Making + Keeping Friends As An Adult, Explained: TALKING SHIFT with Anna Goldfarb

How friendships shift with age, how to think of friendship in categories, and how to let go of the overthinking and guilt that often comes with adult friendships.

Quickly list three adjectives to describe what you think of when you think of “making friends as an adult.”

I’ll go first:

1. Complicated.

2. Challenging.

(…I’ll get to the third in a sec.)

Did some version of those two words come to mind for you, too? That makes sense.

We spend the first couple decades of our lives — the time during which our brains and beliefs are developing from nothing to all the things — taking for grated the EASE of friendship.

And then BOOM, we’re no longer in elementary school playing team sports…or in high school rehearsing for the spring musical…or sitting in our college dorm rooms with an abundance of shared first-time experiences and built-in bonding opportunities. Instead, we’re navigating careers and families, moving to different cities (or states or countries or continents), and going through major life transitions. We become so many things and play so many roles all at once.

Yet at the same time, we’re told that community is essential to prioritize. That we’re in a loneliness crisis, that a key factor to longevity is community, etc etc.

Obviously, the above is all true. Community is essential. And but also. This thing that feels like it SHOULD be easy and intuitive actually takes way more effort than we think it does. If you’re someone with an already full calendar and mental load, it can feel akin to being told “just exercise 30 minutes a day to be healthier!” Just 30! Fit it in! EASY PEASY!! Not so much: there are preexisting beliefs and associations to work through, there’s accessibility of safe physical spaces, there’s time reconfiguring, there’s childcare to secure, there’s logistics…for more people than not, there’s a lot that goes into creating “just 30 minutes.” Yeah, it can be done, but for MANY people, it can’t be done easily-peasily. (for context: i’ve been a group fitness instructor for almost 20 years, so i’ve heard this one a lot, and it drives me bananas every time).

It’s the same re: community and “making friends.” What feels like it SHOULD be intuitive just isn’t. Many of us feel stuck and discouraged, wondering why making new friends (or even maintaining the friendships we already have) feels so hard. Like there must be something wrong with us.

Enter friendship journalist and author Anna Goldfarb. Anna's book, Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, explores the nuances of adult friendship in a way that's validating, illuminating, and SUPER actionable.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna last summer during her book launch, which was an excuse for me to ask her ALL my burning questions about friendship that’ve been stored up in my introvert, HSP brain that sometimes (read: often) has a tendency to worry about friendship.

You might be wondering, “But Katie, if you talked to her last year, then why are we getting this post NOW?”

Because the third word that comes to mind for me when it comes to making friends as an adult, besides COMPLICATED and CHALLENGING, is actually a phrase: WORTH IT.

Over the last couple years, and last year in particular, I’ve worked on shifting my priorities to be more community-centric. I’m far from perfect — my anxious, distracted, potentially-perimenopausal and definitely-overstretched brain seems to want to do everything in its power to thwart my intentions to even send texts back in a timely manner, which is a post for another day — but I’m trying. Building new friendships. Deepening existing ones. Saying YES to things. Scheduling time together, even if short. Earlier this summer, I even took my very first trip solely for the purpose of seeing a best friend in her new city.

What’s been striking to me is how extremely luxurious all of this has felt. But friendship isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Humans are communal beings. Friendships are vital to not just our sense of fulfillment, but to our actual survival. There’s so much research that supports this.

The bummer about our early “easy friendship” upbringing is that many of us don’t ever learn why friendship is important, how to make friends, or how to be a good friend in the face of life happening. When we’re young, it all just (for the most part) HAPPENS. There’s not really any sort of education around why it happens. Yes, we’re able to form potentially deep and long-lasting bonds in those “easy friendship” years…but we’re not taught or even made aware of WHY they’re easy, and what we can do to build those types of bonds when the ease isn’t automatically accounted for.

It’s a lot of work to continue the loop of learning and relearning these skills. It’s sometimes discouraging. But when it clicks, it clicks. Making and nurturing friendships as an adult is complicated and challenging but SO WORTH IT.

Anna’s book is one of those books that’s stuck with me for way longer than the time I read it, and our conversation on the WANTcast last year is one I revisit often. As we wrap up summer and head into the busy-ness of the rest of the year, I wanted to come back to some of the biggest lessons that have stuck with me all this time.

Here’s what I’ve learned from Anna…and how I keep my own friendship guilt at bay when I start to spiral (who, me? lol)…

1. Friendship Needs Shift with Age, And That’s Normal

Friendships often start to fade/morph after age 30. That might sound bleak, but it’s actually normal. As Anna explained to me, it’s not necessarily a reflection of failure — it’s a reflection of changing roles and priorities. You're becoming more things to more people: a partner, a parent, a leader, a caregiver, etc. And that all takes time.

Age also brings different wants and needs when it comes to friendship. For example, Anna told me that women in midlife often seek more interdependence in their friendships: they want to nurture, be nurtured, and feel deeply connected. Men, on the other hand (generally speaking), often seek more independence: freedom from judgment, fewer obligations, and simplicity. This is obviously speaking simply to gender binaries, and there is a whole spectrum of needs and wants across humans as they age, but the point is that a mismatch of needs and wants can create tension and confusion in our social lives.

Bottom line is: our “friendship needs” evolve over time, and so we should expect them to. This was one of the biggest reliefs for me to learn, and has helped me normalize it instead of resisting it.

2. There Are Jacuzzi Friends + Water Park Friends, and Active Friendships + Memorial Friendships

One of the most WOW concepts Anna introduced to me was how to think about your closest friends — the ones she calls your “jacuzzi friends.” These are your inner circle: the three to five people who make you feel seen, supported, and safe. They’re the friends who always remember your birthday, who show up for you in big and small ways, and who you do the same for too.

Not every friend is a jacuzzi friend. And that’s where many of us get mixed up — in trying to make everyone fit in the jacuzzi.

I love her “bodies of water” metaphor, all based on how many people can fit in each body of water: there’s bathtub friends (1-2, usually a significant other and/or a best friend), jacuzzi friends (3-5), swimming pool (10-15), beach bonfire (50ish, also this is water adjacent, we know), and water park (up to 150).

But she goes even further!

Anna breaks down friendships into two main categories:

• Active friendships: These are high-in-contact and rooted in present-moment relevance. You might share hobbies, go through life changes together, or just text or talk all the time. There’s a clear and compelling reason why you're close right now.

• Memorial friendships: These are based more on history. You might have deep affection for each other, but you're not regularly involved in each other's current lives. Maybe you were best friends in high school, or former coworkers who used to be inseparable, but the day-to-day / week-to-week sense of connectedness has faded.

Where it gets painful, Anna says, is when we confuse memorial friends for active ones, and hold them all to the same expectations. And as you’ve probably already guessed, social media makes this even trickier. Your feed might be full of people you once knew well, giving the illusion that everyone in your “friendscape” holds equal weight. (I know that for me, someone who joined *The Facebook* when you needed a dot-edu email address, there are many people on my social media feeds who I haven’t actually seen or talked to in decades.) Clarifying which friendships are active and which are memorial, plus which friends are in which metaphorical body of water, can save you SO much heartache and guilt…and has personally helped my own self-talk about friendship so much.

3. Every Friendship Needs An “ABOUT”

Just like a good website, every good friendship has an “about”: a reason for being. Maybe one of yours is about is books. Maybe it’s parenthood. Maybe it’s music. Every friendship has one, and friendships can shift or fizzle when the original “about” no longer feels relevant.

The trick is that the “about” needs to be both clear and compelling to both parties…which means you need to not only know what it is, but be motivated by it. If your “about” is that you love the same kinds of movies but you don’t really enjoy watching movies that often, you have a clear yet uncompelling “about.” But if you and your friend both enjoy personal development and those are the conversations you’re the most excited to have with others — congrats, you’ve got a clear and compelling “about”!

What I also love is that Anna said that a friendship’s “about” can be re-negotiated at any time. She gave me this simple example when she was on the pod:

”You can go to a friend and say: I want to spend more time with you. How can I help you with things that you care about? And your friend might say, ’Well, I want to move my body more. I would like to start a walking club.’ Great. Let's do a walking club. Now the ‘about’ of the friendship is walking; moving your body. It's really a two pronged attack: One, how can I help my friend with what's important to them? And then two, once I'm with them, how can I make them feel validated, seen, and loved? Then boom, you have a wonderful friendship.”

4. You Can’t Do It All, And You Shouldn’t Try To!

Many of us are inadvertently trying to “jacuzzi” everyone. That’s where the overwhelm and burnout comes in, like I mentioned before.

Anna made this analogy:

“It’s like you’re trying to go grocery shopping for your emotional needs while hungry and without a list. If you don't know how to regard what you're seeing, if you don't prioritize what belongs in your shopping cart, you're going to be so disoriented. You're going to pick the most random things.

It's really about having a plan. So when life is busy, who's in your metaphorical shopping cart? Who belongs there? Why?”

Instead of choosing friendships with intention, we often default to what’s in front of us…like when you’re hungry and grab a bunch of things for dinner at the grocery store without thinking about how they go together, or if you’ll even enjoy the final product.

Thoughtful friendship, just like a delicious meal you cook, requires conscious choice and clarity. Friendship isn’t about doing it all with everyone — it’s about doing the meaningful things with the people who matter to you.

5. Distance, Introversion, And Values-Differences Are Definitely NOT Nothing

Anna says that some common friendship friction points include moving away from each other, being introverted, or realizing your friend’s worldview is fundamentally different than yours. As someone who is in many long-distance friendships, is an introvert, and has recognized soem values-differences in the last decade or so that she didn’t realize existed, it was REALLY comforting to hear that all three of these are super common and are NOT things to just push through. Friendships are flexible, but they also need honesty, boundaries, and mutual understanding.

Anna’s advice:

• Long-distance friendships naturally shift. That doesn’t mean they need to fizzle. Recognizing the shift and not trying to constantly recreate a former version of the friendship is essential. Maybe that means you send each other voice notes more often since you don’t see each other IRL, or there are longer times between when you talk at all. How can you meet each other where you each are, and invest in each other’s lives in different ways?

• Introverts can (and DO!!!!!) make great friends — it just requires being upfront about your preferences and capacity. So many introverts are tentative about expressing their needs, which creates wayyyy more challenges than necessary. Being clear and kind is important in any relationship, but especially as an introvert living in an extroverted world.

• Value-mismatches can sometimes be managed, depending on the peope and values…but sometimes they’re deal-breakers. And that’s valid too.
  

6. There Are Certain Essential Needs That Can Help You In Your Friendship Assessments

We don’t just want to be loved in our relationships, we want to feel useful. Anna describes five different essential needs people have according to Willam Glasser’s Choice Theory:

• Survival: basic needs for food, shelter, and safety

• Love/Belonging: feeling connected to others; having a sense of community

• Power: feeling competent, successful, and valued

• Freedom: independence and autonomy in making choices; self-direction in your life

• Fun: pleasure, enjoyment, entertainment, and happiness

This is huge when it comes to addressing a friendship that’s feeling like it’s got less OOMPH than you’d like it to.

Anna gave a great example about assessing these “essential needs” when a friendship that’s feeling lackluster:

“…When I learned about Choice Theory, I could look at my friendships that were struggling and evaluate them through that rubric. Do I help them with survival? Well, no. Do I help with power? No, we don't even work in the same industry. Do I help with love and belonging? Well, we haven't hung out in eight months, so clearly not. Then you go through and can see why this friendship isn't thriving and doesn't feel nurturing.”

Remember when she talked about the “friendship ABOUT”? This is another way to help you identify and build your friendships. When you help a friend meet their needs, Anna says, you build connection. Instead of asking, “Why don’t I have more friends?” you can ask, “Who do I want to support? Who do I want to witness and champion?”

witnessing and championing!

I HOPE this post could be as helpful to you as Anna’s words have been to me. If you’re feeling disconnected, confused, or lonely in your adult friendships, I promise you, you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you. This season of life just requires different tools, and a different kind of self-talk, around what’s possible. Making and nurturing friendships as an adult is complicated, challenging, and most of all, WORTH IT.

One last quote from Anna:

I now find friendships to be a joy. I used to find them really tough. I was guilt-ridden. Am I doing enough? Am I reaching out enough? Is my friend mad at me? I had this constant reel of guilt and sadness and frustration. And now I feel really calm. I understand what's happening, and why. I was surprised that friendships could feel like that…because for so long they just felt unmanageable. It's not so much “Who will have me as a friend,” it's “Who do I love and admire? Who do I want to be a wonderful friend to? Who do I want to bear witness to and watch them grow and achieve their dreams, and be a part of that?”

I think people go into books about friendship thinking: “How do I get the friends I want?” But I'm hoping that people finish this book asking instead, “How can I be a great friend to these people that I cherish and treasure?” It feels so good to be a part of other people's story.

-Anna Goldfarb

Some links:

Modern Friendship

Anna's website

Anna on IG

Anna's *excellent* Substack Friendship Explained with Anna Goldfarb

Anna in the NYT

Listen to Anna on the WANTcast!

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