Making Friends Is Hard to Do

By Kenda Creasy Dean
December 13, 2023

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Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper. Text says, "Nobody talks about Jesus's miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s."

Comedian John Mulaney theorizes that Jesus’s greatest miracle was that he had 12 best friends in his 30s. Sometimes it does feel like making friends as an adult requires divine intervention. One day we’re flooded with friends in high school or college, and the next day we’re marooned on a sad desert island of loneliness now that we’re bona fide grown-ups. Where did everybody go?  How is it that I can be with people all day and still be scrolling through my contacts at night, looking for one person I can reasonably call for Netflix or Papa John’s? 

Hundreds of studies link having friends with happiness. Most adults in the United States (61 percent) think that having close friends matters more than marriage, children, or money. Yet, 1 in 12 adults in the United States say they have no close friends (just over half, 53 percent, say they have one to four close friends). 

In the United States, our ability to avoid making friends as adults has become a public health concern. In 2023, the surgeon general proclaimed that the United States is being gripped by an “epidemic of loneliness”—a condition as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.  Loneliness dramatically increases our susceptibility to heart disease, stroke, and dementia. The report blames our dramatic shifts in social interaction on our culture’s rapid rate of change, which leads those in the United States to move more often, change jobs more often, and interact with technology in ways that profoundly impact how and how often we interact with each other. (Do you even remember the last time you spoke to a teacher, instead of texting them?) Since young adults spend more time socializing than any other age group, they are the most vulnerable to these shifts. Young people today between the ages of 15 and 24 have 70 percent less social interaction with friends than their parents or grandparents did. 

The point is, if you’re struggling to find friends as an adult, you’re in good company. The surgeon general report urges policymakers to create a “culture of connection,” but we can’t just leave it to them. Here are a few tips from research on where we can start.   

 

Tweet by @ErinChack. me at 18: I only need a few good friends me at 28: wow a few??? I had a whole few friends?????? What was I, a friend billionaire????????????

 

 1. Know what you want from your friends 

Researchers tell us that, since humans have limited reserves of time and effort, we can’t befriend everyone. So, we tend to choose friends who help us achieve certain goals and solve certain problems—which turns out to be a stronger predictor of friendship than gender or other demographic similarities. For example:  

  • Do I want to feel more secure, lovable, and desirable?  
  • Do I want daily companionship or someone to listen to me?  
  • Do I want a partner in getting something done? 
  • Do I want to learn new things or have people in my life who share my interests?  

In other words, what problems do you need to solve in this season of your life?  What goals do you have. The people who help you reach those goals are friends-in-the-making.  

 2. Do the math 

One of the best predictors of friendship is the number of hours logged with one another. My friend Mark DeVries likes to say that strong marriages are built on a million meaningless moments—and the same can be said of strong friendships. It’s called the “mere exposure effect”: we’re most likely to become friends with the people we spend the most time with.   

Recently communication scholars quantified the hours involved in friend-making (which helps explain why it is exponentially easier to make friends, say, in a college dorm than in an office).  It turns out that it takes about 30 hours of interaction to make a casual friend, 140 hours to make a good friend, and 300 hours to make a best friend. But it matters that we make ourselves available for those hours: if we wait three weeks after meeting someone to begin logging friend-hours with them, becoming friends takes longer. 

 

Tweet by @selenalarson. Me: making friends as an adult is so hard!!! Also me: Cancels plans with a potential new friend because I don't feel like putting on pants

 

3. Practice good friend habits 

It turns out that your friend-making muscles—like our quads and triceps—grow flabby when they’re not being used. Once we’ve outgrown recess and the social scene of high school and college, it’s easy to let our friend-making skills grow rusty. In some cases, making friends is mostly a matter of toning up our social habits: remembering to talk to strangers, to foster “loose ties” (that cousin-of-your-next-door-neighbor’s friend has just enough in common with you to be interesting), or maybe go for “relational diversity” (in other words, being open to learning about people who are nothing like you, even though they may share your goals or interests).  

 

Tweet by @AndrewNadeau0 HER: I know making friends as an adult is hard, just try asking questions. {Later at a bar} ME (who has not tried to make friends since 3rd grade): What's your favorite dinosaur mine's triceratops.

 

4. Be the friend you want to have 

Captain Obvious here: sometimes making friends starts with being one. Researchers tell us that people prefer friends who are loyal, trustworthy, and warm—and who prioritize us. But it is also true that when we demonstrate for others the qualities of friendship that we want in our own friends, we tend to form more satisfying friendships ourselves. Jesus was right: “Do unto others…” 

Jesus loved being with friends. He loved his friends “to the end” (John 13:1)—which in ancient Greek meant “to the fullest extent, to the limit, to the uttermost.”  By washing the disciples’ feet—an intimate act of friendship in the ancient world—Jesus was voluntarily setting aside his status as their teacher in order to equalize their relationship so that they could share in everything (John 13:15). 

Jesus had 12 BFFs in his 30s because he chose to have them. Jesus’s friends shared his goal of saving Israel. They logged countless hours together. And they engaged in habits of friendship: talking to strangers, embracing diversity, and breaking bread. Even though there was a moment where some of that went terribly wrong for one of them. Jesus modeled for his friends the kind of friend he wanted them to become—wants us to become. It’s not a bad place to start. 

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Woman smiling

Kenda Creasy Dean, Faculty Senior Strategist

An ordained United Methodist minister, Kenda teaches practical theology, youth ministry, education and formation, and social innovation at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she serves as the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture. She has extensive experience in new ministry development, grant writing, and nonprofit ministry, especially with young people. Kenda is the author of a dozen books including Delighted: What Teenagers are Teaching the Church About Joy (with Wes Ellis, Abigail Rusert, and Justin Forbes); Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church; and The Godbearing Life (with Ron Foster). She is a frequent speaker and consultant on young people and church innovation and has worked with dozens of seminaries, judicatories, congregations, and other faith-based entities. A graduate of Miami University in Ohio, Wesley Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary, Kenda served as a pastor in suburban Washington, DC, and as a campus minister at the University of Maryland before coming to Princeton. She and her husband Kevin live on campus and love hanging out at the beach with their grown children.

 

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