Keep Making New Friends

It seems to me that so much of friendship discourse is about long-term friendships, or cutting people off or outgrowing friendships, but not nearly enough about making a concerted effort to continue to make new friends in your adult years. There seems to be this idea that age does and should make us less open to new interpersonal relationships, and I think that’s a big mistake. So I’m here to get on a soapbox and tell you to keep making new friends.

I say this for exactly the reasons why the popular topics in the friendship discourse are popular. Follow me for a second and I’ll explain:

Long-term friendships - Making new friends will help you maintain the skills needed to get to know people. It will keep you curious about the things you have in common with new people, and not just with the people who’ve known you since <insert age/grade/life stage here>.

Cutting people off - Making new friends will remind you that all of your life experiences will not mirror the life experiences that you already have. That is to say, when you make a new friend after cutting off an old one for not showing up for you when it really matters, you allow yourself to experience someone new showing up for you all the time. If you just cut off not-showing-up-friend, but don’t make a new one, you might not experience a different kind of friendship.

Outgrowing friendships - Making new friends will allow you to experience with life with people who are currently moving at the same pace and in the same direction as you. If all of your friends have settled into lives but you find yourself still a deeply ambitious person who is striving for something bigger, it would help you on your journey to also have friends who are similarly ambitious.

I think the thing that I want to share here the most is that being open to new friends, and making new friends helps to remind you that you are also a person who is constantly growing and changing and shifting. That you can take up a new hobby, or embrace a new identity, even as you mature and age. You can become a different person, and explore different sides of yourself. You can build new relationship skills. Life doesn’t end when adulthood begins.