Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Why Is It So Hard to Make Friends as an Adult? | Thinking Out Loud
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- Kimberly: Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult? On paper, friendship should be simple. You meet someone, you have things in common, you enjoy talking to each other, you enjoy spending time together, and over time connection forms. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, friendship seems to become complicated. People are busy, life gets full, everyone has responsibilities, families, careers, and things they're carrying that people may never see. sometimes priorities simply change. However, I don't think this is the whole story. If it was Only about being busy? Then why do so many people feel lonely even when they are surrounded by others? Why do some friendships feel easier at first and become difficult when someone needs support, sets a boundary, or shows a more vulnerable side of themselves? Why do some connections feel they disappear the moment we stop being the easiest versions of ourselves to be around? I think part of that answer is. That many of us are not bringing our personalities into friendships. We're bringing our experiences, we're bringing the way we learn to protect ourselves. We're bringing the things we were taught about conflict, vulnerabilities, trust, and what it means to be accepted. For many people, those lessons came from places where being fully yourself didn't feel safe. A lot of us carry unresolved pain. Most of the world is not trauma-informed. There is this quiet expectation that everyone has struggles and eventually you should move on, which yes, however, I think it misses the mark. If you're not allowed to exist in your own pain, how can you move on? It's like breaking your leg and being told walk it off. That helps who? When you've been hurt and the responsibility is basically, that's sad. Now keep going, honey. You can learn to hide parts of yourself that feels difficult, complicated, or inconvenient. You learn to present the versions of yourself that won't make other people uncomfortable. The problem is that real connection requires more than being liked. It requires being known. Sometimes the very things we learn to do to protect ourselves are the same things that make genuine connection harder. Why is making friends as an adult so difficult? Is it because we don't have enough opportunities? Is it because life is too busy? Or is there something deeper happening underneath the surface? Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, quick note, this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I'm not here to tell you what to think, I'm here to offer framework to help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. A lot of us are carrying unresolved pain. Unfortunately, it's in a world that is not trauma-informed, at least, not most people. Most people are projecting what works for them, and what works for them works for everyone else, right? When reality says people are unique and different. You can't project who you think they should be, good or bad. There's this quiet expectation that exists in adulthood. We all have problems. Get over it. Or as Queen Charlotte would politely say, prayers, sorrows. You can share something that hurt you, and sometimes the response is basically, I'm sorry that happened. Keep your head up, champ. Everything happens for a reason. The universe is telling you something. Just move forward. Get over it. Life's too short, sweetie. while those responses may come from a good place, they might even mean well. Sometimes what they communicate is your pain is allowed to exist only for a moment. Didn't you get the memo? If not, what's wrong with you? No, seriously, did you not get the memo? Dang it, they didn't send them out. Did you not memorize your lines? Honey, you're on the stage. Many people learn that their difficult emotions are something they need to manage privately. They learn not to be too sad. Not to need too much. not to talk too much about what happened to them. Because apparently that's not polite. Not to make other people uncomfortable. Eventually they learn how to present a version of themselves that feel easier for other people to accept. The person who is always okay, the person who's always helpful, the person who can laugh about their struggles, but never actually talk about how much something affects them. The person who says, I'm fine. Because they learned that being honest about not being fine can change how people see them. So we have people who bottle up for so long they end up bottling it up until they can. And trauma dump in a non-consenting way onto strangers they just met. I'm guilty of that one. Here's part of the problem though. The version of ourselves might help us feel accepted. It might be easy to admit to strangers you may never see again. It doesn't build connection though. It's kind of like you're doing little burpees of processing your trauma, but you're processing it alone. You're not building connection, unfortunately. You're just getting by. It doesn't let us be known. there is a difference. being accepted means people enjoy the version of you that you show them. Being known means someone has seen the complicated parts, the fears, the insecurities, the struggles, and they still choose to show up for you. Real connection requires both. They get to enjoy the parts of you shown to the world and the person behind it that not many people get to see. it's hard to build deep friendship when everyone is afraid of being fully seen. Then there's another layer. Performance baby. People often present a version of themselves. This isn't new. Social media did not create the idea of performing. Rather, it amplified it. Now we live in a world where people can carefully curate what others see. The best pictures, the biggest accomplishments, the happy moments. Even our struggles can sometimes become curated. We learn how to present ourselves in a way that feels safe, acceptable. Sometimes that safety comes at a cost. There's a difference between having boundaries and building walls. Polished boundaries often feel more like walls, not often intended to keep others out, however, it does limit us in our own growth as well. Boundaries say I know what I need to feel safe, and I can still let people get close. A wall says I can't risk anyone seeing this part of me. No way, Jose. If everyone is showing the polished version of themselves, If everyone is presenting the version that's easiest to love, how do we know who will be there when life becomes difficult? When the small problems become a real crisis? When we stop being the fun friend, the helpful friend, the low maintenance friend. where does vulnerability live when everyone is afraid to be vulnerable? Maybe that is the part, why making friends as an adult feels so difficult. Friendship requires us to be seen. A lot of us have spent years learning how to hide, though. Another dynamic is I noticed it happens when one person becomes the caretaker in all of their relationships. They're the one planning the brunches, remembering birthdays, checking in after a hard week. hosting gatherings, listening for hours when someone needs to vent, they become the dependable friend. Somewhere along the way though, they stop asking themselves an important question. Do the people in my life know how to take care of me too? Sometimes the painful realization is Not because other people are necessarily selfish. Rather, the friendship was built around one person One person always giving, and the other person always receiving. If you've always been the listener, people may not even realize you need someone to listen back. If you've always gave people information about yourself and been an open book. They may never think to ask questions about you. If you always initiate, people might not think to initiate first. If you've always been the strong one, people may assume you're doing fine. if you've spent years believing your own needs should come last, Asking for support can feel uncomfortable or even wrong. Asking for things to change can feel needy. However, if we never ask, we never know the potential a relationship can have. We never see where it could have evolved. Life goes through phases. One day, life will get hard. You'll finally need someone else. A shoulder? A hand? However, If you never made room for the idea of needing support or communicating what your needs look like, You're not setting up the people who care about you for success or yourself. Then suddenly your life falls apart and you're discovering Whether the friendship was built on mutual connection or simply on the role you played within it, that can be a heartbreaking realization, especially when you're going through it. Friendship isn't about showing up when it's convenient. It's about being there for good, bad, and boring times. It's about creating mutual trust that both people know they can lean on each other over time. Which is why I don't think most adults are failing to make friends. I think they're struggling to maintain meaningful friendships. Meeting people Isn't usually the hardest part. Building a friendship where both people feel seen, valued, challenged, supported, and able to grow, that seems to be what is harder. From the outside, long-lasting friendship can look like luck. However, two people don't just happen to find each other and click. It's not some soulmate fantasy. More often than not, there's work behind those relationships. Both people make the choice and both are choosing To invest in one another. There are difficult conversations that usually happen, misunderstandings that get repaired instead of ignored. Moments you change the script. No, I want Chick-fil-A this time, not panda. Times where one person gives you more, and times where you might barely get anything. Years of learning each other. Friendship isn't magic. Unless do you believe in magic? Of a young girl's heart, obviously. Shouldn't even have to state this. My goodness. It's an investment. it asks for time, honesty, consistency, forgiveness, and sometimes the courage to be vulnerable before you know whether the other person will meet you there. Sometimes that investment doesn't work out. Most people who are willing to take a chance. and invest in people will eventually find their people. A lot of times we stay too long in bad investments. Sometimes we need to learn to when to cut our losses sooner, then stay in a friendship that had no function other than time. Sometimes it grows into a kind of relationship that changes who you are for better or worse. In the end, we choose our investments. sometimes it's also a matter of I'm going to keep investing in this person right now. Even though I need to find investments elsewhere to fill my cup, because I deeply believe in this person, in this investment I have made already. Sometimes space, sometimes distance isn't punishment in a friendship. sometimes it's protecting it. It's simply not the market for that friendship right now. It's just not the time. It that needs slow and steady. Other dynamics, I want to name them. Hmm. I call them the hostage friendships, not because you're literally trapped. It can feel like that sometimes. Rather, the relationship continued long after it had stopped being rewarding. Nourishing. What I mean is it was a bad investment that just needed to end. Sometimes one person stays because they don't believe they deserve better. Sometimes they stay because the friendship has become part of their identity. Sometimes it's easier to remain in a familiar discomfort than risk the uncertainty of starting over. Sometimes both people hold on to something that no longer exists. You start accepting less because at least it's predictable. You tell yourself this is how they are. They're busy. They've always been like this. One day you realize you've been carrying a friendship that hasn't been carrying you. That's not the same as a friendship going through a difficult season. Every long-term friendship has a season where one person gives more than the other. I'm talking about a pattern. I'm talking about really reflecting on this relationship. Was there actually good times? Or was there simply a time you had low standards that they used to meet? And now maybe they can't even do that. Or maybe your standards changed. And you're frustrated because they won't change. And unfortunately, we can't change people. Because A pattern where loyalty is expected yet rarely returned. Is that a friendship you want to invest in? Where one person constantly reaches out, checks in, makes plans, apologizes first, or carries the emotional weight of keeping the friendship alive? Where you have to beg them to see how their actions hurt you. Over time, familiarity can start to feel like connection. Those aren't always the same thing. For me, the turning point came because of one friendship. I was at the lowest point in my life during this time. I was very anxious, defensive. Honestly, I felt like an overreactive porcupine. I pushed people away because I was embarrassed about how much I needed connection. I felt very needy. How starved I was to be understood. I expected people to leave because at the time I was being told essentially nobody liked me, everybody hated me, guess I should go eat worms. Or that one movie. Hi goop, good morning goop. They all hated me. For me, I had someone in the sidelines telling me that I wasn't wanted, so during this season of my life, I pushed a lot of people away, but This person they responded differently instead of pulling away. When I got messy or overwhelmed, she became curious. When I hurt her, she asked questions instead of immediately assuming my character or the worst. She challenged me rather than interrogated me or belittled me. When I reacted defensively, she wanted to understand what was happening underneath my reaction. She always gave me benefit of the doubt, and usually she was right. She didn't excuse my behavior, she didn't reduce me to my worst moments either. That mattered more than I can put into words. For the first time, I started believing that maybe I wasn't beyond repair. She came into my life during fertility treatments, my long journey She was the person that constantly validated and told me my body was going through it. she understood, even though she's never experienced it, but she understood because she cared to learn and listen to other people's stories about what happens when you go through fertility treatments. Even though she never did. She cared enough to understand me. Before I even had words to understand me. She let me know that maybe I could do hard things. Maybe struggling isn't the issue. That being suppressed of my feelings while I was struggling was. that overcoming happens only through the struggles. I didn't have to keep believing in toxic positivity of could be worse. Instead, I was allowed a space to feel okay to say, this sucks. While I overcame it. If someone could see me at my worst and still believe I was worth knowing, then maybe I owed it to that friendship and to myself to become someone healthier. The beautiful part is that it didn't stay one sided. Eventually she needed me too. friendship became a place where both of us could be honest. Both of us could apologize. Both of us could ask for help. Both of us could grow, and both of us could fall with someone else willing to catch them. After both of us spent years of feeling like people dropped us. I think that's what durable friendship looks like. I hate the word perfect, but it It wasn't perfect. It was just good enough. it wasn't that we never hurt each other. We were just two people willing to let themselves be known and try to see the best in the other person. we just kept choosing to repair when repair is possible. We chose to learn to not. push each other past the breaking point. We learn to navigate triggers not because they're my own personal landmine to go over, but if we touched it, we're like, I remember, sorry, you don't like being scared. Simple things. Another friendship taught me something completely different. She taught me that friendship is an investment, not a transaction. The difference is a transaction asks, what am I getting back? An investment asks, what are we building together over time? When we first became friends, she listened, my gosh, she listened to my trauma more than anybody should have. the funniest part too is when I asked her, why did you do that? Like, wow, I felt like I was such a red flag. It was so precious. She's it was just nice to have someone do the talking and I could sit and enjoy my meal and not have to i keep us entertained. And there are people like that. If you're a talker, there are people who just wanna listen. Luckily I'm a fast talker, so I could keep up with her brain. But not on this podcast. Not on this podcast. She's gotta put one point five speed. But that's okay. That's okay. I do the same thing too when I listen to my own podcast. she just kept inviting me to spend time together. She made room for me in the ordinary moments, play dates with our kids, late night texts eventually, checking in, creating little routines that slowly became part of our friendship. None of those moments felt extraordinary at the time. They just were consistent. Then life changed. She went through a divorce. The kind of season where Everything feels uncertain and overwhelming, and suddenly she was the one who needed someone to lean on, and I got the privilege to support her because we spent years investing in the friendship, not keeping score, not wondering whose turn it was to give, and I was able to show up for her, not because I owed her, because I wanted to be there for her. The return on that investment wasn't money, wasn't popularity, it wasn't even To post pictures with her online. Okay, but I won't limit us. We can do both. It was something much more meaningful. Our families became part of each other's lives. my daughters love her daughter. She loves my kids. I love hers. We celebrate together. We cry together. Well, mostly I cry. We carry each other through different seasons of life. you can't really measure that friendship. It's built quietly, one conversation at a time, one meal shared at a time, one laugh at a time, one cry at a time, and one difficult season at a time. What actually makes a friendship last, I think it came down to three things. Vulnerability, boundaries, and intention. Vulnerability because eventually both people have to risk fully being seen. Boundaries because healthy relationships need honesty about what each person can and cannot give. Again, boundaries aren't walls that keep people out, they're guidelines that help relationships stay healthy long enough to last. intentional because friendships don't survive on good intentions alone. It has to be a conscious effort. They need maintenance, checking in when life gets busy, making plans instead of assuming you'll eventually get together, owning your mistakes, not taking silence as rejection, having uncomfortable conversations, instead of letting resentment quickly build, repairing trust when it's been damaged, sometimes radical honesty. And none of that is glamorous. Most of it We'll end up on social media. That's not how meaningful relationships are built. Not through one grand gesture. Through hundreds of ordinary moments where two people keep choosing each other. One of the biggest shifts for me was realizing that quality matters more than quantity. For a long time I thought having a lot of friends would make me feel secure. I remember that in college. I thought if I had enough people like me, then maybe I'd finally feel like I belonged. That's not what happened. What changed me wasn't having a bigger circle. It was having one person who constantly chose the friendship. And it made me braver. It made me once I had my first friend, my best friend, I was able to get another friend who eventually became my best friend. Again. I know I have too many. Best friends Hmm. When I was able to have one good friend, it made me be able to have two, then three, then four, then five. I'm able to have more friends because at the end of the day, I know there are people who choose me, And that's enough. it started with that one friendship though. One person who was willing to know me. One person who showed me what healthy friendship can actually feel like. Once you've experienced that, Something changes. You feel more bold. Your standards start becoming clearer. you stop confusing attention with connection. You stop chasing relationships that constantly leave you wondering where you stand. You become more confident in what you want from a friendship and what you're able to offer one. You stop counting friends and you start cultivating them. if you've ever wondered where to start, here's what has helped me. Show up even when nothing exciting is happening. A healthy relationship isn't just built on milestones, it's built on ordinary, everyday moments. Small rituals that are created. maybe it's a coffee on the first Sunday of every month. A weekly text, a phone call during your commute. something that quietly says, I'm still here, you matter to me. Ask real questions. Sometimes be silly about it or creative. Ask questions that show them you pay attention to the things that matter to them. When someone answers, listen with curiosity instead of trying to solve them. I remember when people were more honest and vulnerable and saying thank you for sharing with me. I'm so glad you told me what was bothering you. I realized how much more my friends felt they could be themselves. I remember that the story someone tells you today may not be the whole story of what they're carrying. Often there's layer to it, like in Shrek, ogres are like onions. Friendships are like onions. They have layers. And people have layers to them in general. If something hurts you, Talk about it before resentment has a chance to grow because if you assume you're against each other, that destroys relationships. More often, the problem isn't a person, it's miscommunication, shame, avoidance, and needing to be right. If you need space, communicate it. If you make a mistake, apologize and hopefully apologize without being prompted to. If someone apologizes to you, pay attention to whether their actions begin to match their words. But also leave hope for them to change because it's an incredibly vulnerable thing to do to admit your mistake when you're not prompted to it. It is an opportunity to grow that friendship. Friendship isn't about never getting it wrong. It's about willing to prepare when something goes wrong. Because that's how trust grows. Not by avoiding conflict, by learning that your relationship can survive honesty. I think it's worth being intentional about where you invest your time and emotional energy. Not every friendship has to become a lifelong friendship. Some people are wonderful co-workers. Some are great neighbors. Some are friends you grab coffee with once every few months. Some become family by choice. Those relationships have value. The goal isn't to make every connection as deep as possible. The goal is to recognize which relationships have the potential to grow and which ones are the healthiest when they stay where they are. Every once in a while, I think it's worth asking yourself a few questions. Do I feel emotionally safe with this person? Can I be honest about what's happening in my life? If not, is it because of our history or my own insecurity? Do they celebrate my growth without making me feel guilty for changing? Can they change? Can they challenge me with kindness when I need to hear something difficult? Do I trust them? Do they trust me? Healthy friendships aren't only about enjoying each other's company. It's about creating an environment where both people can grow. Sometimes you'll realize the answer to those questions is yes. And sometimes you'll realize you've outgrowed a relationship and that's okay. Not every friendship is meant to last forever. Some people walk with us through one season of our life and then our paths naturally separate. That doesn't automatically make the friendship a failure. It means it served its purpose. And it might have just been a seasonal friendship, not annually. It matters which relationships you're continuing because they're still life-giving. Which ones you're maintaining simply because they've always existed. Our time, energy, and emotional capacity are limited. We don't have to keep everyone on our emotional payroll. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves and for other people is allow our relationship to change without forcing it to stay what it used to be. Back to the question, why is it so hard to make friends as an adult? I don't think it's because we've forgotten how to meet people. That's easy. I think it's because friendship asks something of us that can feel incredibly difficult. It asks us to be vulnerable in a world that often rewards performance. It asks us to trust after we've been hurt. It asks us to communicate when staying silent feels easier. It asks us to repair instead of disappear. Yes, friendships cost something. It costs time. It costs patience. It costs difficult conversation. it costs the willingness to look at ourselves honestly. You'll probably lose people along the way. You'll be disappointed. You may even find old wounds resurfacing in new relationships. Isolation has a cost too. Never letting people get close has a cost. Never allowing yourself to be known has a cost. Maybe the question isn't whether friendship is worth something. Maybe the real question is which costs are you willing to pay? For me, I chose the people who chose me back. The people who make room for honesty. The people who are willing to repair. The people who take accountability without being asked to, the people who remind me that healthy relationships don't require me to perform, and they invite me to belong, to be myself. Maybe the question isn't, why is it so hard to make friends as an adult? Maybe a better question is what kind of friend am I becoming? And what kind of friendships am I building? Or maybe An even harder question is, do the people in my life know the real me or only the version of me that feels safest to show? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Has a friendship ever changed the way you saw yourself? Or maybe have you realized that some friendships last because they are familiar, not because they're healthy? what have meaningful friendships taught you about connection? Whether you leave a comment, send a message, or simply sit with this question yourself, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thanks for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself and remember, friendship isn't something we find once. it's something we build, one honest conversation, one repaired conflict, and one action of showing up at a time. I'll see you in the next episode. B.