Making friends when you're older than thirty

There’s an article in the NY Times about the difficulty of making friends once you’re over the age of thirty.

This is a topic that Steve Sailer has written about many times (for example, he mentioned it in this blog post), so maybe the NY Times has once again been trolling the blogosphere for topics for articles.

This must have something to do with the way our brains change as we grow older. Put two small children in a room together and they become instant playmates. Adults don’t work that way.

As parents, there’s a dark side to the way children make friends so easily; children make friends first, and then they adopt their values to match the values of their friendship circle. So you had better make sure you children make friends with the right kids. Which is probably easier than it sounds, because given that children do make friends so easily, all you have to do is drop them into the right activity and they instantly make friends with the right class of children.

Adults know who they are, so if they meet people who aren’t like themselves, they just shrug them off rather than try to change themselves to become friends.

* * *

The thirty-year threshold for friend-making has important ramifications for career advancement and general well-being. By the time you reach thirty, it’s important to be settled into your career and your geographic location, because after that it’s a lot harder to get started. The friends you make in college and in your first jobs when you are in your twenties will help you throughout your life. But if you don’t have a career until your thirties, or you move around, or you attend a crappy community college where the students are losers who will never be able to help you move up, then you lose this very important source of social capital.

The article also demonstrates the benefits of being married and having children, because then you can become friends with the parents of your children’s friends. Although there’s a darkside to that, because I know some people who were sort of best friends with their child’s best friend’s parents, and then their children had a falling out, and that ended the adult friendship.

This also means that there's a hidden benefit to sending your children to an elite private school. You will become friends with quality parents that way. It's a much better networking opportunity than sending your kids to public school.

Comments

[BrunoBrazil]

One more element of Sigmaist mythology: your friends are all settled when you´re thirty.

Other elements of Sigmaist mythology:

1- Black neighborhoods are dangerous. So there is something intrinsic about blacks, in a biological or psychological aspect, that makes them inherently unable to not to be underclass. Correlation as causation, the big problem of HBD.

2- CEOs and high powered people have 30 mistresses at the same time, when 90% of the men don´t have sex.

3- Sarah Palin has something of interest.

4- Going to community college is as life-destroying as a felony conviction.

5- Programming jobs suck, even though you earn far more than the median.

6- Blacks don´t deserve a swimming pool.

7- It would be enough for single mother to get married, so it automatically solves their problems.

8- Iran will wash out the US fleet on the Persin Gulf. Never happened.

Any other myth I forgot, Mr. Sigma?

[Drole Prole]

I bet a large number of your readers can relate to this 'Though Catalogue' blog post called "How To Screw Your Life Up After You Graduate College":
Excerpts:

"Move back in with your parents and haunt your hometown like a very sad ghost—the kind of ghost that cuts themselves with a dull razor blade because they don’t want to do any real damage, and gets Further Seems Forever lyrics tattooed on their wrist. Treat your hometown like it’s a decayed museum full of broken artifacts. Sincerely believe that you can resurrect certain memories if you visit their origin and think about them hard enough. “This matters to me now because it mattered to me then…”"

"Make sad Facebook updates and tag unflattering pictures of yourself drinking at your hometown bar knowing full well that your friends are going to be judging you. They’re going to be sitting in their grown up apartments with their grown up jobs and they’re going to feel flashes of pity go through their young professional work clothes for you. Maybe they’ll even text a mutual friend something like, “Um, have you seen so-and-so’s Facebook lately? WTF are they doing? Have you spoken to them?” A part of you feels incredibly embarrassed that your life has been reduced to this but another part feels so freaking liberated. When you bring your life down to the depths of nothingness, you have nowhere to go but up. Up, up, up."
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-screw-your-life-up-after-you-graduate-college/

[Peter A]

"This also means that there's a hidden benefit to sending your children to an elite private school. You will become friends with quality parents that way. It's a much better networking opportunity than sending your kids to public school."

Hardly hidden. why do you think people who live in town with excellent school systems (like Scarsdale, NY or Belmont, MA) still spend 50K a year to send their kids to private school? It's not for the education.

[Firepower]

Gee, to think that in order to discover mature adults quit having any popular teen a-hole as a friend, I didn't have to look at my grandad and dad - just read steve sailer.

[asdf]

More and more I've been thinking about picking up "Bowling Alone."

[wallace]

Good advice, all of it. I spent decades trying to be friends with the wrong people...booze helps.

[Turambar]

"Other elements of Sigmaist mythology:"

How curious to use the term myth for statements that all have an EV over .5.

[WesleyH]

Half Sigma, you are correct.

Plenty of sociological studies have shown that children will strive to copy the bahaviour of the "coolest" members of their friendship group.

That is, if your son has five friends, and two of them are consider cooler than the others and the two cooler ones take drugs your son will copy them and take drugs. However if your son has five friends and the two uncoolest ones take drugs your son is much less likely to take drugs.

That is why it is so important to try to put your sons in settings in which they make friends with kids that have good habits

[Mercy Vetsel]

HS,

Good points all around. That's the real reason why NYC Metro suburbanites are so obsessed about the quality of the schools.

It's not because the top schools are going to turn make their kids any smarter or any more successful academically. It's because good schools are a proxy for the overall social status of an area.

That's also why superb test scores in average middle class, but heavily Asian and Jewish, areas don't help as much as they do in WASPy areas.

Of course despite the fact that traditionally upper-class WASPs have felt greater animosity towards Jews than towards blacks, there is no way that they could prevent rich Catholics and Jews from moving in to the most trendy towns.

As a result the most heavily WASP areas are now second-tier economically.

-Mercy

[WesleyH]

Half Sigma,

First of all, I have no idea how friendship works among females. Since all of my children are sons, I really don't have to give much thought to how females make friends. I am very financially comfortable, and as you can tell from my IP address, I live in a neighbhorhood in which nearly everyone has an advanced degree, earns a high income, and avoids self destructive behaviour.

I have the money to keep my sons away from bad influences and I do. That being said, I have many cousins that never had the chance to make big money who have to live in what I would call middle middle class neighborhoods. I have always advised them to look for neighborhoods in which the people living in the neighborhood may not have a lot of money but are still very highly educated. I have said that violent self destructive prole behaviour is not directly correlated to money.

For example, in Las Vegas, the average casino worker makes the same money as the average adjunct professor at UNLV. For the same money you can buy a house and have all your neighbors be adjunct professors or buy a house and have all your neighbors be casino workers. You have to assume that your sons will learn better values from the adjunct professor crowd.

Half, everyone on your blog knows that for people who are fortunate enough to have plenty of money, it is quite easy to keep your sons away from bad influences. But I think you should discuss how people who lack money can do so as well.

[HS: Like you just said, live in the best neighborhood for your children rather than what you might consider the best neigbhorhood for yourself.]

[trey]

Interesting topic.

[Alex]

"Other elements of Sigmaist mythology:

"1- Black neighborhoods are dangerous. So there is something intrinsic about blacks, in a biological or psychological aspect, that makes them inherently unable to not to be underclass. Correlation as causation, the big problem of HBD."

What do you mean by "intrinsic"? Is the height difference between men and women correlation or causation?

2- CEOs and high powered people have 30 mistresses at the same time, when 90% of the men don´t have sex.

3- Sarah Palin has something of interest.

"4- Going to community college is as life-destroying as a felony conviction."

No one has argued this. Community colleges are mostly lower middle class and working class students, but felony convictions are almost exclusively the domain of the underclass.

"5- Programming jobs suck, even though you earn far more than the median."

Yes, I'm sure that high IQ students going to top colleges are just aiming to earn a salary above the median.

Why go for investment banking or medicine, when nursing or engineering puts one well above the median?

"6- Blacks don´t deserve a swimming pool."

I don't see where this has been argued.

"7- It would be enough for single mother to get married, so it automatically solves their problems."

Where has this been argued? Still, it is possible that just being married changes behaviour. I would need a detailed source of info to find out.

"8- Iran will wash out the US fleet on the Persin Gulf. Never happened."

Did we go to war?

[trey]

Bruno, non-HBDers or radical egalitarians also assume correlation is causation: that because people discriminate against lower socio-economic performing groups, it causes their under-performance.

Between the two assumptions that correlation equals causation, HBD is the far less radical. Non-HBDers assume that you can let anyone into a rich country and expect them to assimilate into the country's typical socio-econ level of performance if discrimination is repressed as much as possible. HBDers doubt that. So far, the evidence supports HBDers.

[WesleyH]

Mercy, you are correct

WASP towns that contained high IQ wasps attracted Jewish people.

WASP towns that contained average IQ wasps did not attract Jewish people

as such, there are very few high IQ exclusively WASP enclaves left in the USA.

In fact, if anyone here knows of high IQ exclusively WASP villages or suburban neighborhoods please post the names here

[ic]

Children are more adaptable period. Child soldiers are the best soldiers.

[TheGManifesto]

Ironically it becomes easier to make friends after 40 or so. At that point your kids have grown some, your career has settled to the point you don't need to put in 50 hrs a week to make ends meet anymore, and you don't need a constantly changing social circle for status anymore. Find some guys at the local golf course to play with and some guys at the local bar to drink with and the neighbors to do house stuff with and you're good.

[carol]

I think a lot of boomers like me grew older expecting friends to be "like family" the way they were in the 60s. Thing is, they're not like family. Nothing is like family.

Older people didn't even think like that. It was more the Godfather model: you expected to have lots of family around. If you picked up a friend or two along the way, that was just gravy. Otherwise, you hung out with your grown kids or their kids.

The old Catholic gals I know who had 9-10 kids seem to have no trouble finding people to talk to or help them out.

[Jokah Macpherson]

I was never good at making friends in the first place, so I doubt turning thirty will be any big deal.

[DaveinHackensack]

There are a lot more ways to meet people and make friends today than in the past. The key is to do things that put you in contact with people who share your interests. And there is no shortage of those things, particularly in a city such as New York. E.g., instead of walking around Brooklyn by yourself taking photos, you could join a photography related MeetUp.

It's true that the younger you are, the easier it is to make (young) friends, but as you get older, you can broaden the age range of your friends/acquaintances. For example, I've had breakfast / lunch / dinner / drinks with individuals I've met in an online community related to tech startups who range in age from their 20s to 60s.

[Blah]

Depressing.

I'm 34, live at home with my parents in Florida(it's embarrassing anonymously writing that),I don't have a career(I work shity 1099 telemarketing jobs), I do have a B.S., I'm moving [back] to CO in March to find a career and plant my feet.

On the up-side, I have good credit and a hot 25 year old grad-student girlfriend, whom I banged on my mother's sofa the other night.

I feel like a loser.

Depressing, indeed. The only thing I can do is think positive, and try to get on with the rest of my life, and not dwell on the milk I've spilled.

I really have no other choice.

[Anonymous]

@ Drole Prole

Meh

[Peter]

"The friends you make in college and in your first jobs when you are in your twenties will help you throughout your life. But if you don’t have a career until your thirties, or you move around, or you attend a crappy community college where the students are losers who will never be able to help you move up, then you lose this very important source of social capital."

College and first-job friendships are greatly overrated as future sources of "networking." Especially the latter, for as the article points out, and as I have noticed _very_ clearly over the years, work friendships rarely endure after one or both of the friends leaves the job.

If you ever go into the life insurance industry as I did, your sales managers - invariably a sorry bunch of mental midgets - will incessantly harangue you about how you absolutely MUST sell to your "warm market," in other words people you know. Many companies require new agents to submit lists of 100 or even 200 friends and acquaintences and will require the agents to contact all the people on their lists. How well does this networking actually work? The fact that the overwhelming majority of new life insurance agents fail completely within the first few months, by overwhelming majority I mean in excess of 90%, is your answer.

Another observation, once again based on my experience: the only people who are truly useful as social contacts, in the sense that they can often be counted on to get you a job, are *immediate* family members. And even then it's far from a sure thing. A BFF of many years' standing might be able to help a little, but only a little, and the word "might" is there for a reason.

One last thing: I've had three what I'd call good jobs in my working life, including my present one, and I did not rely to any extent on social contacts or networking to get any of them.

[Jeff]

I lost touch with many of my college friends, and I didn't have any good friends in high school. I'm still paying the price in my mid 30s, alone, unemployed and soon to be violent.

[Anon E. Mouse]

Speaking of age, are you going to do a post about how George Zimmerman 'molested' someone 1 year younger than he is? Noone seems to be pointing out the small age difference between them. Presently shes 27 and hes 28.

[Twain]

The problem is too many people move all over the place. Almost none of my relatives live where they grew up. It's very difficult to keep friends from childhood because of this.

A lot of people would have been better off living in a factory town and getting a job there, instead of wasting their time at college. Of course,there are few factory towns now.

.

[Peter]

"Ironically it becomes easier to make friends after 40 or so. At that point your kids have grown some, your career has settled to the point you don't need to put in 50 hrs a week to make ends meet anymore, and you don't need a constantly changing social circle for status anymore."

Based on what I've heard from older relatives making friends is even easier for seniors. Especially those living in retirement communities.

[lil mike]

Good Topic.

I haven't made a new friend in years. All of the current friends that I have and see regularly I met in the military. Unless you're a total douche, that's a great place to meet life long friends.

But it does seem that the ability to make new friends degrades as we get older. A friend's father, in his late 60's, said he hadn't made a new friend since he was 40.

[Flico]

I didn't go to college, no friends from first job either, all my friends come from high school and their friends, plus people I met in bar and supper clubs in town.
The problem is you think of "friends" as social capital or networking and not as actual friendship, which is about loyalty.

[Just Speculating]

Can we say at least 90% of the people who post on this site have some angst towards society? I think Liberals and NAMs are the biggest obstacles facing our unNAM youths.

[Just Speculating]

@ Jeff

You must be a NAM!

[jeanne]

It's true, seniors can make friends more easily through the various institutions set up to help them, like senior centers, retirement communities and such. But they really have to be wary of some of the aging penniless boomers are are looking for for the support of wealthier retirees. They can empty bank accounts pretty quick.

[Melykin Pug]

"...you had better make sure you children make friends with the right kids. Which is probably easier than it sounds, because given that children do make friends so easily, all you have to do is drop them into the right activity and they instantly make friends with the right class of children..."

----------------------------------

Ha! You don't have any kids, do you? I signed my daughter up for a trendy music summer day camp and she met potheads. Then she ditched all her nice friends from our neighbourhood and started hanging out with losers. It took her years to get straightened out.

[Conquistador]

One thing totally missing in Siggy's analysis and the rest of the comments is that adults don't give a shit about friendships because friends are for people who don't have sexual partners.

[dearieme]

One thing the USA lacks is the culture of the pub football team, the village cricket team, the coarse rugby team: adult men annoying team sports together.

[asdf]

DaveinHackensack,

The friends you make from interest groups just aren't as strong as the friends you made in school. Friends I made in school went on trips with me, hung out with me in a variety of ways, and would bail me out of jail (if I ever got arrested). My best friend now lives in Miami and still tries to see me when he's near where I live.

By contrast, people you meet at Meetups, work, or sports clubs tend to be limited to just that one thing. Outside of that they aren't your friends. Maybe every once in awhile you'll parlay that relationship into drinks at the local bar, but that is about it.

I've never felt as close in my adult friendships as my school ones. I've heard the same thing from lots of people. In fact I think a lot of your close friendships get replaced by dating in your 20s. As my friend remarked the other day, people pair up. Often it's just serial monogomy, but they pair up. If you want a close friend, get a girlfriend. Someone remarked the other day that the reason I'm with my girlfriend is because what I really want is a best friend to travel with, and the fact she also provided sex was a nice extra. They were right.

[Anonymous]

@asdf

>In fact I think a lot of your close friendships get replaced by dating in your 20s. As my friend remarked the other day, people pair up. Often it's just serial monogomy, but they pair up. If you want a close friend, get a girlfriend. Someone remarked the other day that the reason I'm with my girlfriend is because what I really want is a best friend to travel with, and the fact she also provided sex was a nice extra. They were right.

good insight

[BrunoBrazil]

"For example, in Las Vegas, the average casino worker makes the same money as the average adjunct professor at UNL"

Half Sigma, you should write more about low income and high education careers.

If the average casino worker earns more than an adjunct professor, I can´t think how can an adjuct professor keep his class superiority for long.

Earlier or later, what will happen to the adjuct professor?

Are we going to have SWPL overeducated underpaid people living in the ghettos with blacks and have his children raised in "da hood" language and culture?

To worsen things, if an adjuct professor tries to become a casino dealer, Caesars will tell him he/she is "overqualified". You are unemployable even to deal blackjack.

[HS: I've written about this a LOT. Don't go into one of these careers unless your parents are rich. And trying to become a college professor is probably a pretty bad deal even for the rich, because your parents' connections probably won't help you hear. I think that professors are more middle-class than most other high-education low-income careers.

Also, the problem with being a casino dealer is that you have to hang out with other casino dealers. Although this may be a job that's more like a waiter than a truck driver.]

[asdf]

Casino dealers are surrounded by casino culture, which tends to get seedy fast. The problem is that many people can't live that lifestyle without succumbing to it. In theory something like being a stripper is great (lots of money to not even have sex with guys). And some girls really do manage to pay off their student loans and walk away. But many end up succumbing to drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. Temptation is a part of that lifestyle, and most can't resist temptation.

[Camlost]

"Also, the problem with being a casino dealer is that you have to hang out with other casino dealers. Although this may be a job that's more like a waiter than a truck driver."

Plus, the college professor has the advantage of tenure, better benefits, more vacation time and a state pension.

Even high-paying service industry jobs give very little in the way of vacation time and pension/retirement.

[asdf]

Camlost,

They are also, quite frankly, actual work. Waitering is busting your ass. Being a dealer means dealing with agry drunkin gamblers. Adjunct professor teaches 5 hours of class a week.

[BrunoBrazil]

[HS: I've written about this a LOT. Don't go into one of these careers unless your parents are rich. And trying to become a college professor is probably a pretty bad deal even for the rich, because your parents' connections probably won't help you hear. I think that professors are more middle-class than most other high-education low-income careers.

Also, the problem with being a casino dealer is that you have to hang out with other casino dealers. Although this may be a job that's more like a waiter than a truck driver.]

Sigma, I know you have posts about it.

But I still would like to see the long-term effect of taking these careers.

It is feasible to think about an adjunct sociology professor living on the ghetto? Raising children in a predominantly black public school, even though the parents studied on top schools?
What about paying extreme student loans and rent? In the end, you end up living in the worst areas of the city, isn´t it?

Because someone who lives in the ghetto with a so-so job can earn far more than an adjuct professor.

[BrunoBrazil]

Plus, the college professor has the advantage of tenure, better benefits, more vacation time and a state pension.

The problem with being a professor is that the distribution is extreme, just like law: you are either in the 10% who has tenure/pension and earn 80k/year or in the 90% who has no tenure, no pension and earn less than a Walmart manager.

You are better off being a MacDonalds manager: at least, if you are laid off, there is a McD on every corner.

[gym quiz]

"Plus, the college professor has the advantage of tenure, better benefits, more vacation time and a state pension."

ADJUNCT Professor. They get none of those. The only reason to be an adjunct is access to coeds.
... which is reason enough!

[DaveinHackensack]

ASDF,

"The friends you make from interest groups just aren't as strong as the friends you made in school."

That's true, but it's also true that the friendships you made in school get attenuated as you get older as well. I may only see one of my new friends/acquaintances occasionally today, but that's true of my friends from school too.

Your absolutely right about significant others replacing friendships to some extent. There are a couple of other aspects to that worth pointing out. One is that girlfriends/wives both become your best friends and pull your old school friends away from you to some extent. The other is that being in a relationship helps you make the new friends / acquaintances I mentioned above. Because if you're single, you can end up on the hunt too much to make new friends. You also put out a different vibe.

[BrunoBrazil]

The only reason to be an adjunct is access to coeds.

And, if you score them and the boss knows it, you are on the street.

[Camlost]

"You are better off being a MacDonalds manager: at least, if you are laid off, there is a McD on every corner. "

You must be crazy.

You get no real paid sick or vacation time at McDonald's until you get to the district manager level, and you have to deal with a host of low-class, illiterate and/or potentially criminal employees. (unless you're at a McDonald's in an all-white small town somewhere). You catch a four-day flu and your paycheck for that month just went down a significant amount.

You also have to work crazy hours, wear a silly uniform with paper hat, and be responsible for the cleanup of a nasty store.

I can't believe this is even being debated. As a general rule, there's absolutely NO comparison between service industry jobs and white collar jobs that pay the same.

In addition, longevity is a huge issue. Sustaining a service industry career is not easy. Most people would burn out quickly as a McDonald's manager and places like casinos don't want to keep the same dealers for 15 years because there's not gaining any added value from your extra years of learning - casinos would rather rotate their dealers out to be sure that no one is learning how to game the system and skim.

[Melykin]

Adjunct professor on food stamps:

http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/

[Jehu]

People with much higher education than economic status tend to go for the hipster/SWPL markers HARD. They're the obnoxious vegans who do all the ritual SWPL things to scream---I may be poor but I AM NOT A PROLE.
Kind of annoying really.

[Peter]

"Casino dealers are surrounded by casino culture, which tends to get seedy fast. The problem is that many people can't live that lifestyle without succumbing to it."

I know nothing at all what it's like to work in a gambling casino, but here's my reasoned guess: most dealers and other casino workers quickly find "casino culture" pointless and are not tempted in the least to partake in it.

[Just Speculating]

Adjunct professor on food stamps:

http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/"

Too bad she didn't come from wealth to make her academic pursuit worthwhile.

[asdf]

Peter,

A guy on the internet with an opinion on something he knows little about...

[LaPanache]

"In fact I think a lot of your close friendships get replaced by dating in your 20s." -asdf

This is so depressing. Precisely because this is exactly what I have observed. My close friends from high-school/college are such a significant source of comfort, companionship, dependence, and love for me; it pains me that as we move into our late twenties, we just might disassemble. I cannot see how just a significant other can replace my close female friendships but I'm terrified it just might happen.

"The only reason to be an adjunct professor is access to coeds." -Gym Quiz

You are crazy. Even a TA needs education beyond a Bachelors; adjunct faculty even at public colleges often have PhDs! You would have to be a real fool to risk unemployment with graduate school loans, a prospect of a career in academia never again, and harsh social scrutiny from your intellectual peers for a 20 year old flaky girl (who if intelligent will never get involved with a professor!). In fact, I am guessing such a person's judgement is so unintelligent, very few of these types would make it in academia to begin with.

Also, difference between casino dealers in Vegas and academic professors? The color of their collars - a very important predicament of your hierarchy in society.

[prole]

Posted by: Camlost | July 17, 2012 at 01:38 PM

This is by far, the funniest thing I have ever read in my entire life. And he wasn't even trying to be funny.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"most dealers and other casino workers quickly find "casino culture" pointless and are not tempted in the least to partake in it."

Don't Vegas card dealers get women left and right?

[Camlost]

"Don't Vegas card dealers get women left and right?"

I've been to Vegas about 12 times and I've never seen evidence of that.

If anyone in the Casino is getting lots of attention it's the high, high rollers that come in to the pricey casinos and spend big money and play at the tables of 1k-5k min bet and above. However, the high-limit areas at pricey casinos are generally split off into separate, more secluded rooms. This is the case at the Bellagio, Wynn, Encore etc. The high-dollar poker cash games (with 10K buy-in and above)are sometimes even on a separate floor.

[Mike]

***This also means that there's a hidden benefit to sending your children to an elite private school. You will become friends with quality parents that way. It's a much better networking opportunity than sending your kids to public school.***

Very true.

My parents upper middle class, but certainly not wealthy. I attended a very expensive prep school where my parents were definitely on the bottom 20% in terms of wealth compared to my classmates' parents, maybe lower (especially if you exclude the scholarship blacks).

However, my mother who is a landscape architect, got a lot of clients from my classmates parents.

[E. Rekshun]

I know a couple of people that like to call nearly everyone in their life - coworkers, neighbors, mere acquaintances - as "friend." I don't like that because most or all of these peripheral people are not "friends."

A friend is someone that'll pick you up at the airport or help you move into a new apartment.

Speaking of moving...I had a former coworker that was almost a friend, or so I thought. I helped him move - twice! Later, when I asked him to help me move, he outwitted me - Him: "Well, when are you moving?" Me: "Four weeks from Saturday." Him: "Oh, that's the one weekend I can't do it, sorry." We weren't friends.

[Paul helm]

I thought your article today was great! You did screw up with your pointless negative reference to Sarah Palin who should be lauded for her courage and the fact she was a stronger candidate for president than John McCain! again most of your points of view are valid. I hope you are not a progressive liberal with a few good ideas tthough ! LOL

[GLS]

I think a major aspect of this issue is that we simply have less time as we get older. The pressures of life, i.e. career, marriage, kids, mortgage payment, maybe a parent or two that needs taking care of - all of these things start getting in the way. And then you combine that with the increased mobility of our society and socially isolating technologies such as the internet and also the fact that most people don't have especially advanced social skills to begin with, and you start to see how this happens.

Then, this too, is a true statement:

"Adults know who they are, so if they meet people who aren’t like themselves, they just shrug them off rather than try to change themselves to become friends."

I think we definitely become more comfortable with who we are as we get older. I'm 41, about to turn 42, and I simply don't have the energy or desire to try and conform to the expectations of a group.

I should mention that in my case, I actually do have a number of friends I've met in the last few years. But, that's been the deliberate result of an effort on my part to improve my people skills and how I relate to people. I've dabbled in the PUA stuff, forced myself to go out at night, gone to Toastmasters, volunteered for my professional organization, and I do CrossFit. It's worth pointing out that had I gotten married in my 20's, I likely would never have done any of this though.