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Friends and getting older

OP, you are 20 years old, stil plenty of time to meet new people and establish new friendships but i do agree with Stephen king that no friendships are like the ones we had in junior high..simple reasoning is your young friends you basically lived with them, went to school with them, played on sports teams with them, hung out after school...a ton of experiences you had together developed a very strong bond but when u get out of school and hit the work scene, its much different when you meet new people..especially if you are 100% sober its going to be much more difficult imo but it depends on how social you are, if you are outgoing..yes, in your 20s i found that i had to put much more effort into friendships than i had when i was young, this is due to work and my own schedule..tbh the main way i was able to make friends in my 20s was because i used drugs and alcohol, so much easier to meet people that way, its a bonding experience on its own..

so you still have plenty of time left at your age but do realize that after age 25 and especially 30, that creating new friendships that have depth is much more difficult...making friends in your early 20s as compared to your 30s is so different..
 
Noodle said:
Being a young twenty-something is a prime time and can never be repeated.
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With the way our societies are organized the transition between student and independent adult life naturally finds many people lonely. Many must move away to start careers or families, leaving the social scene mercurial and somewhat aversive to finding deeper interpersonal connections. Conditions will stabilize somewhat as you get older, but making those new friends will still require more work than it did in the past. Due to the demands of family and career, many are not as open to forming social bonds with new people as they once were, though, like you, there are also many who would love to have more deep interpersonal ties but they're not sure how to go about it.

This is why you have to be the one that's socially proactive even if it feels awkward. Make frequent invitations to others to meet for lunch or weekend activities at your place, join social clubs like political campaigning or fundraising groups, and attend exercise classes at the gym. If you're ready for a long term relationship that's also a good way to get introduced to a stable collection of new acquaintances. Getting to an interpersonal level that's on par with the kind of organic relationships you may have had with childhood friends will take years, but if you're persistent it can happen as soon as your late twenties or early thirties.
 
First off I just want to thank everyone for their kind hearted words of wisdom :)

Secondly, I've moved and I've met so many new people! It's been no jokes one of the best weeks of my life and I've met all sorts of characters but they have all been SO WONDERFUL and its just re-confirmed what everyone in this thread has been telling me. The best part is that they're all clean so its not as if I've just found a "drug group" (for lack of a better description, but I think everyone gets what I mean?) and fallen into bad ways.

Everyone who I have had the good fortune to meet have all been older than me, showing me that age doesn't really matter so long as you have a great personality and love to kick back and chill out. Honestly a big thank you to everyone who has helped re-confirm my faith in humanity. :)
 
Awesome to hear, afterlife, I hope that others in your situation come across this thread and are encouraged by your success.
Thanks for the update.
 
Yeah it's normal to only have a few friends as you get older.

When I was in highschool, I had literally 20 great friends and we always hung out and partied together. Then college came, and it got widdled down, people started going in different directions, then college ended and it got even worse. But it's a natural progression.

It's normal to have many different friends or groups of friends throughout your life, especially when you're younger. Then you get older and real life happens, responsibilities, you're very busy. So, most people should consider themselves very lucky to have even 2 or 3 very close friends once you get older.

And you'll always meet more people. Coworkers, whatever. Let it happen naturally.

My girlfriend is literally my best friend in the world. I just don't have time anymore to keep up with friends.
 
This is interesting...haven't seen this brought up in the thread so I thought I might throw this Religious Studies' nugget of information out there...anyone have any theories about how our friends manifest in our everyday consciousness? Being conscious, in this reality, collectively experiencing all the peaks and valleys of life on this world in this dimension - we are all extensions of the same core spiritual essence, however you want to label it...with that being said, I have often thought about how all my 'friends' were, technically, just other conscious manifestations of spirit, which manifest from the same essence that my consciousness itself manifests, with which I find some sort of harmony in connecting with...however, all the other people in this world in which I am consciously living in should be able to share the exact same connection with me - we are, after all, the same in spirit, only our physical bodies differ. So, why do we share connections with 'other' people, who we specifically label as 'friends', but who are, in reality, just like everyone else in this consciousness, just us in a different life?

The main thing I'm trying to say is that the conception of having 'friends' in of itself is very odd, but also highly intellectually stimulating. When I'm with my close (dude/bro - I'm a guy) friends, I legitimately feel some type of sacred bond, in a way. Not like a marriage/romance/sex bond, obviously, but a type of 'brotherhood' or organizational bond.

I personally have this theory that your really close friends are placed there by fate/the dream-scape in which we live explicitly to either watch over what you're doing or help you out in your journey, even if in a seemingly insignificant way.

Also, I think that your close friends are more than just extensions of the consciousness which you use to manifest this reality, as any person that you meet/see is part of this reality, not just your friends - your friends are actual extensions of your individual personality manifested to both guide and warn you about what's going on in a way that you might not be able to intuit/tell on your own...

And while my theories are predicated on an explicitly Eastern spiritual model, involving reincarnation and going through cycles of life until verifiable enlightenment is achieved, regardless of what your spiritual model is, we should all still be able to admit that the connection of there being other people within a consciousness that only you as an individual can access is pretty trippy to start with...not to mention how we are all collectively dreaming this reality together to begin with...peace, happy trails, me, you, we, whatever, it's the same, for imaginary...
 
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That happens to everyone.. I watched a lot of friends go to school, while I didn't. Then I'd only see the one's in town (via my very close friends) but as time went on I quit hanging out with everyone. It never bothered me much, I'd occasionally see and hang out with people I hadn't seen in awhile that I was good friends with, but that's it. All my close friends do some type of drug or drink like mad men. I'm trying to clean up my act, and not be surrounded by opiates, and cocaine non-stop. I'll ALWAYS love them to death, but we just do not chill anymore. I hope the best for them, and everyone else who has a good heart :] Only people who call me is my dad and g-ma, only people who text me are my mom and sister, very rarely a friend. Only people I see are my family. My mom's side and my polac side, good people who love me to death. I really can't ask for more. Probably sounds really lonely reading this, but I get to chill with the 2 coolest dogs ever, and see my family whenever. I'm 22, btw.
 
afterlyfestyle said:
?..I'm just feeling very worried about how anyone that I'll ever meet won't know a thing about me, who I am, where I've come from, what I know and how I've experienced it because they weren't there or knew me way back when, does that make any sense?

I'm afraid people will never understand and comprehend the many weird layers that is me

But if I keep worrying and thinking like this I should be more concerned on initially meeting people cuz I'll only scare the fuck out of them and be called an oddball for the rest of my days aye?
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These are normal fears and many people experience this at one stage or another. The term for it is "an existential crisis" if you want to do some reading about it.

We are all multi-layer, complex creatures and we all change as we grow older. No one can ever really know everything about us all the time, not even family. That is why our sense of our own self, our own values and who we are and not losing sight of that, becomes so crucial to retaining our identities as time passes and our compass changes.

Scene buddies are ten a penny, but you really learn who your real friends are when you go through a rough time and some people really are stand up folks and step up to the plate and others let us down royally. I tend to save my energies now for the people that have gone out of their way for me in the bad times and not just been there as drinking buddies when the going is good.
 
caseface99 said:
8 months ago I moved to a different city, got sober and deleted the phone numbers of every single person I knew besides my parents and my ex girlfriend (the one i still talk to from a while back, and she lives on the other side of the country anyway, along with my parents.)

So I have had to try and make new friends starting basically from scratch. It's been one of the most difficult 8 months of my life. I have only gotten close to one person, and she recently left me and needs an unspecified and possibly indefinite amount of "space" where she doesn't want to talk to me even though she still cares for me, apparently.

So basically back to square one, and I totally feel for you and relate. I read that you quit doing drugs - Have you tried going to any AA/NA meetings? specifically young peoples meetings. Even if you don't need to work the steps or get seriously involved, they can still be a great source of potential friends that don't use drugs. Have you thought about taking some classes at a community college? I saw that you say you finished school, but it can never hurt to take a couple random classes you're interested in and meet some people through them. I just started back in school today so I'll be doing my best to meet people in my classes.

Otherwise, basically the point is that I'm struggling with the same thing but I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel regardless of whether or not I can see it yet, I know it's there. It can be difficult at first but just try and force yourself to be more outgoing and talk to random people. I've been starting to force myself over the last couple weeks, and have made a bunch of new acquaintances that I am hoping will develop into friendships - Time will tell but I know one thing is for sure, If I continue sitting around sorry for myself like I did the first 7 months I was sober then nothing will ever change and I really will die alone. You have to be the change you want to see in your life! :)
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It takes balls to do what you have done and I know as I have also done this several times to restart a new life. Drastic situations take drastic measures sometimes.

You'll drop upon a scene in time and soon you won't even have time for all the people you will meet.

I've found friends in all sorts of walks, from going travelling solo where you are forced to join excursions, chat to people, to joining groups, to taking up an instrument and making loads of musician buddies and joining bands and jam nights.

I strongly believe that making proper real life friends now that want to and know hot, communicate and be social, outside the internet, is far harder than even a decade ago. Many people have lost ability to cultivate real life friendships and keep up the effort to maintain them. Shared hobbies like beach life, surfing type stuff is good, as is sporting stuff, like hill walking, running clubs, cycling clubs, etc, etc. by finding new hobbies, you always find new friends.

Well done to all making the effort and keep it up.
 
I'm 42. I know people who have childhood best friends & I am totally envious of them. I don't have anyone who was my best friend since we were little. I think I am just missing something in my personality that causes people to bond with me. I think I'm too honest, too good at certain things, & truthfully, I can be quite insensitive without being aware of it.

That said, I am not without friends. I have a very, very small group of what I consider "real" friends. Friends who will still be there even if we disagree, who will come back even if we have a fight so we can work it out, who are still be friend when I'm having a bad day. I'm a bartender & most of the people I know are pretty shallow, & I've put my faith in the wrong people over & over & over again.

But the good ones stick around. I just try my best to be a good friend to them.
 
I wound up having a lot of friends who were older than me when I was in my teens and now more or less all of them either have families or got strung out on drugs and kind of lost touch with people. Some of them both had a kid and got strung out on drugs which is really sad.

Not going to a college/university generally causes people to have smaller social connections, although most people who meet othe people in college have the same thing happen to them at graduation that happened in high school.

On the positive side of this topic, you can be as selfish as you want and dont have to worry about any real negative repurcussions. I guess it can get boring at times but that is why most people use drugs in all honesty
 
heres my experience with this.

i hung out with a ton of people up until my early twenties, then everybody grows up, gets married/kids/job/moves and goes their separate ways. there are a handful of people that i grew up with or were very close with for years, and they stayed in my life longer than most but eventually we hung out less and less. im 28 now and with these people i might not see them for years but well always be close. i havent seen or talked to one guy that was my best friend from 10-21 in almost 4 years, but i know i could show up at his house or call him and wed pick up like we saw each other yesterday, and itll always be like that with a few people. at some point around 25 most of the people youve known will no longer be in your life, that era is over and youre starting a new one with new friends.
 
I've made more and more friends as I've gotten older. I've always had many friends. Then again, I'm twenty-three, so take my "limited" life experience as you will.
 
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