Choose Joyy Podcast
Based on the mood and habit tracking Joyyful Planner, the Choose Joyy podcast is focused on self alignment for those who struggle with anxiety. Through these unpredictable times, we’ve all experienced moments of self-doubt and uncertainty. By making a conscious effort to choose joy daily, we allow ourselves to heal and grow into the path destined for us. Join me weekly to unpack, affirm, and choose joy.
Choose Joyy Podcast
What About Your Friends??
Remember when becoming best friends was as simple as sharing a class or a lunch table? As adults, the friendship landscape shifts dramatically, and nobody quite prepares us for what that feels like.
Science confirms what many of us experience – our ability to form and maintain friendships naturally declines after age 25.
This episode unpacks the raw truth about why adult friendships change, offering research-backed strategies for navigating friendship loss and building new connections. We explore why proximity still matters, how vulnerability creates intimacy, and why showing up consistently makes all the difference. Most importantly, we discuss why acceptance, not closure, leads to healing when friendships naturally conclude.
Whether you're deep in friendship grief or actively rebuilding your circle, remember: you are worthy of community, capable of connection, and you will absolutely find your people. Join our conversation and share your own friendship journey for our upcoming minisode where we'll dive deeper into your experiences and questions!
Don't forget to text us to be featured on the next episode of Chels Chats!
Visit www.choosejoyy.com for more
you've made it to the choose joy podcast. Here we make a conscious effort to choose joy. Daily we allow ourselves to heal and grow into the path designed for us. Join me to unpack, affirm and choose joy. Hello, and welcome back joyful babes to the choose joy podcast. It's your girl, chelse, and yeah, let's get into it now.
Speaker 1:I know the title of this episode probably took you back to yep, yep, yep, tlc, but they had a point, because if it's one thing that hits harder in your adult years, it's the shifting landscape of friendships. Today we're getting into the real, raw and sometimes uncomfortable truth about adult friendships how hard it is to make new ones, how awkward it is to keep old ones, and what it means when people grow distant or fall away. Because whether you're mourning a bestie breakup, feeling isolated in a new city or wondering why your circle looks a lot smaller these days, you're not alone. You're never alone. So let's get into it. Let's start with this Making friends as an adult is not easy, and that's not just a you thing, it's literal science.
Speaker 1:Research from the American Psychological Association shows that our ability to make and maintain friendships tends to decline after age 25. Why is that? That's because our lives get busier. Hello, we prioritize careers, relationships, children, healing, health or sometimes just surviving the freaking day. We no longer have built-in social environments like school or college, where proximity made connections easier. And let's be real when you were younger, you became best friends with somebody just because you sat next to each other in third period. Now you might see somebody at work for a year and still not know their last name. We move, we shift and sometimes. Sometimes we outgrow people or they outgrow us, and that part it hurts.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about losing friendships first and foremost. Bro, nobody warns you the grief that exists in platonic relationships. We grieve friends who drifted, friends who disappeared without a conversation, friends who stopped showing up or maybe we're the ones that pulled away and we don't even know why. And I want you to know that, whatever side of the coin you're on, you're allowed to feel that way. You're allowed to be sad about it. You're allowed to miss what was, even if it wasn't meant to last forever.
Speaker 1:Relationships come in all shapes and sizes and there are different reasons that friendships fade. Life stages like we mentioned before marriage, kids, career, growth, emotional unavailability I'm going to say that again, em. Emotional unavailability I'm gonna say that again, emotional unavailability, unspoken hurt or simply just misalignment and values and capacity, like you, literally, quite literally, can outgrow someone or something, and I feel like it's important to know that your worth is not directly tied to those shifts. Your ability to be loved, chosen or understood is not tied to people who stay, and sometimes the most loving thing a friendship can do is to gently exit stage left. Okay, let's breathe and let's pivot, because losing friends is a part of the journey, but so is making new ones. So how do we do that? How do we make friends real grown friends as adults? So I'm going to share a few strategies that are rooted in both science and my own experiences.
Speaker 1:Okay, number one proximity still matters. Okay, according to research, we're more likely to form friendships with people that we see regularly, even in passing. So that's why it's more comfortable to make friends, maybe at work, but I mean, you're not limited to that. You have your gym, your yoga classes, your local coffee shops, community events or maybe, like I said, the co-worker that you always email but never actually talk to in person. Don't be shy to make the first move, say hey, sit next to them. Connection starts with consistency, and it took me a while to like break out of that mold. Um, I grew up kind of a shy kid, I'm not gonna lie. Um, and slowly but surely, with age and getting involved with sports and things, that slowly faded away and made me a little bit more social. Um, and even in adulthood I do struggle with bouts of shyness or coyness and I just like to treat relationships like a cold plunge. I just dive right in, I say hello, I walk into a room and just try to own it and that helps me literally combat my shyness by just doing the exact opposite. So try that and see if it works for you.
Speaker 1:Two, be honest about where you are. We don't always need new best friends. Sometimes we just need companionship in a certain season of our life. A gym friend, a creative buddy, a single mom, sister for the circle let your needs meet, your outreach okay and guide it. So my mom told me this um, when I entered college, which to me I felt like my college was just a bunch of high schools put together on the same campus and that's pretty much all colleges. But I felt really cliquish and I just felt like every friend I met was just my best friend, my everything friend, who I tell everything to and, uh, just share life goals with, and that's not exactly the case. You know, sometimes you gotta group people in boxes. You know you have your fun friends. You have your friends are gonna be there when stuff hits the fan. And then you have friends that you know what I'm saying are your party friends, your travel friends. Kind of start setting people apart by category. It will help you in the long run.
Speaker 1:Three vulnerability creates intimacy. You don't need drama or to trauma dump on the first hangout or to keep a friendship enticing or around, but you do need to be honest with yourself and those around you, and sometimes that can just look like hey, I've been craving a more meaningful friendship lately. Have you felt that too? It's scary, but it's freeing. So, yeah, surround yourself what's needed in your season and let that be your guide.
Speaker 1:Number four and I struggle with this say yes to safe invites. You can't make new friends in your living room. Trust me, I've tried, except that lunch. Go to the paint night, join the group group chat and let your events make it out of the group chat. Okay if it doesn't fit, cool, but you might be surprised at who shows up to the room okay, so get out there okay. I know I know you be wanting to bedrock, because so do I, but even if it's just one thing, even if it's just a quick meetup for lunch or grabbing some coffee, you need social interaction. Or grabbing some coffee, you need social interaction.
Speaker 1:And I know, in this era of social media and us glued to our phones, the new generation as well with the current one and the ones above us, all generations really we struggling, y'all. We struggling with communication. We can't talk to each other, we don't know how to collaborate. And settings outside of actual work, like. It's crazy to me that you can have so much cross-functional collaborations and work settings and people can come together and communicate, um for the common goal and benefit of a freaking company, but you can't do that for yourself. You are a business. Treat yourself as such, and I mean that's on the Maslow's hierarchy chart. I don't know if anybody else had to learn about that. I am a sociology major. But, yes, social interaction is something that you need to survive. Get outside, touch some grass we always talked about that but touch and agree with a friend, make new friends, okay. And last but not least, keep showing up. Not every connection brings a soul tie, but every attempt does bring you closer to the community you deserve.
Speaker 1:Ok, now let's shift a little bit and talk about coping with the changes that comes with adulthood. Here's what I'm learning Friendships shift, especially the ones that we swore that would last forever. Friendships shift, especially the ones that we swore that would last forever, and it leaves a gap, and sometimes we want to fill that space with anger, shame over explaining, explain again and again and again, or simply pretending that we don't care. But healing real healing comes with acceptance, not closure, not clarity, just choosing peace with the fact that the chapter just has ended and honoring the role that that person played in your story as well as you in theirs. Ask yourself what did that friendship teach me, what version of me did they reflect, and what do I still need in my relationships? Now and then, instead of focusing on who's no longer in your life, pour into the people that are there. Let that call go a little longer. Send the just thinking of you text. Ask someone new out for matcha or a target run. Keep choosing connection, even when it takes effort, because here's the truth Friendship in adulthood is not effortless, but it's still essential.
Speaker 1:I always like to say friendships are never 50-50. They're 100% and 100%. I'm giving you all I got, you give me all you got, and we meet each other somewhere in the middle. Because I don't know who lied and said that friendships are effortless. They're not All relationships, especially platonic friendships, take work. Okay, like not every time you want to agree to that meetup, not every time you feel like getting coffee or texting back or calling. You know it's been a long day, it's been a rough week, but it's essential, it's essential to the soul, it's essential to growth. Okay, joy is magnified when it's shared and you are not meant to do life alone, no matter how this life may make you feel. And I'll close with this you've heard it before and now you're hearing it again. But some friends come into your life for a season, and some for a reason and a precious few. Oh, they'll walk with you for a lifetime. But no matter how long they stayed or how the ending looked, it doesn't make the connection any less real.
Speaker 1:Okay, there are friendships that I'm still grieving. Childhood friendships that I grieve from time to time because, wow, and am I having emotional release? I don't know, but I remind myself who that person was in the chapter that they were in and how they helped me along the way I was in that time span and who I want to be. You know it's okay to mourn old friendships, it's okay to mourn that time in your life that once was. But, like I always say, you got to keep going, you got to keep moving on. There's more chapters to uncover. Y'all Like, the book is not closed, we're not done, it is not finished. And do you know how many people that you still have yet to meet? It's mind-boggling.
Speaker 1:Whether you're deep in friendship grief or navigating loneliness, whether you're rebuilding your circle or stepping into something with no familiar faces, I want you to remember you are worthy of community, you are capable of connection and you will find your people, the ones that see you, who hold space for you and invite your full self to the picnic and open your eyes, look behind you, look around you. Maybe those people already exist to you and you're the one not reaching out, you're the one not holding true to that connection. Just trust the process, babes. Be gentle with your heart and, as always, choose joy. That's all for today's episode. If this spoke to you, share it with a friend or a former friend. You never know who might need this message today. Love ya mean it, talk soon, talk soon, oh, and also text into the chat.
Speaker 1:The next episode is going to be our minisode, where we just chat and talk about some of the things that you guys want to talk about when it comes to this episode. Let's talk about it. How are you making friends as an adult? And talk about your adult friendships now, like I want to know all the tea. I want to know all the stories. What's your worst friendship breakup? Text that in the chat. I want the tea babes. No names, no face, no case, no face, no case. Yeah, text me all the deets I have to do with friendships, past friendships. Um, yeah, text me all the deets I have to do with friendships, past friendships. Uh, broken up friendships. Have you ever took a friend to miami? Because that will make or break your trip. If you can survive miami, trust you can survive anything. But, um, yeah, drop it in the chat. Let's talk and I'll see y'all. The next episode.