TTonight Rachel, Elvira and I will meet for dinner. A year ago, none of us knew that others existed. Six months ago, Rachel and Elvira were strangers until I introduced them. But now here we are, as close friends as can be after such a short time.
If you've ever consumed any form of media, you'd be forgiven for thinking that life after 35 is a burning wasteland of unimaginable horrors: the onset of incessant back pain, an interest in loading the dishwasher, the discovery that you're unsuited to entire industries touted as “a young man's game”, and a seemingly inability to make friends.
“As you get older, it becomes harder to make friends,” as the saying goes, and indeed, 69% of people in US survey The Talker Research authors agree that making close friends becomes more difficult as you age. Research shows that this requires about 200 hours contacts to form close friendships, and according to psychotherapist Katie Gillis, such dedicated time evaporates in adulthood. “Unlike childhood, when free time is plentiful and social interactions are woven into the fabric of daily life,” she writes, “adults often have to actively carve out time for social activities among their busy schedules.” Add to this the fact that we live in an era of increasing fragmentation and in an increasingly globalized world. loneliness epidemicand it seems that we are doomed.
Or not necessarily. I'm living proof that making friends doesn't have to be limited to the school playground, freshers' week or first job. Over the past year, I have slowly gathered a small network of new people in whose presence I feel fulfilled.
I was about 30 and was not ready for drastic changes in my social life. My social diary had gaping holes the size of weekends, where at one point in my 20s it was filled to the brim with after-work drinks, brunches, lunches, birthday parties, and parties for no reason other than Saturday (or Friday, or Thursday, or Wednesday…).
The same friends who once stood on pub stools and sang at 2am suddenly and in quick succession moved to the suburbs (and other countries), got married and had children. But all of us—newlyweds and singles—persistently held onto the delusion that nothing would change in our friendship.
I, belonging to the second camp, realized that my path in life was quickly diverging from the path of my closest and dearest. Those who started families were now less available and less prone to spontaneity. I understood this and was happy for them in their new lives and roles. But emotionally it felt like a loss. I missed not only their physical presence – I didn't necessarily need us all back together screaming in pubs every weekend – but our connection as a whole. Even talking on the phone fell into the background; we spent days, sometimes weeks, circling each other's calendars like confused birds, unable to find time to simply talk.
Then came the pain of seeing friends start lives that I couldn't relate to, but society told me I was supposed to live. It took me years to discover women's expectations of marriage and motherhood, they were so intertwined in my being. At the same time, I felt like an anomaly—sometimes a failure—among the trusted friends with whom I had once shared so much.
The desire to fit in is a basic human instinct. And while I loved these friends very much and continued to spend time with them, I also knew that I needed to meet people living the same life as me.
A friend abroad extolled the virtues of Bumble BFF, the platonic version of the popular dating app. This time you're not looking through a catalog of faces to see which ones you find attractive, but instead trying to determine which face suggests friendship material. In a dating culture already skewed by swipe-based judgments, it was wrong—almost antithetical to my feminist values—to be a woman exploring other women in this way. But the aforementioned friend insisted that Bumble BFF give her a new friendship circle, so I reluctantly swiped.
Fun fact: Whether you're dating friends or lovers, you're never immune to feelings of rejection and self-doubt. In fact, being ghosted by a potential new buddy is probably even worse. I can accept that someone doesn't like me, but what is less pleasant is that someone finds me completely unfriendly. One woman I exchanged a few light-hearted messages with disappeared from the app two hours before we met.
But fortunately, there were more tangible connections than ghosts. Rachel and I were each other's first friends. We met in a cafe and connected our parallel childhoods spent in swimming training. There was some awkwardness; we both admitted that the very nature of what we were doing seemed strange. Besides, we are completely different people: she is a scientist and an avid Spurs fan; I'm a creative person who doesn't even really know what Spurs are. And yet somehow it works. Almost a year later, we swam together, ate together, hung out with her dad, and signed up for swim meets together.
I later succumbed to aggressive Instagram marketing and signed up for Timeleft, an app that invites you to have lunch with six strangers. Through it, you'll be asked to take a personality test, which is apparently used to match you with six like-minded future friends. You will then be informed where and when you need to be for dinner. Once again, the unnaturalness of the situation made me slightly uneasy. We were one of several groups of strangers spread out throughout the restaurant, relying on an algorithm to make new friends – it was like an episode of Black Mirror.
But it was nice to know that these six strangers were in it for the same reasons. Most of them were experiencing a time in their lives when the trajectories of old friendships changed course and the desire to find new soul mates emerged. Elvira turned out to be one of these kindred spirits. Sitting across from me, she was the quietest of the group except for one, and at first I thought we had nothing in common. Then she made a dry, cutting remark under her breath, smiling wryly at me, and at that moment I realized that we had the same sense of humor. This was enough to keep us in touch and hang out periodically for the next 11 months. During this time, I introduced her to another friend with whom she developed her own friendship, and now the three of us meet for dinner and join each other's social events.
Then there were semi-casual friendships (albeit with a gentle helping hand). When I moved earlier this year, I turned to SpareRoom – a home-sharing platform – to help me find a new place to live. I answered Abi's ad and after she showed me her lovely apartment we sat and chatted on the sofa. We hit it off instantly, and although I didn't become her lodger, I became her friend instead. After watching, I asked her if she wanted to meet for drinks and she agreed. Several dinners, funny and awkward stories exchanged, and a Fleetwood Mac tribute night later, I consider her a good friend in my new city.
Not all of my new friends are app-based; I can happily confirm that in 2025 it is still possible to make connections “in real life.” In July, when Cribs played On the Beach festival in Brighton, I organically and unintentionally met Loveday. Ticketless locals watched and danced on the side of the road. I, alone and on my way home, may not have had the courage to join them, but my love for early 2000s indie pop rock runs strong. As did the man next to me who knew every word. His girlfriend, who wasn't such a mega-fan, struck up a conversation and at the end of the show we were chatting like old friends in the local pub. Four months have passed and I accompany Loveday on weekend walks in the South Downs, where we put the world to rights.
Elsewhere, I found promising connections at coworking spaces, gym classes, monthly supper clubs, and even local coffee shops. And these connections weren't just about women, although as a straight woman, I tend to seek out new female friendships to avoid getting into murky waters or feeling like it's too much like dating—which wasn't the goal.
At times I couldn't believe my luck; everything seemed much simpler than I had imagined. Much easier than research suggests. It's true that I've always been an extrovert and not particularly shy about meeting new people, and I know this can give me a boost in the friend-making department. But I think there's more to it than just extroversion.
Spiritual leaders and Instagram memes preach refrains such as “what you put in comes back,” “like attracts like,” and the importance of “loving yourself before you can love another.” All concepts I've rolled my eyes at in the past. However, I am pretty sure that this friendship could not have materialized 18 months ago because I was going through a difficult period in my life. But at some point I found a measure of peace and discovered that happiness is a feedback loop: the happier I felt, the more interesting the world became – and as the world became more interesting, I became happier and, apparently, more interesting to others.
Statistics may indicate that as you age, it becomes increasingly difficult to make friends. But they also instill defeatist beliefs about our role in the world. Age doesn't stop you from making friends—fear, anxiety, and sadness do. I believe that once you take the time to work through difficult emotions, you will find that there are a lot of fantastic people out there willing to be your friends.
