion that stayed with me was the comparison between loneliness and hunger. When we are hungry, we do not usually interpret the feeling as evidence of a personal flaw. We understand that our body is giving us information and that we need food. I think there is something compassionate in considering whether loneliness can sometimes be understood the same way. Rather than immediately asking, “What is wrong with me that I don’t have more friends?” perhaps we could ask, “What might I need more of right now?” Loneliness may not always be an invitation to look further inside ourselves. Sometimes it may be a sign that we need to look outward and create more opportunities for contact, belonging, and companionship.

This matters because friendship difficulties are so easily personalized. We look around and imagine that everyone else already has their group, everyone else knows where they belong, and everyone else is naturally more socially comfortable. But appearances tell us very little. The person standing beside you in line may be lonely too. The woman you recognize from yoga may also be wishing someone would ask her to coffee. The neighbor you wave to every morning may be hoping for more connection. Sometimes two people may both want friendship but are each waiting for the other person to go first.

That may be one of the most important shifts we can make. What if our goal is not to wait for someone else to create the connection, but to become the person who occasionally goes first? This does not mean approaching every interaction with an agenda or treating every new person as a potential close friend. In fact, I think the opposite is probably more helpful. We can simply be present. Ask a question because we are genuinely interested in the answer. Listen. Notice something about the other person. Enjoy the conversation for what it is without deciding where it needs to go.

Not every interaction needs to become a friendship in order to matter. Some people will remain acquaintances. Some will be the people we enjoy chatting with at the coffee shop or seeing every week at a class. Some conversations may happen once and never again. These small moments still remind us that we are part of a larger community. They soften the sense of isolation that can come from moving through an increasingly private and individualized world. And occasionally, through enough repetition, mutual interest, and vulnerability, one of those casual connections becomes something deeper.

Of course, if we are willing to go first, rejection is sometimes going to happen. Someone may decline an invitation, a conversation may fall flat, or a friendship we hoped would develop may not. The danger is not the rejection itself so much as the story we build around it. It is easy to think, “See, people don’t like me,” or “This is why I shouldn’t put myself out there.” But one interaction tells us very little about our overall capacity to connect. People are busy, overwhelmed, distracted, or simply not always a good fit for one another. If we allow one rejection to become evidence for how the world works, we may stop creating the very opportunities that could eventually lead to connection.

This brings me back to the larger cultural change. Many of us may still be waiting for friendship to happen naturally in a world that has removed many of the places where friendship used to naturally happen. We may need to become more intentional about creating what our environment once created for us. That could mean leaving the house when it would be easier to stay home, attending something regularly instead of once, shopping at the farmers market instead of always ordering groceries, returning to the same coffee shop, volunteering, joining a group, taking an in-person class, or simply becoming more aware of the people we encounter repeatedly.

There is a progression here that I find hopeful. Action creates experience. Experience creates competence. Competence creates confidence. Connection may grow in a similar way. Presence creates familiarity. Familiarity creates comfort. Comfort makes vulnerability easier, and vulnerability, repeated over time, creates the possibility of friendship.

Maybe we have not forgotten how to connect. Maybe we have simply lost many of the structures that once made connection easier. If that is true, loneliness is not necessarily evidence that there is something wrong with us. It may be information that something important is missing from our lives. The answer may not be dramatic. It may be as ordinary as leaving the house, finding somewhere we want to return to, continuing to show up, noticing the people who keep showing up too, and every once in a while being willing to be the person who goes first.