why adult friendships are so hard- and how to make new ones

why does making friends as an adult feel so much harder than it used to be?

in this episode, i'm talking all about friendship- how proximity and consistency made it easier when we were younger, the reason/season/lifetime framework, how to tell when a friendship is draining vs. fulfilling, and practical ways to actually make new friends now.

consider this your sign: it's friendship summer. by the end of this episode, i want you to text that friend you've been meaning to text.

listen to our previous episode on friendship → here

join the self-love book club → here

get your copy of finding your people → here

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Transcript

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Nobody warned us that one of the hardest things about growing up would be friendship. That the people that you were friends with, the people that you knew everything about, all of a sudden you're keeping up with those same people via Instagram story. The reality is, is that we live in a different world. We live in a world where social media exists. We live in a world after COVID. We live in a world where things have changed. But that doesn't mean that we can't have friendship. That doesn't mean that we can't have community and connection. So consider this your official sign that it is finally time for a friendship summer. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Self Love Archives podcast. I am your self love bestie, Julia Salvia, and we're talking about connection, community, and softness this month, this month of July. But in today's episode, we are really honing in and focusing on friendship. I'm 32, and I don't know about you, but I've definitely had my fair share of friends. And while I appreciate so much that my circle is small and I love the friendships that I have, I can't help but think that I still crave a type of friendship that I see other people have, whether I'm seeing them have it, um, through social media, or I'm just always craving, like, that best friend. By the end of this episode, I want you to text that friend that you've been meaning to text. I want you to give a call to that person that you met out the other night and ask them to go to coffee with you. I hope by the end of this episode, you feel more confident and are more courageous to just say hello to someone who you look at and you're like,"I think we would be great friends." Why friendship is so hard now that you're an adult? Well, we've lost proximity. When we were in high school, elementary school, we were in proximity to these people. It's kind of like how as you grow up, you have, like, your high school friends, your college friends, your neighbor friends, your work friends. These people become your friends because of proximity. And not only that, there's also the, that, that part of showing up every single day. You're going to school every single day, and you're seeing these people every single day. It's making the possibility of having these friendships so much easier because of the proximity and the consistency. Same thing goes for college, same thing goes for work, and same thing goes for being friends with your neighbors. You're in proximity to these people, and both of you are consistently showing up to something. So when we take that away, for the most part in adulthood, and more specifically, like, high school friends and, and college friends, or that time in our life when we're in college or in school- It gets harder to make friends because now you need to go out of your way to create that consistent pattern in your life. And as we leave this super common path of high school and college and into adulthood, we also enter into completely different stages of life. Some friends will go on o- go, go on off to get married and have kids, and then you have other friends who are focused on their career, and then you have some friends that are still struggling, still at home with their parents. Maybe you have a friend that's just going to school again and extending their education. Maybe you have a friend that decided to move. We go into this area of life and things just change, and it's not that these people can't be our friends anymore or that we can't have friends or that we don't deserve to have friends, it's just that life changes. And sometimes we create friendships based off of similar paths or similarities in our lives, like your work bestie or like your friend that's also your neighbor or like your friend that goes to the same college as you, but also the friend that you became friends with because they were in a lot of the same classes as you. Just because your friendships have changed as you have gone about your path in life doesn't mean that you have failed friendship. Things change. People change. People get to decide that they like the color blue today, but they like the color pink tomorrow. People get to change their mind But then it's also up to you to decide if you can still be friends with someone who now likes the color pink when what your friendship was based on was the, the like for the color blue. Do you see what I'm saying? It's like that one saying, you have friends that are here for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Do you have a friend that was your friend for this time period because you related to something together, because you went through something together? Do you have a friend that was just your friend because of proximity and consistency of just going to the same, uh, yoga studio every single Monday night? Do you have a friend that is here for a lifetime, that has been your friend for a long time, that has grown with you, that you both have respected each other in that growth of your separate lives? Friends are here for all different reasons, and you can have all different kinds of friendships. Not every single friendship is meant to come with you in all of your stages of life. But what I do think is extremely important is asking yourself the question, do you have friends that support you, that lift you up, that make you feel more inspired and alive and excited and happy? Or do you have friendships that drain you? Like, after you hang out with this person, you just feel so incredibly drained. And this doesn't mean that you can't be friends with that person anymore, or that maybe there's a certain season where you pull back from the friendship a little bit, and then later on you reconnect. I had a friendship where Truthfully, if I were to look back at it now, this person didn't have, and, or, or this person wasn't in a good state of mind in their life. They weren't in a great living situation. They weren't in a place where they were happy, and it kind of came out in the way that they spoke about other people. And every time I would hang out with this friend, they would drain me. My energy would just be so depleted and so drained after I would hang out with them or after I would talk to them. So while I could have said,"I don't wanna be friends with you anymore, this, this friendship is draining," I knew that for me, I just needed to set a boundary. And in this circumstance, I didn't feel as though my boundary really needed to be shared because this wasn't a super close friend of mine. This was just, like, a friend of mine. So I just started to pull back a little bit from the friendship to kind of allow her to have the space to heal in whatever way that meant for her. And we actually ended up having a great friendship. I wasn't feeling drained by her energy, and she had the space to do whatever healing she needed to do for herself, and we actually ended up becoming really great friends after that. We all go through different chapters in our life, and it's something to consider when it comes to your friendships. Just because your friend may be getting married and, and having babies and, and doing that whole life thing, but you're still focusing on your career, doesn't mean that you can't be friends with this person anymore. It just means that you guys are in two different stages of life. What it comes down to is, what do you value in friendship? And what are your non-negotiables in friendship? What do you need to consider this a friendship? Do you need respect? Do you need quality time? Maybe it's like the love languages. Maybe you could use the love languages to kind of decide that and figure that out. Because just like a romantic relationship, that is a relationship, but a friendship is also a relationship, too. You still need to have respect for each other, value each other, communicate with each other, and, and love each other for flaws and all, you know? So treating each friendship as its own relationship that you have with this person can be something so important to look at and do in regards to how you go about the friendship or your next steps with this friendship, and how you decide to either set boundaries or decide to continue this friendship with this person or not continue the friendship with this person. Is this friendship reciprocal? Who do you fully relax around? And who do you maybe perform for? Who could you potentially just be jealous of? You know, or maybe it's that saying, like, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Is anyone actually maybe your enemy? Do you have any friendships with anyone that maybe you don't actually value? Or maybe you have friends that have pulled away and you wanna reconnect with them This isn't about cutting off friends that already exist in your life. This is about taking stock of the friendships that you have, treating them, looking at them one by one, and understanding those friendships that you have. There's something that I spoke about in a previous episode, um, about the different kinds of friends that you have. I'm gonna link that episode down below so you can listen a little bit more to it. But it was kind of inspired by another creator who I also mentioned in this video. Her name is Hayes, and I believe her blog, I think it's a Substack, is called Hello Hayes, and she really gets into the details about all the different kinds of friendships. I took a little bit of a d- a different approach into the kind of people who you should not be friends with. In this episode, I talked about my interpretation as well as Hayes' interpretation of the different kinds of friendships, and I want you to go on and take a listen to this because it was really great in having some perspective about how different our friendships are and can be. Here's the thing. We've talked about the friends that you do have, but what about the friends that you want to make? What about the friends that you wanna invite into your life? What about the new friends and the people around the corner, and that one person that you always see, and you look at her and you're like, "I think we could be really good friends. I think we could have fun. So much fun. I would love to go get a margarita with her. I would love to sit down and have a coffee with her. I would love to pick her brain because she just seems like the most intelligent person out on this subject"? Like, who are those people in your life? Sometimes it takes us being the brave one, the courageous one, to actually be the one that goes first, to ask this person to hang out, to go do something. And in a social media-filled world, that feels so uncomfortable. Trust me, I am in the same boat as you. I think it is so uncomfortable to ask someone to go do something, to basically ask someone on a friend date. It's, it can be awkward, and it can be unaligned potentially, but what if it goes right? What if this person is your new bestie? What if this person is someone you can have the most fun with? Or what if this person and yourself, like, what if you guys just connect on everything together and have the best, most fulfilling friendship ever? But you're not gonna know that if you don't try. Someone has to be the first person to stand up and ask. Someone has to be the first to reach out, and the first to ask them to coffee, and the first to say, "Hey, you look beautiful today. Would you like to go and get a cup of coffee with me?" It's as simple as that. And I always say that it's like you have to cut the awkwardness a little bit. I think I al- I'm always like,"So can I get your number?" I always kind of like make a joke out of it because that's just… I mean, that's just me. That's just my personality. But if you have to lead into it with something funny or something awkward to kind of get all those like jitters away, just do it. If they are the right person, the right friendship for you, they will totally get your humor. Maybe you're the person who doesn't have any people in your vicinity that you wanna connect with. Well, what about the friends that you do have? Are there any friends that you have been craving to reconnect with? Be the first person to text them and say, "I miss you. Let's hang out." Now, what if you're the person who doesn't have any potential connections around you, or any friends that you feel like you really wanna reach out to? How do you find friendship? Proximity and consistency. You have to show up somewhere consistently. Take a class once a week, whether that's learning a new language, a workout class, or maybe it's a sound bowl on the beach. Do something that puts you in proximity and in a consistent way to people who might have the same likes as you. I would assume that if you're taking a yoga class, you like yoga. And I would hope that anybody that also is there likes yoga, too. And the more that you show up, the more that you're gonna see familiar faces there, and the easier that it is going to be to say hello, and then the easier that it is going to be to ask how their weekend was, and what's going on this week, or do you wanna go get a cup of coffee? Like, the easier it's going to be to continuously make those connections to start building on a friendship. I actually have a friend that has used Bumble Friendships, I think it's called, to connect with people in the area. She had just moved out to North Carolina, and she didn't really know anyone out there except for one friend that she had, and she went on Bumble to connect with some girls. And she ended up making some really great friends out of it, and I'm so proud of her for getting out of her comfort zone and, and doing that and, you know, consistently showing up for these friendships. And sometimes those friendships may not work out, but sometimes they will, and you'll meet some really, really great people there. I think that's kind of our new way of doing things, too. Also, you can maybe slide into someone's DM on social media as well. I've made actually a lot of friends through social media that way. Um, just having a conversation, complimenting someone. It is possible. But I think the one thing rings true in all of the ways that you could make friends with someone, that you could become friends with someone, is that someone has to be the first person to actually reach out. Someone has to make the first move. And I wanna leave you with this really big thing, too. Just like we write out lists of what we want in our partner, our romantic partner, I want you to write a list of all of the things that you want in a friendship. Sometimes it takes actually seeing it to understand really the type of friendship that feels fulfilling at this point in your life right now Do you want someone who you're able to see often? Do you want someone who relates to you in a certain way or likes to do this or likes to do that? Do you want someone that is, has a more like sarcastic sense of humor or do, or do you like someone who really loves to read? What, what does your ideal friendship look like? And it's not that we're sitting here manifesting friendship, although we kind of are. I think that it's so important to actually understand who we are and what we are looking for when it comes to the ways that we wanna connect with our friends and beyond that. But in this case, how are you looking to connect with friends? How are you hoping that these friendships will fulfill you and vice versa? And sometimes it just takes like writing a little list, taking out a piece of paper, and maybe writing out… Maybe it's not a list, maybe it's a letter to future you. Maybe you wanna change the way that you show up for your friends in your life. And maybe you're craving a type of friendship that you've never had before. Maybe you are looking for that lifetime friend. Or maybe you're looking for someone that you can connect with. Whatever the reason, I hope that this is a friendship summer for you. I want you to romanticize friend time the way that we romanticize romance, the way that we romanticize our lives. I want friendship to be so fulfilling for you. I want friendship to be so fun for you. I want friendship to be Everything that you need and more. I want you to have that friend who could just come over your house at the drop of a hat so that you guys can make a little Aperol Spritz together, hang out by the pool, or just sit on the couch in sweats and talk about how annoying work's been. Friendship is and will always be important, and it's kind of feeling like it's just not as important as it used to be because social media exists. But I can promise you it is, and the minute you get out of your comfort zone and are the first to reach out or are the first to text, "I miss you. Let's hang out That's when everything changes for your friendships. This month in the Self Love Book Club, we are reading Finding Your People by Alexandra and Sally of Two Broke Chicks. And this is the ultimate guide to friendship. If you are interested in joining our Self Love Book Club, all the details are in the description, the show notes down below. It is completely free to join via the Fable app where we talk all about the book and go through it one by one, s- share our favorite quotes, talk about our experiences, and really connect together on books that are just changing our lives and inspiring us to be our highest selves, essentially, and love ourselves more, most importantly. We still have over a week left in the month, so don't worry if you have not picked up the book yet. That link is also in the description down below so you can go and purchase it, um, and grab your favorite type of copy, whether you want to listen to it or if you want to physically read it. Don't you worry. Um, we're never, I'm never crazy and the community is never crazy about someone finishing a book. I never want that to be stressful for you. I want you to just join the conversation. Just be a part of the conversation. We all have friendships and all have stories, and we all have things that we want to share and say. And if you just join to share your thoughts, or maybe you need advice on something, that is perfect. That is amazing. You showing up is all you need to do. Next week, we are going to be talking about Finding Your People here on the podcast. I'm gonna give you some of my takeaways from the book and what the most important things are from our book of July. I am so excited for that episode, but until then, I will meet you over in the Fable app to discuss each part of it and our favorite quotes and all that good stuff. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. I hope you reach out to a friend or to a new friend this week. I love you to the moon and back, and I will see you back here same time Sunday, 12 o'clock Eastern Time. Bye.