"Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?" (NYT)

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"Friends of a Certain Age. Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashi ... adult.html

Being 30, and not having any friends, this is deeply depressing. Well, at least I don't have a career to get in the way. Oh wait, that's just one less thing I have in common with my peers.

Depressing, but not surprising. I've noticed that at a certain point people close the doors to their castle and pull the drawbridge up. If you're not on the inside when that happens then you're done. By 40 most people have done that so there's slim pickin's left over.

It doesn't change the reality of my existence at all, though. I still have virtually nothing in common with my so-called peers, beyond the other obstacles in the article. Kids? Spouses? Fancy career? Nope, nope, and nope. Even worse, never had any of those in the first place. Being divorced is ok, but being 40+ never married and not gay is just incomprehensible to people. But, hey, good (preemptive) riddence to the lot of them.

I only network with cat5e, perhaps that is where I'm going wrong*.






*Being unemployed, broke and never leaving the house may also be factors...

I don't know how to make friends now and didn't really know how to make friends when I was younger. I guess I'm just lucky that I pretty much don't feel a need to have friends any more.

Throughout my teens and until my early thirties, I had no friends (except for my husband). Now, I'm almost 40 and I have a few friends. It's not impossible to make friends after 30.

So basically, if you're like me, over 30, have Aspergers, and don't have any friends where you live, you're f****d.

Story of my social life right here.

It really is tough. Even though I have quite a few people who I semi-regularly share in activities with, it's hard to call many of them "friends." The ones that are tend to be because they live closer than the others.

Life.

Then again, people move so much that they're always having to make new friends. It's not like in the past, when people had the same childhood friends in the neighborhood their whole lives.

Scientific explanation....our brains are neuroplastic till 30 when according to developmental psychology we become more fixed in our ways. In this respect we are less likely to expend energy and be stimulated to meet new people and make new friends.

Yes it is very hard to make friends when you are a socially awkward person with few or no friends. Outgoing, friendly people can easily make friends regardless of their age.

30 and over your best years are behind you and it is all down hill from there. I am a friendless guy, over 30 and living a sad, boring and lonely life is all I have ever known. You get used to being alone when you are a loner.

looks like I'm screwed.

Only had a few friends in high school (few is four) and I'm turning 30 at the end of the year.

The modern human race no longer lives in the world we evolved to live in psychologically. It's no wonder so many people are depressed.

It seems like people should still become acquainted through hobbies. That is if busy people even have time for hobbies after work and family and can afford a hobby after paying bills.

I would disagree. I think that, for us spectrummites, it may be easier to make friends when we are older. I had some close friends in childhood, but we moved when I was thirteen and I had no real friends in high school or college.I started to make friends again in midlife. Adolescents demand conformity. You are expected to act like everyone else. If you don't go to proms, if you don't go to football games. if you aren't interested in the latest fashions or the latest bands, if you are not a "girlie" girl or a "jock-type" young man, no one wants to know you. Many spectrummites are also slow to make the transition into adulthood, and do not start working or living independently until years after their contemporaries have moved on. You might feel left behind and not very social. When you do enter the workplace,you might make friends there. You will have a common interest with co-workers. When you are a kid, you are somewhat trapped and constrained by the interests of your classmates and your family. If you don't share them, you are left out. When you are older, you are more mobile. You have a car or money for transportation and can go places where you feel more comfortable. You can pursue your own interests and find people who share them.Also, as people get older, they tend to get more tolerant of other people's quirks.you also learn to differentiate between the sort of person who might be open to someone like yourself and the kind of person that will never accept anyone who differs from their conceptions of normal.

I hate when people who have kids and busy jobs and significant others put those things ahead of just hanging out and existing once in a while. I don't understand people who feel a need to schedule every minute of their days. Exploration and reflection are so important to me, the idea of being locked down with a small group of people in a constant routine just scares the hell out of me. Is that related to this discussion?