Couldn’t Be Me: Am I too old to make friends?

Welcome to Couldn’t Be Me, a weekly advice column where I solicit your personal dilemmas and help out as best as I can. Have something I can help you with? Find me @_Zeets.

Friendship, great or small, is a wonderful thing; to have people, or a person, who one feels comfortable and safe with, another soul one feels obligated to in this short journey of life. Someone to share ourselves with, often just as lovingly as in a romantic sense, though they demand different things from us. There is no natural law that says that a friend cannot be your soulmate.

Because friendship is such a wonderful thing, not having friends, or being unable to make friends, can be a torturous experience. In Frankenstein, the creature referenced his lack of friends as he decried the loneliness of his existence:

”The fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even the enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”

This week, we deal with the difficulty of making friends and how to remain open to others, even as one struggles to find someone with whom to share their lives.

Shaddai:

I’m in my junior year of college and I don’t really have any friends on campus, just acquaintances that don’t seem interested beyond superficial academic conversations and who blow me off when I try to talk to them outside of that. My lack of friends here makes going to any party a daunting task, despite that I’ve attended two by myself and have mixed feelings towards doing it again. How do I make sure not to waste the fantastic networking opportunity that is college before I graduate?

CBM:

My little brother had a similar problem when he was in college. For some reason, he couldn’t make friends, as much as he tried. My advice to him, and to you here, is to find a club. It doesn’t even have to be a club for an activity that you’re good at already. It can be something that you’re interested in learning. For him, it was archery. It could be a writing group, an activist group, or gathering with a bunch of theater kids. (I’m personally less of a fan of fraternities and sororities, because people seem to use those organizations as substitutes for building their own individual, stable identities, and the cultures around them can be toxic.) Joining a club or group gives you a place with a reliable variety of people who you will routinely see and learn with, and gaining that familiarity in a fun environment is conducive to developing friendships.

Once you develop that core, you’ll have an easier time networking with others and branching out, because you won’t feel desperation to make each connection a deeper friendship. My little brother made a few friends in archery. He also found people who like wrestling and has kept in contact with them even after graduation. I hope you find your tribe as well.

Alice:

Background: I’m 38, been divorced for like a year, and way more comfortable with being alone than I was before. Used to barely be able to leave the house, but now I travel, go to events, etc., on my own.

This process of self-discovery has been interesting, but I find myself struggling with making friends — a lifelong struggle. I have this intense fear that people think I’m, well, fucking lame as shit. I let down my guard and started to get close — as a friend — to someone last year, and then she ghosted me. Others give me nonstop bullshit for my interests (dare I bring up soccer in front of some people and then I get an earful). I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really invite people anywhere, and if someone happens to be there, great.

While I’m better at being alone, as I said, my confidence is still pretty destroyed. I am too afraid to talk to people about my interests (or work — don’t even get me started on how my lack of confidence is destroying my career) for fear that they will totally reject me. Everyone else has, so why not them? It’s only a matter of time. So, I guess my question is three fold. Should I just accept being alone and cut everyone out of my life? Or should I work on my confidence in some other way? And how do old folks with no experience make friends?

CBM:

It’s much more difficult to make friends the older one gets, which I think comes down to many people having already established their friend groups. It’s also takes more effort to put yourself among a large number of people. As a result, there’s a loneliness and shame in being the only person who is not with someone else when you’re out by yourself, and you may feel anxiety in trying to reach out to others in that situation.

Still, fear is not the way to go. A life of fear isn’t a life at all, and the loneliness won’t stop just because you close yourself off. It will only intensify, and that self-blame could evolve into self-loathing. You should take steps to improve your confidence and keep yourself open. As Anna Kamienska wrote in her notebooks about the act of destruction that is shutting yourself away:

“Everything else is closed, impenetrable. You can’t penetrate rain, hail, wind, wood, stone, storm. All things are sealed tight as a coffin lid. Only man is open, open like a great home in which all things, phenomena, events may take up residence, become his body.”

People will ghost you, won’t reciprocate your efforts, and will even abuse your friendship. You can never be sure of another person’s intentions or love towards you. But rather than internalize their behavior as an indictment of yourself, it’s better to accept that hurt is natural in human relationships. The most you can do is put yourself out there and hope you find the right people who are as loyal and open as you are, and address any problems you may have if there is something you are doing to push people away.

Furthermore, I think you actually have a great way to make friends: Soccer. Rather than be fearful of bringing up soccer to people who may not like it, you could go find bars and or other gathering places where people watch games. Fans at bars are usually more open to conversation and friendships because of that foundation of a shared team or sport. The emotional openness that sports demand makes things easier, too.

My general advice is take the things that you’re interested in, find a place where people who share that hobby gather, and take the step of being vulnerable by going there.

Dre:

I’m going through heartbreak myself! Help me find the light to this shit!

CBM:

Not sure if this will bring you as much comfort to you as it does for me. It doesn’t give motivation after heartbreak, but it does capture the feeling of lost love. But like listening to sad songs to get through sad times, I always liked Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Ashes of Life:

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;

Eat I must, and sleep I will, — and would that night were here!

But ah! — to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!

Would that it were day again! — with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;

This or that or what you will is all the same to me;

But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through, —

There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow,

And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, —

And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow

There’s this little street and this little house.