Living in the COVID-19 World ... and Beyond #17: Making New Friends

When I was a young person and went to school, I met other young people and made new friends.   I liked people and people seemed to like me, and we invited each other to play, and new friendships were formed.   It seemed very easy to make new friends.  Other people wanted to make new friends too.   The conditions were as good as could be for having new friendships develop.

This ease of making new friends continued for me through all my years of schooling, even in graduate school.   And it was also true in my early years as a worker in my 20’s and 30’s.  I would meet someone at work, like them, initiate lunch dates at work, and then dinner outside of work with partners too if we had them.  Many new friendships were formed that had working together as the initial foundation.

As the years have gone by, making new friends has gotten harder.   I think there are a number of reasons:

-       My work life used to be focused locally, that was true in my 20’s and early 30’s.  Since then, the people that I work with have been much more geographically spread out (including globally).   How do you become friends outside of work with people who live far away from you?

-       Again, thinking about my work life, for many years the people that I had the most contact with at work were either people that reported to me or my boss.    I am pleased that I have been able to generate a number of friendships that transcended work with people that reported to me … but that has definitely required thoughtful attention so as not to distort the ongoing work relationships.   And there have been many more people that I could have become friends with from work, that I was not able to figure how to manage having both a work relationship and a non-work friendship.    I think I have struggled with both workplace norms – what is OK or not OK in the workplace – and my own internalization of those norms and my own resistance to challenging the norms.

-       One final aspect of work life is that now as a consultant, the people that I am spending the most time with are paying me to do work with them.   It feels even more awkward to initiate friendship in the context of having a supplier/buyer work relationship.   

-       Probably the biggest reason is that as I and others have gotten older, our lives seem to be more set – we have established families and friendships that have endured for decades.   Do I have time in my life for another new friend?    Does the other person have time or interest?  It seems that as we grow older, our lives are supposed to get smaller.   We are set in our routines, we know what we like and don’t like, and our resistance to change tends to grow stronger.  

I have two recent experiences of asking people to become friends, one was a work client, and the other is someone with whom I serve on a Board.   In both cases, I really liked the other person and wanted to get to know them better.   And in both cases, I was very hesitant to bring up the topic of friendship.   What would they think of me asking if we could be friends?    It felt totally inappropriate for me to even be thinking of such a thing.   I realized that nothing really bad could happen from asking someone to be friends.   At worse, I could be rejected … for any of various reasons.   And so what?   And I also realized that it was highly unlikely that we would become friends unless I took what felt like a risk to initiate the possibility via a conversation.   So I did it.    I felt anxious, reminiscent of times from my teen years.   And I put the past behind me and acted on the basis of what I really wanted … and I received positive responses in both cases.

 What is easy or hard for you about making new friends?