Do you remember that feeling of the first few days of a school year? The crisp, fresh feeling of back-to-school clothes; the stiff click of opening a new pencil case; bright, unbent folders sliding into the backpack.
It wasn’t just the school supplies and outfits that were new. Each new year meant a new configuration of schedule, subjects, and classmates.
As hard as it could be to make friends in the jungle of middle school and high school (cue the Mean Girls imagery in your mind), there was something about the shared challenge of getting through homework, exams, and extracurriculars that created a semi-automatic bond among my schoolmates and me. Not to mention the oodles of hours we spent together every week.
Most of us over the age of twenty-five know that it’s harder to make friends as adults, out in the “real world.” Even harder and countercultural if you’re a man, as a recent study has shown. And yet, friendship with Jesus and with others is the foundation of effective evangelization.
So, if you want to make new friends as an adult, where do you begin? Here are some of my favorite ways to get started.
Carve Out Time to Do Something You Love
A shared interest can open the door to friendship. Enjoy running? Join a running group. Like cooking? Take some classes. Have young kids? Start a playgroup. Join a book club. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Take up fencing. Whatever it is, if you invest time in something you love alongside other people who love it too, you’re putting yourself in a situation where you can meet new people and make new friends.
Talk to Strangers
“Come a stranger, leave a friend.” While I’m not sure I wanted to make friends at the European hostel where I first saw that phrase, they had a point. Every friend you currently have started out as a stranger. A lot of what keeps us from making friends is overcoming the initial fear of striking up conversation with someone we don’t know. Get in the habit of talking to strangers, whether that’s in a checkout line, an airport, after Mass, or someone who lives on your block. As you practice striking up conversation, that initial moment of saying hello and asking an opening question will become less intimidating. Instead, you may find yourself delighting in the practice of getting to know a wide variety of God’s sons and daughters.
Since trying to make a connection with someone outside of your established circle always includes the social risk of rejection, it is understandably a little nerve wracking for most people. The more you take the risk, though, the more comfortable with it you become, and the more aware you become of your own ability to ride the wave of rejection or disinterest. Because if you keep doing it, you won’t meet rejection at every turn! Lots of the time your outreach will result in a genuinely good human connection, whether or not that person becomes a friend.
Invest in a Few
According to one researcher, “our ability to judge whether or not we want to be friends with people happens fast, but the process of developing that relationship takes a lot more time.” By a lot more time, he means 80 to 100 hours of time logged before an acquaintance becomes a friend.
While carving out time for your favorite interest or hobby and talking to strangers will get you interacting with a lot more people than you may be used to, this won’t result in actual friendship without the investment of lots of time and intentionality. It takes an invitation to spend more time together socially—and doing so repeatedly—to log that kind of time as an adult. So while you can meet dozens of people on a regular basis, you can only invest in building a few friendships at a time. Choose a few people you genuinely enjoy and log the hours.
Take Conversations Deeper
While time is a hugely important factor in making friendships, it’s not the only one. Most people have friends they’ve known for years who never crossed the threshold into deeper territory. If you want more than talking about work and the weather for the rest of your life, learn to take conversations into more meaningful territory. You can do this both by sharing about yourself in authentic ways and by asking your friend questions that go beyond the surface level. Ask about their family, about where they grew up, about things that you know are important to them.
As Jason Simon writes in Mission-Ready Friendship,
We often don’t go deeper with people because we try to ignore our problems by shoving them away. Or maybe we don’t want to give our spouse ammunition for a fight—or our friends a reason to give us a hard time. It can be scary to be the first one to get real. But God wants to give us deep friendships as places not only to receive support but also to give it.
Take the risk. Make the time. Get more personal. It’s this kind of real sharing that connects us with friends for a lifetime.
Want to learn more about how to truly befriend your friends and become the friend Jesus created you to be? Check out Jason Simon’s newly released book, Mission-Ready Friendship.
Andrea Jackson is a Content Creator and Ministry Consultant at the Evangelical Catholic. The Evangelical Catholic’s mission is to equip Catholics to live out the Great Commission. Learn more.
