Why is creating friendships as adults so difficult, and how to make friends easily
There seems to be a common theme of loneliness and feelings of being alone that I’ve noticed over the past few weeks. Almost all my clients feel disconnected from themselves, their people, their passions. It seems as though the past two years of isolation have truly taken a toll.
It’s as if we spent so much time alone that we now don’t know how to reconnect. Or perhaps our priorities shifted, and we no longer value the things that we used to. Maybe we have changed and the people around us have too, however we’re no longer like-minded. Perhaps now we are looking for deeper, more meaningful friendships, or even perhaps we are desiring more shallow hobby-based friendships. Any and all of these reasons are totally valid.
For many of us we blur the line between childhood friendships and adulthood friendships, and I’ve noticed, even with myself, that we place the same expectations on our adult friendships that we did as children. Realistically this creates an immense amount of pressure since as adults we have adult things to do, our time to socialize is more limited, in proximity to our friends, we no longer see them every day on the playground, on campus, and now even at the work canteen. As children we believed we would be best friends forever, and now as adults that is becoming harder and harder to maintain for a myriad of reasons.
It is likely with this now adult view on our friendships, and our own shifting in priorities, that we deconstruct our childhood expectations on our adult friendships, redefine what it is that we desire our friendships to be, and determine the roles that we require our friends to fulfil.
I have created a Journal Journey to guide you to determine what you would like your adult friendships to look like, and to create an action plan on how you could go about cultivating and creating new friendships, at all levels.
If you too are feeling the effects of loneliness or are wanting to reassess your current friendship circles, then click here to get the Forming Adult Friendships Journal Journey
Who knows, this might even be the start of a beautiful friendship!
Looking forward to connecting with you.
