Making Friends when you are Older

[Philip]

Does anyone have any tips on making friends when you are over thirty?

I was listening to a podcast and someone said, “It is a universal truth that it becomes more difficult to make friends as you get older,” and I agreed. When I was in my twenties, I made friends through school/uni, 21th birthday parties, and through work. Nowadays, I am familiar with everyone from my workplace, friends have their own families and babies to worry about, and birthdays are close friend invites only.

More specifically, I want to make new friends roughly my own age (early thirty) with the possibility of finding someone to date (best case scenario). So far, I have

joined clubs that reflect my interest/hobbies on facebook but people are too scattered across the country to meet up,

been too afraid to go to clubs/bar scene and approaching someone there to talk to (maybe I should go with a friend),

done +1 invitations to house parties but most people are busy so it ends up being just my usual group of friends,

downloaded ‘Meetup’ app, but haven’t actually meet-up with any group yet because I’m such an introvert.

I meet some cool people at bathhouses, so I think I’ll give that a go some more. I thought people go there for sex only, but there are some who likes to chat.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Philip

[hntnhole]

16 hours ago, Philip said:

joined clubs that reflect my interest/hobbies on facebook but people are too scattered across the country to meet up

I meant in your area.  Of course online contacts are usually too far away to be productive.

[BootmanLA]

On 1/22/2022 at 9:29 PM, Philip said:

Does anyone have any tips on making friends when you are over thirty?

I was listening to a podcast and someone said, “It is a universal truth that it becomes more difficult to make friends as you get older,” and I agreed. When I was in my twenties, I made friends through school/uni, 21th birthday parties, and through work. Nowadays, I am familiar with everyone from my workplace, friends have their own families and babies to worry about, and birthdays are close friend invites only.

More specifically, I want to make new friends roughly my own age (early thirty) with the possibility of finding someone to date (best case scenario). So far, I have

joined clubs that reflect my interest/hobbies on facebook but people are too scattered across the country to meet up,

been too afraid to go to clubs/bar scene and approaching someone there to talk to (maybe I should go with a friend),

done +1 invitations to house parties but most people are busy so it ends up being just my usual group of friends,

downloaded ‘Meetup’ app, but haven’t actually meet-up with any group yet because I’m such an introvert.

I meet some cool people at bathhouses, so I think I’ll give that a go some more. I thought people go there for sex only, but there are some who likes to chat.

Being an introvert is a complicating factor for sure.

I would suggest you look more closely for local groups into your interests/hobbies. For instance, if you are into model airplane flying, search for "Model airplane group Melbourne" to see if there is a local club into that. In larger cities (and Melbourne, at 5 million people, is a larger city), there's almost certainly going to be a group that shares whatever hobby you might enjoy.

Now, if you mean specifically *gay* people into that hobby, that can be more challenging. The Venn Diagram of queer people into anything - no matter what that thing is - probably has a fairly small overlap area, with the exception of a handful of wildly popular things like popular film and music, and then to impose a "local" restriction on it is even more problematic.

I'd also add: look for volunteer opportunities in the gay community there. 

[polyglutton]

I think there are confluence of factors that make it more challenging to make new friends as we age.

We get to know ourselves better, our likes and needs, and become more discerning.

Car-centric suburban sprawl atomises us and prevents serendipitous connections with new friends or casually encountering established friends without planning ahead.

Our current economic system and attention economy further alienates us by leaving most of us with very little free time. 

I struggle with all of these factors myself  in my current situation.