Then after 20 years of friendship you learn their real name
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Had this. Stopped because being social with them was a hassle. Finding people you enjoy being with goes a long way.
Don't ever feel stuck.
How do you get adopted or befriended? I'm too anxious to talk to people and don't go outside much.
Initiative, feel the vibes for compatibility, try to find out subtly if he/she has good friends that might be interesting and do the same thing for him/her.
People are awkward, they all feel nervous to a certain degree. Be forgiving with yourself and others, but don't bite more than you can chew.
Really it's about saying to hell with privacy and not thinking about intruding in other ppl lives: most of the time they actually like it if it was a cool interaction at least!
If you really are nervous, try starting with saying randomly hi to strangers that aren't in a hurry maybe add a platitude, ask the time by "accidentally" forgetting your phone, bum a cigarette off the cool guy, comment on the weather for old people. Give a compliment! Enjoy living, and don't mind if you ever get a bad interaction, sometimes you randomly encounter someone at their lowest point or at their worst because of a personal problem, hangryness, or they just talk rudely by habit.
And if you want to meet specific people with specific interest: where do they hang out? Online? Offline? Then you proceed with a friendly hello or smile.
I don't know how some people actually manage to maintain an actual friendship with more than 3 people, really. Like, where the fuck do you find the time to have 20 close friends?
You know, there are quite a few numbers between 3 and 20. Also you dont have to talk to them every single day. Just meaningful time together. Thats it.
Or at least this worked / works for me.
Just meaningful time together. Thats it.
Yeah, but when?
They probably don't. I feel like people's definition of what a friend is can be very loose.
I recognize some people I know as colleagues or acquaintances, but some people may think of them as friends were they in my shoes.
some folk i know just use friend, family, and enemy. colleague, acquaintance, and any other social relationship classification does not exist for them.
There are several people I consider (very) close friends, that don't live in the same city as me anymore. We message regularly, do some online gaming here and there and visit each other as often as possible. And every time we do it's just like back when we hung out in uni every day. While we don't have as much time as back then, the quality of friendship is the same or even grew. I think it's about consciously making time and the effort for each other, even if it can't be every other day or week.
Also not having kids makes it much easier, time wise, I guess.
I would call bullshit, but out of the real friends I have, there's exactly one I didn't know back then. There's a couple I wasn't really friends with then, and friends from then I'm no longer in contact with, but yeah.
I'm baffled by some of the responses in this thread. Yes, it's harder to make friends in one's 20's than in the teens, and harder to make friends in one's 30's than in one's 20's.
But to act like it's inevitable, or even desirable, to not make new friendships after the age of 20 seems like overstating things.
The people you grow up with and befriend at a young age share those similar roots. That will always be valuable in friendships.
And the people you befriend later in life, through your hobbies, your career, your neighborhood, your mutual relationships also share those commonalities, and that will bring something valuable to those relationships, too. One of the most things I love about meeting, dating, and marrying my wife is that it mingled our two worlds of friends, and a lot of the friends I met through her in my 30's are now some of my best friends today.
I rely on local friends for things that require geographical closeness. I rely on fellow parents for parenting support (including favors, advice, even jokes/rants). I am close with former and current colleagues, and we talk shop, careers, people we know, and sometimes refer each other to job opportunities or other work.
There is a certain richness that comes from multiple social relationships evolving and developing over time, including repeat acquaintances, superficial friendships, all the way to very close or very intimate friendships. We're all just walking through life in different stages, and each stage has different needs and opportunities to rely on and provide support to your social network.
Sir/ma'am, this is a Wendy's..
That’s because it is.
That's true, although I lost contact with those friends so now I'm stuck at 0 :c
I'm a friend :3
Yeah my 3 friends all decided to do meth so I quit highschool and got a job.
me too thanks
Works... until they die.
I make 3 new friends at every stage of my life, career, and living situation. I also lose those same 3 friends and never speak to them again if any one of those variables changes.
Ok well I followed you with the lost part, but I’m lagging behind on making new ones…
I'll be your friend. But also I won't. Call me if you want to hang, and I will make a poor excuse
fair enough! I would make you an excuse as well. Because well I’m bedridden and cannot leave my bed due to disability, hence why I don’t really have close friends like I did before in this part of my life…
God, down to the exact number...
Same.
I dont like these General statements on boys and girls. I dont think its good to strengthen the stereotype by stating things like that.
Of course i do know a bunch of men, where this is true and then i go "haha so true" and stereotype is reassured. But when i think of it, i know quite a lot of men that have larger circles of friends and also met them much later in der lifes. Also i do know women that only have 3 friends from highschool.
Its just another Version oft the stupid stereotype all women are extroverted and all men are introverted. Its not true. And the stereotype might influence how men and women behave in the end.
I guess whats influencing the number of friends more than Gender is:
- are you more extrovert or introvert
- did you move from your hometown (then the need to make New friends is a bit higher)
- do you have hobbies done in groups, like some sports or choir, etc. Where you constantly meet people
- are your friends extroverts and bring people to your life or are they introverrt and only meet you?
Of course it might be that some of these points are statistically more valid for women or men, but just generalizing doesnt help.
Good friends are an emotional investment, many friends is networking.
Both are mentally and emotionally taxing
The extroverts feed on us like we're their cattle
Get this... Many good friends!
Many emotional investments
That's 100% me. I got into my friend group when I was 16 which consists out of 3 other people. I got like 2 other friends in University and that's it. I do have another friend group left over from my childhood in my hometown, but I Am nowhere near the level of closeness with them than with my other groups.
However in University I did in fact gain quite a lot of connections to people that I wouldn't call friends, but people you hang out with due to us engaging in the same circles. Not that bad to have these circles, but I'm also fine with it.
Wait, theres one more person that I would call my friend and this is someone who I met around last year over Lemmy. Theres also someone that I met through one of my school friends that I would call a friend. With these two I am totaling at 7 very close friends, and 3 semi close friends.
3? Are you nuts? I have two and see them maybe twice a year in person. Most friends require way too much time and I'm glad my friends are low maintenance and don't get annoyed when I ghost them for weeks.
Girls make 300 “friends” a year and they hate all of them.
i mean i'm well over 40 and haven't seen anything to demonstrate that life is better with more than 3 friends
I need 4, but that's because one of my hobbies is being in a 5 piece band. I need the other 4 people to carry my untalented ass and I can't be in a band with folks I'm not friends with. They like me because due to my obsession with being on time and prepared we get called back for gigs and booking agents (or sound guys, honestly) recommend us as local openers for large acts because we never let them down.
Quality > quantity
Is there a correlation, inverse or otherwise, between the quality of friendships and the quantity of friends?
Unironically yes
Its funny because when I had the time 3 was about the number of folks at any one time I hung out extensively with unless you include rpg groups because that met regularly.
What exactly counts as 'friends'?
As a teen I had >300 good friends phone numbers in my phones contacts. I was constantly turning people down who wanted to do activities / hang out, because I didn't have time to maintain that many friends. It felt really bad and stressful, especially when they tried to persuade me and it was just impossible to spend time with them. At some point I just had to power down my phone and never powered it up again. Improved my life a lot.
Decades later, I have a new phone number and phone now, but my contacts are few and I keep the number secret.
Accurate. Although it was more like 2 after high school, and 1 now.
I am very saddened by the general attitude people come at about making new friends with age, on any side of the discussion. I've got like 30 friends right now (active, some friends are still friends but show up once a year or something), and I started with half that in my 20s. It has been growing slowly. Yeah some people fell out (Trump related more than anything else) but like, I just made 7 new friends in the last few years and it wasn't hard. It was just being open to meeting new kinds of people.
By the way: I'm an introvert
Not me