You don't even need to me approaching middle age. I'm in my 20s and moved halfway across the country recently, and am continually amazed at how hard it is to make good friends of the same gender. Given all the websites/events/groups dedicated to meeting people to date I've found it far easier than ever to get dates, but more difficult to make friends. It's a weird reversal. There's probably an opportunity for a little business there, but I haven't quite worked out how it would work.
Any chance you're in the Bay Area? I just moved out here from Philadelphia and am stuck in the exact same situation. Either way, feel free to shoot me an email (in my profile).
I've found it far easier than ever to get dates, but more difficult to make friends
That's interesting and kind of profound.
I guess when you're arranging dates on match.com, the intention is clear. You're out to meet someone for a relationship. It's the goal.
A meetup to discuss Ruby on Rails or something is all about the subject of the meetup. Most are there just to talk about Rails and get help with a bug, not to make close friends.
How would you find activities where the specific goal is for people new to an area to make friends, or maybe for people who aren't new to an area but they want to make friends?
There's probably an opportunity for a little business there,
There has to be someone already doing this... maybe?
> A meetup to discuss Ruby on Rails or something is all about the subject of the meetup. Most are there just to talk about Rails and get help with a bug, not to make close friends.
You can sometimes make friends in such settings if they're regular enough, informal enough, and smallish groups. I initially met one current friend via the SF Wikipedia meetups, for example. But they have a somewhat deliberate "social outing" tone, where it's expected some Wikipedia business will be discussed, but not in any organized way.
I've found it far easier than ever to get dates, but more difficult to make friends
People have ridiculously high standards for friendships than dates. This sounds weird, even writing it, but I've found it to be true again and again. Many many people would have no problems dating absolute jerks, but wouldn't hang out for 15 minutes with a genuinely nice person (of the same gender). May be people are just desperate to hang out with people of opposite gender? I dunno.
There's probably an opportunity for a little business there,
I doubt that. How could you do this as a business? Arrange volunteer activities/"friend dates"/hang-outs with the primary aim of making friends? Make a website like lookingforfriends.com (just made up the name)? Most people just can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes getting to know another person, unless there is something in it for them (that is why it is easier to get dates, than friends). It just boils down to, people are just plain selfish, at least most of them.
I'm older now and I have been going through the same thing.
I made a lot of lifelong friends when I was in the East Coast. When I was in my late 20s, I decided to move out West. My friends were my support system back in the East Coast and now I don't have them.
Starting over when you're older is hard. Most people my age have established their own circle of friends. It feels out-of-place trying to join an existing circle.
There's another factor. In my observation, people on the east coast make truer and deeper friendships than people out west. I'm a lifelong westerner and when I first started spending time in the east I felt, in this respect, like I had come home for the first time. People I met (socially, not on the street) would actually do things like make eye contact, listen to what each other said, and respond to it. They were noticeably more contactful.
On the west coast, things don't work that way. People seem nicer on the surface but it's a cool sunniness. They don't really mean the friendly things they say and they shy away from deeper connection. It's an alone-together vibe. The social ecosystem is less hospitable to bonding.
That may be less a West Coast / East Coast thing and more a California thing in particular. I say that because my family hosted a couple of exchange students from France who were really struck by the veneer of friendliness here, and the very real distance that people maintained beneath it.
Later, when I went to France, I found that there was an initial aloofness that I mistook for vague dislike. But after a while, this went away and what I found instead was a much more substantial and very real affinity.
I'm not sure how general my experience is (Santa Cruz is the only place I've lived in California, and it's a bit odd). But I tend to think of it as being about compartmentalization more than veneers. There are a reasonable number of people I'd chat with semi-regularly because we were both regulars at the same coffee shop, for example, but we didn't regularly socialize outside that setting. It wasn't superficial interaction in the sense of chatting just to keep up appearances or be polite or something. There is also some of that that goes on, but the people I chatted with regularly were because I actually enjoyed our conversations, and found them personally and/or intellectually fulfilling. I might even look forward to them, or visit a particular coffee shop more often if there was someone I found particularly interesting who frequented it. But I was fine leaving them at that; coffee-shop conversation partners who occupied a certain niche in my life, which didn't necessarily need to get all mixed up in other niches (and vice versa).
Apologies, accidentally down voted you on my phone..
Anyway, having grown up on the east coast then spending time both in Seattle and back east off and on, I can vouch for the Seattle freeze being rather real.
And to a certain extent I actually find myself liking it. Moving around too much makes forming deeper relationships risky, they end up being more baggage. I see the freeze as a sort of defensive mechanism against that.
It might be a San Francisco thing. I moved to California (Los Angeles) when I was young, and recently moved to the East Coast (New York). I don't have many friends back home, but we(~6) keep up with each other (especially back home) on all sorts of events/happenings. I actually had problems when I first moved that while I was sincere about being friends, people (on the east coast) did not believe I was serious.
Or maybe my circle of friends are not the norm in Cali.
Damn, I missed my chance to add that this distinction was captured perfectly by the late great John Callahan in his cartoon "The Difference Between LA and NY":
1) you meet a lot of people while traveling (quantity)
2) you and them are out of context (and out of existing social circles)
3) all are a little bit more relaxed
4) you start pretty fast talking about things that are interesting without (social circle / insider) background information - you can filter them for quality (if they are interesting enough for do friendship follow ups)
from the last 5 years about 80% of the new people i now call friends i met during traveling
Traveling is impractical for many people especially when they have wife and kids, and even if they did, it might be hard to have interactions with people like you mention when you're with family. A simpler step would be joining a gym, or a yoga class or any other physical activity in a group setting.
The issue with this, and I've moved around like a gypsy, is that while traveling, your new friends are either traveling too or you are meeting them where they live. I've made great friends in my travels and through moving a lot but they are only great when they are with me. After they move or I move it becomes "that time in our lives". There are so many variables for friendship that it really is amazing when things fall into place with any one person.
That's the premise of Grubwithus - connecting people over meals so you can get to know new people in a casual environment where the focus isn't an activity where conversation is sort of restricted to that event (like most Meetups). Have you tried one out?
Ah, that looks very interesting. The ones currently closest to me seem about an hour's drive away in LA, but I'll keep an eye on it.
And yeah, that's the thing I've run into with Meetups. Great place to find a particular activity, harder to find people looking to meet people beyond just the activity.
you should make dates with prospective friends. we fall in love a little with guy friends, so instead of the outcome being 'let's explore a romantic chemistry' it is 'let's explore a friendship chemistry', but the mechanics are the same: one on one meetup with a stranger.
There has got to be a writing style rule somewhere out there that says you should not capitalize the entirety of a word at the beginning of an article if doing so forms a common acronym. It took me almost a solid minute to make sense of that first sentence.
This is much better than the average lifestyle piece, or at least I guess it is. I couldn't read it - it's too painfully accurate. I'm very sad that our society works this way.
Sorry, I don't agree with the premise of this piece. I'm finding it easier to make connections and friends since I've left school and the place I grew up. Are these BFF-type connections? Not yet since they haven't had the time to really flourish. But with time, I anticipate they will since we share common goals & interests. When you're in your teens/early 20's, you're at the mercy of a small pool of individuals (classmates, neighbors, people in town) that you may have absolutely nothing in common with other than sharing the same space or a passing interest in the same music, tv show etc. These passing commonalities aren't indicative of a friendship that will last.
Maybe I've just always been pickier about who I've associated with. I don't know.
I also think it's got the vibe of one of those pieces that make you feel guilty for getting older, i.e. the nonsense of entrepreneurial "peak ages"
There's definitely an inverse effect in the "when you grow up, move out, and search around on the Internet, you'll find Your People" phenomenon. Not sure that's exactly what you're referring to, so maybe there's a third one.
Do note: the article provides several anecdotes to your one. :)
> Thayer Prime, a 32-year-old strategy consultant who lives in London, has even developed a playful 100-point scale (100 being “best friend forever”). In her mind, she starts to dock new friend candidates as they begin to display annoying or disloyal behavior. Nine times out of 10, she said, her new friends end up from 30 to 60, or little more than an acquaintance.
Whoa. I would never want to be acquaintances with this person.
And yet that's not too far off from what I - and I think most people - are doing. Sure, I don't have a scale. But I'm sizing people up. If I had that cynical, narrow-minded approach back in high school, I don't think I'd have the life-long friends I have now. I'm working on shutting that inner voice up, but I think it's something that slowly creeps in over time.
But that's just part of the problem - the other is that, especially with big moves, there's no obvious support structure for making new friends. Having moved across the country a few months ago, I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any idea HNers?
"Whoa. I would never want to be acquaintances with this person."
Thinking of specific numbers is very cynical indeed, but I agree with the point made though.
For example, there's a former colleague I've had a few lunches with, every 3-6 months or so, since the startup we were working at folded. We clicked well when working together and we enjoyed talking about ideas. However, during the past few lunches, I've been more and more annoyed at the fact that he's been mostly interested in talking about his own stuff, not caring at all about mine. (granted, I've wondered if I could be just like him, since I want to talk about my stuff… :)) Overtime, I realized that I won't be seeking lunches with him anymore.
So unconsciously, every bad interaction kind of knocked some points off.
Friendship is really like any kind of relationship: you're expected to give and to receive. If it goes only one way, it will eventually stop going any way at all.
>Friendship is really like any kind of relationship: you're expected to give and to receive. If it goes only one way, it will eventually stop going any way at all.
When I read this, I honestly wasn't taken aback by it. Rather, it seemed to me a pragmatic realization that often, our friendships are self-selecting. If someone doesn't call you back, you naturally won't get closer to them. If someone does call you back, you probably will naturally get closer.
> Having moved across the country a few months ago, I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any idea HNers?
Take up a hobby, more or less unrelated to what you do for a living. Maybe it's rowing or rock climbing or fencing or writing. Find something you think you'll enjoy that draws in people from all walks of life.
I think it's especially important now, when the only thing in your life is your work, to avoid trying to make friends there. In my mind deep friendships start with sharing personal things, which starts from sharing everyday things. Someone you're around all the time will share just enough experiences that you won't be able to talk long enough to open up.
I have been thinking about this as well. I often wonder that it is not only my friends that I got pickier, as the article suggests, but I also changed, became more withdrawn, more introverted, and thus maybe less fun to be around.
Then of course there is the problem of time. That coupled with priorities, make it very hard to balance friends with family with career. After having children, I just want to spend more time with them than making friends, even though I might say that "yes, having more and better friends would be nice" my daily actions and attitudes probably don't reflect that.
I have also realized that being friends with co-workers doesn't work. They switch jobs or there is often competition for the same bonus pool, same cool projects and this turns things sour
I'm 21 and having just moved across the country for a job this isn't resonating with my life so much, since I already had a lot of friends where I am. But looking back, it's pretty clear that 90% of my parents' good friends came from two categories: people they'd known since college, and parents of me or my sisters' friends.
I think the expected reaction to this is to be afraid of it, especially given I don't make friends very easily my best friends today are all people I've known since elementary school, and already I'm only in contact with a handful of people from college. But somehow I find it reassuring, my takeaway is that if I work at it I can stay good friends with all of these people, and maybe that'll be enough. Plus someday I'll have kids and hopefully their friends will have nice parents, I know my parents are as good friends with my friends' parents as I am with them (wow that's a badly written sentence!).
I hadn't really ever given this much thought, but now if I categorize the overwhelming majority of my friends, they fall into the following buckets:
High-School Friends (who I still stay in touch with, although only peripherally, as I don't still live where I grew up)
College Friends (which includes a subset of High School friends, who I do a better job of staying in touch with, but who also mostly live back where I went to school)
Work Friends (the overwhelming majority of my friends are people I've worked with at one time or another. Reservations about mixing work with pleasure aside, people in my line of work tend to have a lot in common)
Photography School Friends (I suppose similar to college, but they are more recent, and local. This group is unusual in that the entire class ended up becoming really really close)
For whatever reason, I've never had trouble meeting people. What has proven to be a lot of work is actually committing to spending time with people (as my natural state is to never want to leave the house under any circumstances).
I've found online presence exacerbates that, as it's easy for me to convince myself that I'm being social merely by responding to people's Facebook posts (which doesn't really cut it).
One part is actually meeting people with whom you click. Unless you go to a lot of meetups and similar events, overall, you won't be meeting that many new people besides co-workers. And meetups tend to have a theme other than just having fun, whereas that's what most college activities are about. So you meet people in a serious context, and you need to bring the fun with you.*
So, you first need to come across someone with whom you click, and then you have to fuel that relationship. What's difficult there is that you need time. Once married with children, grabbing a beer after work is not as simple. You also have that awkwardness as pictured in "I love you, man" (and I believe a Louis CK sketch in his TV show): you have to acknowledge pretty fast that there's something going on and that you feel you could indeed become friends! It's one meetup, you're awkward now with that guy who seems cool, or you might never see him again.
But as you grow older, you also lose a lot of that casualness that you had before: you don't just invite them over after work to play video games. Now that you're a "grown-up", it's "a dinner". And since you're a grown-up, your home has better be somewhat clean, and you can't just serve pizza. What was a spontaneous interaction before is now a whole event that needs planning, some cleaning, some cooking, etc. (until of course, you become real friends) So these happen less, and friendships can be like making mayonnaise: if you don't make it go right now, you'll never make it go at all.
* I'm not saying meetups are no fun, just that it's not the end-game for everyone. Some people are there only for "professional" reasons and you need to figure out what people are looking for.
I agree with your description with how a lot of people feel, myself included, especially the part about meetups. However, 'you' don't have put up with grownupness and dinners and clean houses and fancy meals if you don't want to. If you like the grownupness then by all means get into it, but you make it sound like it is a required pain ... If you don't like it find friends that also don't like it.
I think the issue is that before you know enough about the other person you have a lot more chance to ruin the friendship with the cheap meal in front of the TV than the well planned and prepared one.
This is an interesting point, but I wonder if it is an opportunity. If everyone expects a college-style beer-and-pizza party, why not? Maybe something you can do with some existing friends first, and then start inviting new people over? Something like "Hey there's this crazy thing some of my friends and I do. Want to come to the next one?"
> But as you grow older, you also lose a lot of that casualness that you had before: you don't just invite them over after work to play video games. Now that you're a "grown-up", it's "a dinner". And since you're a grown-up, your home has better be somewhat clean, and you can't just serve pizza. What was a spontaneous interaction before is now a whole event that needs planning, some cleaning, some cooking, etc. (until of course, you become real friends) So these happen less, and friendships can be like making mayonnaise: if you don't make it go right now, you'll never make it go at all.
That is so frustrating to me. I don't really want a Do when I get together with people, I just want to kick back.
Aren't quiet pubs/bars for that? Or say you've had a busy week but how about takeaway and some trashy TV in the background? Been meaning to try some local restaurant, you guys want to see if it's any good?
I find the value of a good pub is vastly underestimated these days. I suspect a combination of American college drinking culture and abstinence style drinking education in public schools ("you can have more fun without drinking!") are to blame.
Pubs are too damn loud. That's my problem with them. There's very few quiet places to have a drink. Many of the ones that do exist are upper class targeted.
In the US try the local microbrewery(s) for relief from a loud bar/pub. Unofrtunately, in the bay Area these may be upper class targeted, but in other areas you get a great mix of townies and beer fans.
Seriously.. this has always been my problem. Friends would always say "let's go to the bar!". Ok, we go the bar, sit down at a table, and proceed to shout at the top of our lungs at each other because the music is so loud. I understand about 10% of what people around me are saying. So I give up and just drink, and feel isolated. And I get made fun of for wanting the group to sit outside or somewhere more quiet so we can actually talk. I probably just had shitty friends.
Go to a different pub. There's always that slightly dorkier place that you can adopt which doesn't have live bands every Friday and get overrun with the in-crowd. Might be a bit tragic, but who cares.
Perhaps I'm odd, but I like hanging with friends at homes - its where we live. It's a lower energy drain for me than to go to a restaurant. Plus, homes stock games, music, wifi, etc, it's set up by one party or the other for their particular comfort. A restaurant doesn't really target specifics, and certainly won't have our favorite (niche) board games.
Going out also costs a chunk of change, and snarfing a grocery pizza will cost a lot less. :-)
Sorry, I thought that if you wanted to kick back and relax, you also didn't want to clean up the house and so on (but that might've been the commenter above you). OK, so you can just invite people around for takeaway ("had a busy week; you guys OK if we go with takeaway?") removing the expectation of three courses with matched wine. Easy.
Another option to frame it casually is say "X and I were going to get Thai and play some Fluxx. Seriously, nothing elaborate. You're welcome to join us if you want?"
This adds something to http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html. The dying would like to not just have kept in touch with friends, but also to have made more of them. PG's edit captures the generalization, but I hadn't noticed that before.
The why is so much more interesting. Part of it is a product of topology, visualize this pattern: home, car, work, car, home. There's not a lot of surface area in there to meet someone. This is a product of America's lack of streets, we have roads not streets. Roads are for cars, streets are for people. Some good reading on this subject is, "The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community", and of course "Streets for People, A Primer for Americans".
I've found that joining clubs (either informal, like the climbing club I was a member of) or formal (like the Odd Fellows or Masons or Kiwanis) is a great way to meet friends. You still have to deal with the time issues, but at least you don't have tensions of work--and as a plus you get to meet people with different types of employment and age.
However, the main issue is that when you are in college and your early 20s, you tend have gobs of time to make friends--once you hit a certain age (or marital status or child status) other activities come first. Might as well celebrate the closeness with your family or your work achievements as kvetch about the difficulty of making friends.
I knew a guy who made a boatload of money off of the dotcom bubble. He kept doubling down and doubling down, then at right about the peak he told himself "I have as much money as I'll ever need if I cash out now. There's no reason to take any more risks." In other words, he timed it perfectly (based on his own situation - he wasn't genius and he would freely admit that)
So here he was, a multimillionaire who'd spent the last five years or so working and playing the market to the exclusion of everything else. He was one of those people who had unconsciously believed if he just had enough money he could find a way to be happy. When he finally had the money he realized relationships with other people are what make you happy. But at that point he didn't have any friends and didn't know how to make them.
He was, without a doubt, the most miserable guy I've ever met. He was always willing to buy a round or lend people money. He'd go to Vegas and pay for five or six people to go with him. So there were always people around. There were always women willing to sleep with him. But they were there for the money and he couldn't delude himself into thinking otherwise. The money actually added to the problem, because it meant even when he wasn't paying, people had a motive to hang around. So he became cynical and a bit paranoid.
Eventually he got into drugs and ended up eating a whole bottle of pills. I've always wondered if any of those hangers-on went to the funeral.
Obviously there are people who can't do this (Zuckerburg, and plenty of much smaller examples too) but I don't see why, if you have the choice, you'd let people know how rich you are. Of course, unless you live the life of someone much poorer people can always guess ("hey, nice house you've got there..."), but people who talk about how rich they are, or show off with the money... just seems stupid to me.
He didn't realize it would be a problem in the beginning. After that I think he was just afraid to move away from the people he knew.
I've thought a lot about what I would do in that position, and came to the same conclusion you did. The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing.
Of course, it's easy to decide how other people can fix their lives :)
"The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing."
The fact that the above sentence says "live simply" and "take up a hobby" seems to contradict the notion that he should try to take up with people who are equal in wealth which was the issue being discussed.
I said
"live among people"
which is not the same as
"move far away"
and
"live simply"
is not the same as
"make friends with people in the same income bracket or assets or higher"
It's the taking up that's being done on an equal footing (i.e. the friendships are free from the wealth-disparity baggage); it's not that the people have the same amount of wealth.
That's a possibility too. I was thinking it would be more difficult, since he might have run into the whole new rich/old rich thing. He would have been perfectly happy living in a suburban tract home, and that's the type of person he grew up with, so I was thinking that would be the easiest.
Besides, you have fewer choices if your pool of potential friends is rich people.
But they don't all have to be real friends. The interesting thing about Dunbar's number is that it also suggests that people strive to make these 150 relationships even when there are not enough people around (i.e. that's why some people care for celebrities and forge online relationships when real life friends are not enough)
From zero to one is a quantum leap - you go from "alone, no one to talk to" to "can talk honestly and frankly with someone". That's the biggest step. Beyond that, of course it enriches your life, but the first friend is the most important.
Dunbar's number isn't that simple. It's more like you have an upper limit of 150 person-sized points. You can allocate 50 to one person and only have 100 leftover for more casual acquaintances, for instance.
Dunbar's number refers to group sizes, not friend counts.
Not that I've ever had much money, but let me provide some thinking of why this is the case.
When you have a lot of money, you are used to getting anything you want, since everything has a price. Want a hotel room overlooking Times Square for NYE? Sure, maybe it'll cost you $25K, but you can probably get it (I'm just guessing here). Want Madonna to come sing at your barbecue? Sure, that'll be a million bucks (plus incidentals).
So when a rich guy is without friends, his first reaction is "how much will it cost?". The moment he flashes his money, all sorts of "friends" come out of the woodwork, happy to be his chum. So, in the short term it looks like it's working. But these aren't friendships; these are hired companions. Just because you can hire a hooker to have sex with you doesn't make her your girlfriend.
One only has to look at the myriad NBA/NFL players out there who, despite having earned 100s of millions of dollars over their lifetimes, end up broke shortly after retiring (and this does not include child support). It's mainly because their wealth attracted the leeches who sucked them dry.
"So there were always people around. There were always women willing to sleep with him. But they were there for the money and he couldn't delude himself into thinking otherwise."
For some reason people seem to think that someone wanting to be around because of a person's fame or money is less pure than other reasons because it's not real.
Generally when people want to be around someone it's because they give them something the other person needs. It could be humour it could be looks, it could be prestige, it could be they went to a college you admire, it could be because they are in awe of the person, or their profession, or their power. There is always a reason that a person is attractive to others. Money is certainly one of those things. Sometimes it's because they are angling to gain something from the person and sometimes it's just the halo that makes the person more attractive or respect for what they have done.
I understand the whole idea of people who are successes attracting people and not knowing of their motives. But the fact that someone liked you "way back" when you were nobody doesn't mean their current attraction is entirely pure either once you gain something else that is of benefit to them.
I've read these stories of guys who are big successes and manage to still play ball with the same guys from high school who are "regular" guys. Do you think the successful person's status has nothing to do with the fact that the high school friends all manage to want to get together and maintain ties? I think it does. For one thing it gives them something to talk about with others (say at the office) that elevates them. "Oh, yeah, I played soft ball with my friend from high school Robert DeNiro this weekend and was at his house, anyway..."
It would be impossible to have a meaningful friendship on such grounds. That is not friendship it's a trade between "fame/money" and "rich friend". It's not just "less pure", it's insane and wrong.
It's entirely possible to be true friends with people of vastly different status. People have a great instinct for real friends when they see one. The problem with rich/famous people is that their lifestyle changes vastly since they can afford not to work, they live in more isolated neighborhoods and it becomes increasingly rare to bump onto people with similar goals in life.
If you're super rich you can work your way through the social elite, but if you're averagely rich this doesn't seem to be an option.
For most of the people I know, they aren't looking for anything besides connection to other people. They're complete & whole people on their own, they don't need anything else. They don't hang around their friends because they're looking for a halo of success. They don't do it for prestige or looks or humor. They just do it because they like company.
It's really a difference in worldview. For some people, things come first in their life, and they surround themselves with people who will help them achieve those things, or ones who have already achieved them so they can bask in their glow. For others, people come first in their life, and they surround themselves with things that will help them relate to the people they care about.
I've been on both sides of the fence, and I can tell you, I have felt miserable every time I tried convincing myself that success was all that mattered. I'm trying to find my way back to a place now where the people matter more than the accolades - it's not all that easy, because it really is a worldview, and once you've optimized your life for success, it's pretty hard to un-optimize it and build relationships. But I can tell you that my friends don't care if you're a hot-shot developer for Google or a yoga instructor or a public-policy consultant or an urban planner. People are people, they're complex, and they're a lot more than a laundry list of characteristics you might like to have.
I don't see this as an either/ or thing, aiming for success is fine, so is building connections and relationships on the way. I suspect that your misery had little to do with what you attributed it to, but far more to do with the side effects of the misery.
>For some reason people seem to think that someone wanting to be around because of a person's fame or money is less pure than other reasons because it's not real.
There's a big difference between a person's intrinsic properties and his money. You like your friends; you like the rich guy's money.
And when you're around someone for his money you're playing a part. It's a job. You're not going to tell him what you really think about anything. That's pathological.
"You like your friends; you like the rich guy's money."
Oh?
So you think that there aren't a large number of rich people that are interesting and have achieved something which is the reason they are rich? And it would be great to spend some time with them?
Steve Jobs was rich and had power and fame. So the only reason anyone would want to be around Steve is because of the money, the power and the fame? Or Larry Ellison? Or Warren Buffet? Or even Paul Graham? He's doing ok and I'm sure he would be interesting to be around even for people who have no interest in the startup scene and nothing to gain by knowing Paul.
But even if someone was born into money for that matter then as a result of having money they also could be interesting and nice to be around for exactly that reason. Or at least entertaining (the Kennedy's come to mind..)
the only reason anyone would want to be around Steve is because of the money, the power and the fame?
You completely miss the point- it isn't that nobody could like Steve as a person. It's that, how can Steve tell who likes Steve and who just likes Steve's money?
It's easier to demonstrate a counterfactual than to prove the theorem. Therefore the burden of proof should be on you to demonstrate the counterfactual.
Because it is during those periods when you need your friends the most and when it is most inconvenient/difficult for fake friends to come to your aid. It is naturally the most effective way to separate the wheat from the chaff, even though it may not be a nice process.
You were talking about "wanting to be around because of a person's fame or money" being just another reason to be around. The "You like your friends; you like the rich guy's money" is just a way of restating your apparent original claim.
So coming back and saying, well, Steve Jobs is interesting, is missing by a mile what you're responding to.
Here's the thing though.... If there was more of a gift economy in these cases, the intrinsic properties would be something like generosity, fairness, and honor. You have a lot of money and have a reputation for these things, who is to say that isn't more real?
The problem though is form. I am generous with my good fortune to you. What are you doing for me in return? It used to be that a gift demanded reciprocity (as would injury or misbehavior), and to be forgiven for not doing so was a bad thing and an insult to one's honor. Then Christianity came and we all got screwed over by this obligation to forgive.
Interestingly we know from anthropology that money came about as a way to quantify debt, not the other way around. So perhaps this is only less real today because of how we account for our possessions and how we relate to our money, not because of any intrinsic issue with a relationship based on disparity of this sort.
Interestingly Cicero brings up a similar point in his work on friendship. At a time where Roman society was very stratified and friendships were supposed to be between economic equals, he suggested that the best friendships would be made with people below one's social status, for the specific reason that they would be more loyal. Friendships in Rome were all about a gift economy (as they still are in many parts of the world today. I have a friend who studied with Edgar Polome for his PhD and said Polome used to use India as an example if this. He'd get a gift-- maybe a new wallet or something-- from someone one year and a request for help getting a job or a car or something else a few years later. And when he'd turn them down they'd be unhappy because it was not fulfilling his obligation for having accepted the gift. This is true all over Asia as my wife always reminds me never to accept a gift from someone unless I know what they want in return.)
I think the examples you mention would fall into the sphere of "acquaintances" or "family friends" or "connections" or "not enemies" today (in the business or strategic sense). We are talking about actual close friends, comrades, (BFFs if u want) here.
Case in point, read the Old English poem "The Wanderer" (ideally in Old English but if necessary in translation) and remember that the relationship the narrator is lamenting is this sort of relationship.
The point is that gifts tie us together. As one person said, "obligations unite us, debts drive us apart." The idea that you give money and there is some sort of a moral obligation to reciprocate in some way (but not a quantified debt) creates the bond.
The way gift economies work is that you give gifts out and therefore obtain communal esteem, and people reciprocate to get that esteem by giving you gifts.
Making the claim it's better in Old English is just a transparent way of bragging you know Old English. And it's subjective how best to enjoy something. It's like telling someone they need an ice cube in their scotch.
Irrelevant and pedantic point here, but I would suggest it's more like telling someone they need to not have an ice cube in their scotch, very few scotch snobs would argue pro-ice :)
Actually despite being a scotch snob who spends a lot of his money on really nice bottles... I do enjoy it chilled sometimes (though a friend got me "whiskey stones" for Christmas, so I use them instead of ice!) I'm a snob to what I consider bad whiskey, not to what might be considered a bad whiskey drinker :)
The issue is that in translation, something is always lost. There are a few phrases[1] in the poem that are darned hard to translate adequately although knowing Old English well enough to read the poem is not a guarantee by itself of getting more out of it than in Modern English.
In general, if you can, reading a work in the language it was composed in is better than reading it in translation. It is generally hard to disagree with that.
The fact is that translation into contemporary English from Old English and Old Norse is deceptively difficult.
[1] wyrd bið ful aræd is probably the best example. It's usually translated as "Fate is wholely inexorable" which is not a good translation. "The turn of events is fully complete" is better, as would be "My fate has now been decreed" depending on how you want to look at wyrd (fate, but literally "that which has turned" and often personified as a woman) and araed (decreed, established, spoken).
Edit Changed the above OE to proper characters, and adding this:
While I am bragging, as you put it, about my understanding of languages I will point out that the structure there of wyrd becoming established through the spoken word is also found in parallel Old Norse traditions, where we have the description of the Norns in Voluspa ending with:
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
This is again difficult to translate because of the variety of things lög could mean. "They laid laws" or They laid layers" or "They allotted lots" are all viable translations. My overall translation would be:
This is reasonably true. But there is also some likelihood that the hospitality and guest-right system was not only very old (since it is found across many other Indo-European branches as well) and part of this. Isn't there an episode in one of Homer's poems or something (I don't have my library with me in Indonesia :-( ) where two people are fighting on the battlefield and discover that one of their ancestors gave hospitality to the ancestor of the other and so they have to quit fighting?
Oh yes. Hospitality is the central theme of Genesis 19, for instance, which definitely predates The Wanderer. I feel a little bad now, because I can't provide you with a solid set of sources, but every culture all the way back to the earliest stories we have will give references to the obligation of a host, the duties of a guest, and how gift-giving plays into that. The whole point of the Trojan War wasn't precisely that property had been stolen, but more importantly that it had been done by a guest to his host. (As modern readers, we recognize a breach of private property more clearly than we recognize a breach of hospitality.)
It's the earliest form of debt-as-community-glue, really. It only survives today in the habit of bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, and in the handshake. We mostly rely on codified laws of hospitality instead (which govern restaurants and hotels).
I have a couple of wealthier friends and one that is getting wealthier by the day.
The way I solved this problem between us is that I refuse to accept "mercy" gifts. I will accept an earnest gift when It is presented out of kindness. Also I demand that our financials be thoroughly transparent with me covering my fair share.
It works exceptionally well, allowing for our friendship to develop at its own and sincere pace. Besides, being around him and having such a friend/mentor is a gift that keeps on giving, more than a paid this or that ever could.
They're lucky to have you as a friend. But the friendship started before they became wealthy, right? That way they'll never have to wonder if you're working some kind of long angle.
Regarding the long angle, of course I am working the long angle. As I said, these people help me move along, just not in a way where I would be a mere client.
If I am not interested in having fish caught for me - that doesn't mean I am not interested in learning everything I can about fishing.
The "Rich guy not made happy by wealth after all" story is so old that I am surprised anyone is still surprised by it. Every other novel they made me read in middle/high school had this as its message. I am very reluctant to use the term "smart" for anyone that runs into this problem.
What struck me about the experience wasn't the "Rich guy not made happy by wealth after all" part, but that he was so desperate for friends and just couldn't make them. That's why I thought it was relevant to the topic.
Ya allah! And the solution was so simple, too: invest his millions and live off the interest/dividends, which would be a modest income. A more modest income would have kept gold-diggers away, and he would have figured out that while the security of a personal trust fund is nice to have, you don't need millions to make friends.
something hinted at but not made explicit is the relentless filling of your calendar as you get older. it's simply harder than ever to get together with people on short notice, which is one of the major ways of nurturing nascent friendships.
I agree, and I think there's an opening here for a social networking app. The way I've always imagined it, you and your friends would feed in your free time, activity preferences, which "friends" you actually enjoy spending time with... The back end would be something like a constraint solver combined with a recommendation engine. It would suggest events either independently or triggered by a user: "I'm feeling bored tonight. Does anyone I know want to do anything? Preferably within walking distance of my apartment." That triggers some notifications to check if there's any consensus for a get-together.
The idea is that it's a lot of work and noise to spam all your friends whenever you've got a few free hours, especially since only a small subset of them are likely to be free on short notice. And planning any kind of outing can be a real headache when you have to either accomodate everyone's schedules/preferences or actively exclude them.
You could even monetize it by sponsoring suggestions: "Three of your college friends are interested in getting Mexican tonight. Join them and get 10% off at José's. Want to go?"
Ignoring the spam and the established conventions, that sounds just like the idea behind facebook's news feed when used on an account only connected to friends you like.
You even pratctically verbatim quoted their sponsored targetted ads.
This reminds me of a time, last year, when I needed to fill out some paperwork that asked me to list four friends and I couldn't list one (I ended up listing my wife's friends instead).
Sadly, these days, I don't often meet anyone with similar interests. The people who I do meet and find interesting are often female, which leaves me confused about how friendly to get without causing people and my wife to think I am cheating.
This rings very true. In fact, I turned 29 eleven months ago and I moved here (to another country, albeit culturally similar) eight months ago.
I have zero friends.
My coworkers are vastly different from me. I work with two people the most; one is a younger guy who goes clubbing and is interested in getting laid, and the other is a 40-something woman who is most likely menopausal and hates everything in her life.
I'm married to boot.
All my friends and wife are back home. My immediate family is here but we couldn't be any more different. My situation is complicated, but for all intents and purposes, you can say I was adopted.
I moved here for a better job, yet it happens to be a city I hate; a city in which driving and huge cars is a fact of life, yet I absolutely despise cars. I am used to taking public transport, cycling, walking, and even running. I run 5 times a week. The air is so bad here I had chest pain yesterday after running. I still do it.
I observe the people in this dreadful city and feel they are either extremely superficial, cliquey, and stereotypical or go-getters who do nearly anything to go up the corporate ladder in a dog-eat-dog 'world'.
Where is the substance?
If you've not guessed already, I'm trying to get out of here, but it would be nice to have meaningful conversations or form some type of meaningful relationships along the way.
Most Americans (and maybe Canadians) will guess what city I'm in, and as others have mentioned, the American west coast just works differently, especially the southwest. It's definitely not me.
(Sorry if this sounds like a soapbox, corny or like I'm wearing my 'heart on my sleeve' - I know it's not a social norm. It wasn't my intention and I hope someone can extract something useful out of it.)
I actually miss the bad weather of other places I lived. One reason for that is I'm just weird, but another is that the common struggle of shitty weather leads to interactions with strangers. There was the time in college I pushed my neighbor's car out of the snow and she asked for my name, or during the great NYC xmas blizzard of a few years ago, where waiting for a very late bus led to friendly grousing with a stranger. Or even as a kid in Virginia, checking up on neighbors during storm power outages. Now I find in LA there's no real need to ally with others. It's just one person per apartment, per car, gliding smoothly from place to place, alone.
Thank you. This is a great tip. I am training for my first half marathon and I've been running really early in the morning before work or after (around 6pm), but sometimes it gets too hot or I can't make those times and end up running around 11am on weekends. Yesterday was the worst I ever felt.
Do you know how accurate areavibes.com is? I'm trying to move to a city with cleaner air within the incorporated or unincorporated LA area.
Thanks again for the suggestions! I will have to check them out!
And a very specific suggestion. Pasadena. One loop around the Rose Bowl is 5k. I run it every night. Don't break the chain. I also do the trails of the San Gabriels.
I despise cars too (which definitely makes me an oddball since I'm Canadian and live in a mid-sized city), so I sympathize with you. North America is obsessed with cars, and has caused a lot of pollution and havoc on the landscape.
But I digress. I just wanted to let you know there are others that feel the same way.
Thanks. I moved from Vancouver. A couple people I talk to love to point out my 'Canadianisms'.
When I first moved here, people were surprised I wasn't into cars and told me, "Don't worry, give it a few months!" And I just smiled and said, "I don't know!"
I love Vancouver and would hate cars if I lived there too. On ever visit we get a hotel a bit out, but still accessible to the sky train and have enjoyed the transit immensely.
What made you leave, out of curiosity. I've told my wife many times that I'd love it if we moved there (we live in the Seattle area). She's a PT and worried about getting paid less there because of the health care system. (I know they get paid well, and tried pointing this out - I've looked it up)
You mean physical therapist, right? I don't know much about that. I do know people in healthcare generally get paid less in Canada, when compared to the States.
As for living there, it depends what part of the city you'd like to live in and what vibe you like. Generally, housing in Vancouver is expensive, but the rule of thumb is the more east you go (Lougheed area, Burnaby, New West, Surrey, etc.), the cheaper it gets to buy. My wife and I live a 5-minute (Sky)train ride from downtown. Buying in and close to downtown can be cheaper than or the same as renting. We've not bought a condo because we didn't know where we'd settle.
I moved to LA because of work - that's it! The job market for my specialization in Vancouver is really bad (I have an Arts degree and do copywriting/content writing). The LA weather is a nice bonus for me, but I really couldn't care less about it. My worldview and priorities are just vastly different from the Southern Californians I've met thus far, minus the obvious (desire for safety, a family, a good group of friends, etc.).
It's funny you should ask, actually, because I will know by the end of this week if I am moving back to Vancouver. If I do move back, it will be by the end of the year.
My wife studied Computer Science and we have a lot of CS friends. All of them are doing well, for the most part. But I think that sector has its own set of problems, which were recently talked about in an HN post titled "Canada's vanishing tech sector". Most of our friends are doing well, though.
But yes, I miss my Vancouver life dearly; my wife, my friends, our hangouts, taking the ferry to the Island, wild salmon/fresh fish, hiking through forests, the fresh BC air - too many things to mention.
Mind you, if I go back I'd still take my car up there, but we plan on only using it to get away during the weekends or holidays, but we would still bus and/or take the train to work.
Burning Man. Join a theme camp and work on a big project for three months with 50 people, then try to survive the dust storms together on the playa. It's a great way to make friends. I'm told that you can have a similar experience working on a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans. There must be other regional equivalents.
I think part of what makes it harder to make "true friends" when you're older is that everyone is more independent and it takes a lot of work to get a person to consider you for a true friend.
What I mean is, when you're in high school and college, everything just seems bigger, and any help from anyone counts a lot. Helping someone pass the exams, get a girlfriend, restore their dad's car (which they wrecked :-) can be instant reasons for that person to start considering you a true friend, and that sticks around for a looong time.
When you're an adult, you support yourself, and it takes much more to get to that point: heck, I don't even know what it would take to make a best friend - help him/her get out of jail, get a green card, buy a house or something?
Everything else are just little things that don't count for much in the minds of most adults...
Making friends as an adult can certainly be difficult, although I do think some of it may be self-inflicted. I find that I definitely am one to prefer quality over quantity, so a lot of times, I just don't go looking for new friends. The last time I did, I happened to get lucky. The last new friend I made was almost exactly a year ago, but in that year, he's become one of the best friends I've ever had.
He's an HN regular, so maybe he's reading this and will chime in and offer his view on the subject. :)
For me, there are all sorts of practical reasons, but a lot of it just boils down to the fact that there aren't a lot of people around me that I share common interests with. So most of my lasting adult relationships have started as online acquaintances that grew into real, meaningful, "offline" friendships (that's also how I met my husband 16yrs ago).
I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. The next year I organized a softball team, mostly coworkers at the time. There are six of us that have been playing since we started, going on seven years now, even though we've almost all since changed jobs. Even though it's "just softball" (and our league is about as uncompetitive as possible without being totally beer-league), we've all made attempts to make it to games that bordered on absurd. I'm talking like, having a game end like 90 minutes before a flight I had booked, so I brought my luggage to the game, planned for a cab to arrive right as our game ended, and changed in the back seat of the cab on the way to the airport. Sure, I could have just skipped the game. I don't know if it's as contrived as "not wanting to let the team down." But these guys were my friends and I wanted to be there. Outside the six of us, we've had countless guys come in for a season or two, and then kind of fall off and stop playing. Almost all my post-college "good friends" -- the kinds of guys I invited to my wedding, for example -- have played on this softball team.
So I've thought about this a lot. I guess I've concluded that male friendships in particular are more easily forged in some environment of "commitment." In the "you've been there for me, so you're a good guy, so I can feel comfortable about opening up to you about subjects you only bring up with your good friends," sense. Also, I don't think this happens overnight, at least not for me. We were playing for two years before we'd do something like get dinner after the game. It was another long while before we'd talk about deeper friendship stuff like career advice, girlfriend problems, etc.
Hopefully I'm not making this sound like you can only make friends when you're a "bro" who plays sports. When we're younger, these organizations exist everywhere: high school, college, school clubs, sports teams, whatever. Just any place where you're expected to give more than what may be convenient and everyone else does the same. Going back to the softball team, let's say I get two emails the day of a game. One guy says, "hey my boss wants to pull me in a meeting that probably run long, I managed to tell him I have a hard stop at 7:00pm, but I may be like 10 minutes late to the game." Another guy says, "hey, I had a big lunch, I'm gonna skip the game." Which guy am I going to end up being friends with?
So I suppose my conclusion, at least for me personally, is that it's usually not enough to find people I have something in common with, but something in common that we're both committed to. It's tougher to find that after high school and college, but it's not impossible.
It's very common in Portland at least. Any night of the week within any three mile radius there's a bar somewhere hosting trivia.
It's just people who come to a normal bar once a week and play trivia. Think Jeopardy with teams and booze. Sometimes there are prizes for winning/losing. There is an entry fee that goes toward the prize pool and compensation for the person running the trivia.
AFAIK, it's bigger in the UK and Australia than the US. I'm from Portland, currently live in SF, and know of a handful of bars in both cities (also Davis, CA) that do trivia, but not as many as in Sydney, where I studied abroad.
I live in SF as well and have noticed bar trivia picking up a bit. I think it's starting to catch on as companies spring up to provide trivia nights (there's one I just read about called geeks with drinks or something)... And just a small plug, my friends gf hosts one Wednesday nights at Zekis in Nob Hill around 8 if you're interested.
Yep. I found most of my non-tech friends from Pub trivia when I moved to SF a few months back. Kind of refreshing to meet people who by the virtue of the fact are not in tech have different aspirations, perspectives on life.
The bar you go to makes all the difference. You are more likely to see Quiz Night at a Mom & Pop sports bar, a place where loud noise is acceptable. The quiet, little pub you go to for ale/stout and quiet conversation or a folk/jazz bar not so much.
Beyond the juvenile stage men can't bond through "play time". Men bond through shared struggle and purpose. You aren't going to make close lifetime male friends at some stupid beer centric sports league.
We could have a much deeper discussion on the evolution of society and how the gradual reduction of physical survival difficulty has eroded a lot of the male bonding development that used to exist. But a lot the OP was about difficulty making friends even when people had a lot of things in common, so I was sharing an anecdote on how a shared activity and commitment, even for a mostly trivial hobby, still led to what I considered good friendships.
You may consider bonding through my softball team "play time." I posit that it's better than not bonding at all, but if you really want to dismiss my friendships and suggest the only way to forge lifetime male bonding is to form an underground anarchist militia and make bombs out of soap, I'll take that under consideration.
How are you not contradicting him? He said he made some great friends through casual sports, and you're saying that lifelong friendship cannot happen through casual sports. You are directly disagreeing with him about how deep his friendships are.
I dunno, maybe he's saying that if you take casual sports as seriously as the first guy evidently takes his casual sports, they count as a shared struggle, etc, etc.
I wonder how he'd respond to a non-aggressive, benevolent shared purpose and struggle. How about a mainstream charitable organization that makes soaps out of bombs?
Not always true either. I spent some time in the military in South Africa during the bush war. I can without a doubt say that I've never felt closer to another male as I did then.
However, 23 years later and I only have contact details for one of the 8, and even though he and I are friends on Facebook we never exchange more than the annual "happy birthday". Back then all 8 of us were in the same hole. Today we have different lives, with little (if anything) in common. Anything we have left for each other belongs to another time, and place.
A softball team is going to provide far more rewarding and, importantly, long-lasting friendships than "shared struggle and purpose".
I got the impression the Band of Brothers Easy Company guys basically didn't talk for 20+ years after the war, except odd pairs and small groups that stayed in touch. People went back to school, started careers, families. Then they reconnected and ended up forming a strong social network, even though they had very different backgrounds and life paths. Stephen Ambrose was between projects and came across them, and the rest was (literally) history. They were an elite group and some were very successful, others were wounded, others ended up going through what I might have considered stereotypical Vietnam Vet experiences, even though WWII veterans are not associated with that. I suspect a critical mass of people working to keep everyone connected and provide mutual support makes all the difference.
I recently connected with a close friend that I hadn't seen since high school (20 years ago). We talked about common friends, etc. and it was as if the intervening 20 years had never happened. There were seeds of trust and companionship that had survived the 20-year drought.
My hunch is (and excuse me for suggesting this, since I don't know you at all) that if you ever got in touch with any of those 8 again and spent some time with him, you'd be able to reconnect very quickly.
This is going to sound grossly presumptuous, because it is: Please find these men you served with and give them a call, or write a letter, while all of you are still alive. The thought of you guys drifting so far apart with so little contact is making me sad.
Speaking as a fellow (?) South African, albeit younger (too young to have been involved in that conflict) I feel it's worth pointing out that their drifting apart may very well be by choice, or rather: simply not making an effort to stay in touch.
In high school I had two teachers who were involved in the bush war or 'spent time on the border' as it is often referred to, both of them clearly very scarred by their experiences. One of them outright shell shocked.
I'm guessing that there may be some level of self preservation in leaving experiences like that in the past, reconnecting with your life and getting on with it.
It may very well be that they decide to forget that part of their lives.
I cannot imagine how some kind of reunion would be good for remembrance:
"Do you remember that time when we got a granade and almost died?" "aaah yes... bad times"... "Or what about when corporal Jones was blown into pieces" "aaah yes... that morning we played poker toghether".
Completely agreed with this. My best friends from High School and college were those I was doing something with, not just hanging out. I'm still friends with those folks and have tried repeatedly over the years to capture that feeling and turn it into an application that would solve this problem for folks, especially in new towns. The problem seems to be that doing something meaningful but still organic is very hard to replicate. Good on you and your teammates with the softball team.
Sure.. I am a 26 year old guy from southern USA and have had a lot of trouble making friends since I graduated from college 4 years ago. I still had my small group of 4-6 friends from high school back home (90 miles away), but I wanted to make new friends. I didn't join a fraternity in college, and spent almost all my time doing class work, studying, or being with my girlfriend. So I only made a handful of friends there. Many facebook acquaintances but few real friends. Big mistake, I know. So I got a decent job and a (new) girlfriend, and I'm pretty happy, but the male friendship void was hurting me. This was a year after leaving college.
I decided to start playing tennis, and it changed my life.
I had taken a few lesson when I was very young, and I played on my high school team, but it was not a very competitive or serious thing. I decided to dig my racquet out of the closet and give it a shot. Worst case scenario, I get some exercise.
As it turns out, my city has one of the largest, most active network of local tennis leagues in my state. There are hundreds of young (and old) people who play regularly. I signed up for a random team, and before I knew it, I was meeting 10-12 other guys for tennis practice and playing in league matches two to three times a week. I met some guys my age who were similar to me. We started getting better at tennis. The next year, I started my own team and a lot of the guys joined. Three years later, I've got a small network of about 20 guys I can comfortably call or text to meet up with to play tennis any time, and half of them are close enough with me to go out for a beer afterwards. Just last month, our team advanced to the state championship tournament, and it was a pretty awesome bonding experience to go on a road trip and stay for 3 nights.
I don't know what my life would be like if I didn't pick up tennis 3 years ago. I'm in better shape, I have more friends, and I am addicted to those endorphins I get every time I go out and play. I have to get my fix 3 times a week, at least.
If you're interested, google USTA and find out if there's a local league in your area.
Even if you are not athletic, give it a shot. There are a dozen different divisions, separated by ability level. Find a local tennis instructor and join a 'group lesson', where you and a handful of other beginners just hit balls and receive instruction from the coach. It's also very cheap, compared to golf or skiing or other sports mentioned in this thread. For starters, buy a $30 racquet and some decent $40 tennis shoes, and that's all you need.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadThat's interesting and kind of profound.
I guess when you're arranging dates on match.com, the intention is clear. You're out to meet someone for a relationship. It's the goal.
A meetup to discuss Ruby on Rails or something is all about the subject of the meetup. Most are there just to talk about Rails and get help with a bug, not to make close friends.
How would you find activities where the specific goal is for people new to an area to make friends, or maybe for people who aren't new to an area but they want to make friends?
There's probably an opportunity for a little business there,
There has to be someone already doing this... maybe?
You can sometimes make friends in such settings if they're regular enough, informal enough, and smallish groups. I initially met one current friend via the SF Wikipedia meetups, for example. But they have a somewhat deliberate "social outing" tone, where it's expected some Wikipedia business will be discussed, but not in any organized way.
It makes sense as most people want partners that complete them but friends that are like them.
People have ridiculously high standards for friendships than dates. This sounds weird, even writing it, but I've found it to be true again and again. Many many people would have no problems dating absolute jerks, but wouldn't hang out for 15 minutes with a genuinely nice person (of the same gender). May be people are just desperate to hang out with people of opposite gender? I dunno.
There's probably an opportunity for a little business there,
I doubt that. How could you do this as a business? Arrange volunteer activities/"friend dates"/hang-outs with the primary aim of making friends? Make a website like lookingforfriends.com (just made up the name)? Most people just can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes getting to know another person, unless there is something in it for them (that is why it is easier to get dates, than friends). It just boils down to, people are just plain selfish, at least most of them.
I made a lot of lifelong friends when I was in the East Coast. When I was in my late 20s, I decided to move out West. My friends were my support system back in the East Coast and now I don't have them.
Starting over when you're older is hard. Most people my age have established their own circle of friends. It feels out-of-place trying to join an existing circle.
On the west coast, things don't work that way. People seem nicer on the surface but it's a cool sunniness. They don't really mean the friendly things they say and they shy away from deeper connection. It's an alone-together vibe. The social ecosystem is less hospitable to bonding.
Later, when I went to France, I found that there was an initial aloofness that I mistook for vague dislike. But after a while, this went away and what I found instead was a much more substantial and very real affinity.
1. http://martinsbusinessenglish.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-tal...
Anyway, having grown up on the east coast then spending time both in Seattle and back east off and on, I can vouch for the Seattle freeze being rather real.
And to a certain extent I actually find myself liking it. Moving around too much makes forming deeper relationships risky, they end up being more baggage. I see the freeze as a sort of defensive mechanism against that.
Or maybe my circle of friends are not the norm in Cali.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanfeeley/5551037426/
... except that that's a censored version. In the one I remember, "Drop Dead" was "Fuck You", as it should be.
1) you meet a lot of people while traveling (quantity)
2) you and them are out of context (and out of existing social circles)
3) all are a little bit more relaxed
4) you start pretty fast talking about things that are interesting without (social circle / insider) background information - you can filter them for quality (if they are interesting enough for do friendship follow ups)
from the last 5 years about 80% of the new people i now call friends i met during traveling
And yeah, that's the thing I've run into with Meetups. Great place to find a particular activity, harder to find people looking to meet people beyond just the activity.
I think I'll go walk the dog.
Maybe I've just always been pickier about who I've associated with. I don't know.
I also think it's got the vibe of one of those pieces that make you feel guilty for getting older, i.e. the nonsense of entrepreneurial "peak ages"
Do note: the article provides several anecdotes to your one. :)
Whoa. I would never want to be acquaintances with this person.
And yet that's not too far off from what I - and I think most people - are doing. Sure, I don't have a scale. But I'm sizing people up. If I had that cynical, narrow-minded approach back in high school, I don't think I'd have the life-long friends I have now. I'm working on shutting that inner voice up, but I think it's something that slowly creeps in over time.
But that's just part of the problem - the other is that, especially with big moves, there's no obvious support structure for making new friends. Having moved across the country a few months ago, I'm still trying to figure this one out. Any idea HNers?
Thinking of specific numbers is very cynical indeed, but I agree with the point made though.
For example, there's a former colleague I've had a few lunches with, every 3-6 months or so, since the startup we were working at folded. We clicked well when working together and we enjoyed talking about ideas. However, during the past few lunches, I've been more and more annoyed at the fact that he's been mostly interested in talking about his own stuff, not caring at all about mine. (granted, I've wondered if I could be just like him, since I want to talk about my stuff… :)) Overtime, I realized that I won't be seeking lunches with him anymore.
So unconsciously, every bad interaction kind of knocked some points off.
Friendship is really like any kind of relationship: you're expected to give and to receive. If it goes only one way, it will eventually stop going any way at all.
The whole area of transactional psychology is based on that idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis
What purpose could such thinking have?
Take up a hobby, more or less unrelated to what you do for a living. Maybe it's rowing or rock climbing or fencing or writing. Find something you think you'll enjoy that draws in people from all walks of life.
I think it's especially important now, when the only thing in your life is your work, to avoid trying to make friends there. In my mind deep friendships start with sharing personal things, which starts from sharing everyday things. Someone you're around all the time will share just enough experiences that you won't be able to talk long enough to open up.
Then of course there is the problem of time. That coupled with priorities, make it very hard to balance friends with family with career. After having children, I just want to spend more time with them than making friends, even though I might say that "yes, having more and better friends would be nice" my daily actions and attitudes probably don't reflect that.
I have also realized that being friends with co-workers doesn't work. They switch jobs or there is often competition for the same bonus pool, same cool projects and this turns things sour
I think the expected reaction to this is to be afraid of it, especially given I don't make friends very easily my best friends today are all people I've known since elementary school, and already I'm only in contact with a handful of people from college. But somehow I find it reassuring, my takeaway is that if I work at it I can stay good friends with all of these people, and maybe that'll be enough. Plus someday I'll have kids and hopefully their friends will have nice parents, I know my parents are as good friends with my friends' parents as I am with them (wow that's a badly written sentence!).
High-School Friends (who I still stay in touch with, although only peripherally, as I don't still live where I grew up)
College Friends (which includes a subset of High School friends, who I do a better job of staying in touch with, but who also mostly live back where I went to school)
Work Friends (the overwhelming majority of my friends are people I've worked with at one time or another. Reservations about mixing work with pleasure aside, people in my line of work tend to have a lot in common)
Photography School Friends (I suppose similar to college, but they are more recent, and local. This group is unusual in that the entire class ended up becoming really really close)
For whatever reason, I've never had trouble meeting people. What has proven to be a lot of work is actually committing to spending time with people (as my natural state is to never want to leave the house under any circumstances).
I've found online presence exacerbates that, as it's easy for me to convince myself that I'm being social merely by responding to people's Facebook posts (which doesn't really cut it).
my natural state is to never want to leave the house under any circumstances
Coincidence? :)
One part is actually meeting people with whom you click. Unless you go to a lot of meetups and similar events, overall, you won't be meeting that many new people besides co-workers. And meetups tend to have a theme other than just having fun, whereas that's what most college activities are about. So you meet people in a serious context, and you need to bring the fun with you.*
So, you first need to come across someone with whom you click, and then you have to fuel that relationship. What's difficult there is that you need time. Once married with children, grabbing a beer after work is not as simple. You also have that awkwardness as pictured in "I love you, man" (and I believe a Louis CK sketch in his TV show): you have to acknowledge pretty fast that there's something going on and that you feel you could indeed become friends! It's one meetup, you're awkward now with that guy who seems cool, or you might never see him again.
But as you grow older, you also lose a lot of that casualness that you had before: you don't just invite them over after work to play video games. Now that you're a "grown-up", it's "a dinner". And since you're a grown-up, your home has better be somewhat clean, and you can't just serve pizza. What was a spontaneous interaction before is now a whole event that needs planning, some cleaning, some cooking, etc. (until of course, you become real friends) So these happen less, and friendships can be like making mayonnaise: if you don't make it go right now, you'll never make it go at all.
* I'm not saying meetups are no fun, just that it's not the end-game for everyone. Some people are there only for "professional" reasons and you need to figure out what people are looking for.
That is so frustrating to me. I don't really want a Do when I get together with people, I just want to kick back.
Going out also costs a chunk of change, and snarfing a grocery pizza will cost a lot less. :-)
Another option to frame it casually is say "X and I were going to get Thai and play some Fluxx. Seriously, nothing elaborate. You're welcome to join us if you want?"
This is a problem, that's for sure.
However, the main issue is that when you are in college and your early 20s, you tend have gobs of time to make friends--once you hit a certain age (or marital status or child status) other activities come first. Might as well celebrate the closeness with your family or your work achievements as kvetch about the difficulty of making friends.
I'm in my mid 30s.
So here he was, a multimillionaire who'd spent the last five years or so working and playing the market to the exclusion of everything else. He was one of those people who had unconsciously believed if he just had enough money he could find a way to be happy. When he finally had the money he realized relationships with other people are what make you happy. But at that point he didn't have any friends and didn't know how to make them.
He was, without a doubt, the most miserable guy I've ever met. He was always willing to buy a round or lend people money. He'd go to Vegas and pay for five or six people to go with him. So there were always people around. There were always women willing to sleep with him. But they were there for the money and he couldn't delude himself into thinking otherwise. The money actually added to the problem, because it meant even when he wasn't paying, people had a motive to hang around. So he became cynical and a bit paranoid.
Eventually he got into drugs and ended up eating a whole bottle of pills. I've always wondered if any of those hangers-on went to the funeral.
I've thought a lot about what I would do in that position, and came to the same conclusion you did. The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing.
Of course, it's easy to decide how other people can fix their lives :)
It's going to be hard to fairly tease the effects of having Asperger's syndrome on making friends apart from the effects of wealth, fame, and power.
Why not just live among people and make friends with people in the same income bracket or assets or higher?
I did.
He said:
"The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing."
The fact that the above sentence says "live simply" and "take up a hobby" seems to contradict the notion that he should try to take up with people who are equal in wealth which was the issue being discussed.
I said
"live among people"
which is not the same as
"move far away"
and
"live simply"
is not the same as
"make friends with people in the same income bracket or assets or higher"
Besides, you have fewer choices if your pool of potential friends is rich people.
How many friends does someone need?
I don't see any evidence that wealthy people or upper middle class have any problems friend wise.
Not only that but nothing prevents them from mingling with anyone even a lower "status" if you want to call it that.
About 150: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number
But they don't all have to be real friends. The interesting thing about Dunbar's number is that it also suggests that people strive to make these 150 relationships even when there are not enough people around (i.e. that's why some people care for celebrities and forge online relationships when real life friends are not enough)
Dunbar's number refers to group sizes, not friend counts.
But, generally, yeah.
When you have a lot of money, you are used to getting anything you want, since everything has a price. Want a hotel room overlooking Times Square for NYE? Sure, maybe it'll cost you $25K, but you can probably get it (I'm just guessing here). Want Madonna to come sing at your barbecue? Sure, that'll be a million bucks (plus incidentals).
So when a rich guy is without friends, his first reaction is "how much will it cost?". The moment he flashes his money, all sorts of "friends" come out of the woodwork, happy to be his chum. So, in the short term it looks like it's working. But these aren't friendships; these are hired companions. Just because you can hire a hooker to have sex with you doesn't make her your girlfriend.
One only has to look at the myriad NBA/NFL players out there who, despite having earned 100s of millions of dollars over their lifetimes, end up broke shortly after retiring (and this does not include child support). It's mainly because their wealth attracted the leeches who sucked them dry.
For some reason people seem to think that someone wanting to be around because of a person's fame or money is less pure than other reasons because it's not real.
Generally when people want to be around someone it's because they give them something the other person needs. It could be humour it could be looks, it could be prestige, it could be they went to a college you admire, it could be because they are in awe of the person, or their profession, or their power. There is always a reason that a person is attractive to others. Money is certainly one of those things. Sometimes it's because they are angling to gain something from the person and sometimes it's just the halo that makes the person more attractive or respect for what they have done.
I understand the whole idea of people who are successes attracting people and not knowing of their motives. But the fact that someone liked you "way back" when you were nobody doesn't mean their current attraction is entirely pure either once you gain something else that is of benefit to them.
I've read these stories of guys who are big successes and manage to still play ball with the same guys from high school who are "regular" guys. Do you think the successful person's status has nothing to do with the fact that the high school friends all manage to want to get together and maintain ties? I think it does. For one thing it gives them something to talk about with others (say at the office) that elevates them. "Oh, yeah, I played soft ball with my friend from high school Robert DeNiro this weekend and was at his house, anyway..."
It's entirely possible to be true friends with people of vastly different status. People have a great instinct for real friends when they see one. The problem with rich/famous people is that their lifestyle changes vastly since they can afford not to work, they live in more isolated neighborhoods and it becomes increasingly rare to bump onto people with similar goals in life.
If you're super rich you can work your way through the social elite, but if you're averagely rich this doesn't seem to be an option.
For most of the people I know, they aren't looking for anything besides connection to other people. They're complete & whole people on their own, they don't need anything else. They don't hang around their friends because they're looking for a halo of success. They don't do it for prestige or looks or humor. They just do it because they like company.
It's really a difference in worldview. For some people, things come first in their life, and they surround themselves with people who will help them achieve those things, or ones who have already achieved them so they can bask in their glow. For others, people come first in their life, and they surround themselves with things that will help them relate to the people they care about.
I've been on both sides of the fence, and I can tell you, I have felt miserable every time I tried convincing myself that success was all that mattered. I'm trying to find my way back to a place now where the people matter more than the accolades - it's not all that easy, because it really is a worldview, and once you've optimized your life for success, it's pretty hard to un-optimize it and build relationships. But I can tell you that my friends don't care if you're a hot-shot developer for Google or a yoga instructor or a public-policy consultant or an urban planner. People are people, they're complex, and they're a lot more than a laundry list of characteristics you might like to have.
There's a big difference between a person's intrinsic properties and his money. You like your friends; you like the rich guy's money.
And when you're around someone for his money you're playing a part. It's a job. You're not going to tell him what you really think about anything. That's pathological.
Oh?
So you think that there aren't a large number of rich people that are interesting and have achieved something which is the reason they are rich? And it would be great to spend some time with them?
Steve Jobs was rich and had power and fame. So the only reason anyone would want to be around Steve is because of the money, the power and the fame? Or Larry Ellison? Or Warren Buffet? Or even Paul Graham? He's doing ok and I'm sure he would be interesting to be around even for people who have no interest in the startup scene and nothing to gain by knowing Paul.
But even if someone was born into money for that matter then as a result of having money they also could be interesting and nice to be around for exactly that reason. Or at least entertaining (the Kennedy's come to mind..)
You completely miss the point- it isn't that nobody could like Steve as a person. It's that, how can Steve tell who likes Steve and who just likes Steve's money?
You were talking about "wanting to be around because of a person's fame or money" being just another reason to be around. The "You like your friends; you like the rich guy's money" is just a way of restating your apparent original claim.
So coming back and saying, well, Steve Jobs is interesting, is missing by a mile what you're responding to.
The problem though is form. I am generous with my good fortune to you. What are you doing for me in return? It used to be that a gift demanded reciprocity (as would injury or misbehavior), and to be forgiven for not doing so was a bad thing and an insult to one's honor. Then Christianity came and we all got screwed over by this obligation to forgive.
Interestingly we know from anthropology that money came about as a way to quantify debt, not the other way around. So perhaps this is only less real today because of how we account for our possessions and how we relate to our money, not because of any intrinsic issue with a relationship based on disparity of this sort.
Interestingly Cicero brings up a similar point in his work on friendship. At a time where Roman society was very stratified and friendships were supposed to be between economic equals, he suggested that the best friendships would be made with people below one's social status, for the specific reason that they would be more loyal. Friendships in Rome were all about a gift economy (as they still are in many parts of the world today. I have a friend who studied with Edgar Polome for his PhD and said Polome used to use India as an example if this. He'd get a gift-- maybe a new wallet or something-- from someone one year and a request for help getting a job or a car or something else a few years later. And when he'd turn them down they'd be unhappy because it was not fulfilling his obligation for having accepted the gift. This is true all over Asia as my wife always reminds me never to accept a gift from someone unless I know what they want in return.)
Case in point, read the Old English poem "The Wanderer" (ideally in Old English but if necessary in translation) and remember that the relationship the narrator is lamenting is this sort of relationship.
The point is that gifts tie us together. As one person said, "obligations unite us, debts drive us apart." The idea that you give money and there is some sort of a moral obligation to reciprocate in some way (but not a quantified debt) creates the bond.
The way gift economies work is that you give gifts out and therefore obtain communal esteem, and people reciprocate to get that esteem by giving you gifts.
In general, if you can, reading a work in the language it was composed in is better than reading it in translation. It is generally hard to disagree with that.
The fact is that translation into contemporary English from Old English and Old Norse is deceptively difficult.
[1] wyrd bið ful aræd is probably the best example. It's usually translated as "Fate is wholely inexorable" which is not a good translation. "The turn of events is fully complete" is better, as would be "My fate has now been decreed" depending on how you want to look at wyrd (fate, but literally "that which has turned" and often personified as a woman) and araed (decreed, established, spoken).
Edit Changed the above OE to proper characters, and adding this:
While I am bragging, as you put it, about my understanding of languages I will point out that the structure there of wyrd becoming established through the spoken word is also found in parallel Old Norse traditions, where we have the description of the Norns in Voluspa ending with:
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
This is again difficult to translate because of the variety of things lög could mean. "They laid laws" or They laid layers" or "They allotted lots" are all viable translations. My overall translation would be:
They allotted lots,
They chose lives
for the sons of men,
They uttered fate.
Back then, these things were evidence that the other guy wasn't going to knife you in your sleep.
It's the earliest form of debt-as-community-glue, really. It only survives today in the habit of bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, and in the handshake. We mostly rely on codified laws of hospitality instead (which govern restaurants and hotels).
The way I solved this problem between us is that I refuse to accept "mercy" gifts. I will accept an earnest gift when It is presented out of kindness. Also I demand that our financials be thoroughly transparent with me covering my fair share.
It works exceptionally well, allowing for our friendship to develop at its own and sincere pace. Besides, being around him and having such a friend/mentor is a gift that keeps on giving, more than a paid this or that ever could.
Regarding the long angle, of course I am working the long angle. As I said, these people help me move along, just not in a way where I would be a mere client.
If I am not interested in having fish caught for me - that doesn't mean I am not interested in learning everything I can about fishing.
The idea is that it's a lot of work and noise to spam all your friends whenever you've got a few free hours, especially since only a small subset of them are likely to be free on short notice. And planning any kind of outing can be a real headache when you have to either accomodate everyone's schedules/preferences or actively exclude them.
You could even monetize it by sponsoring suggestions: "Three of your college friends are interested in getting Mexican tonight. Join them and get 10% off at José's. Want to go?"
You even pratctically verbatim quoted their sponsored targetted ads.
Sadly, these days, I don't often meet anyone with similar interests. The people who I do meet and find interesting are often female, which leaves me confused about how friendly to get without causing people and my wife to think I am cheating.
This definitely used to be easier.
I have zero friends.
My coworkers are vastly different from me. I work with two people the most; one is a younger guy who goes clubbing and is interested in getting laid, and the other is a 40-something woman who is most likely menopausal and hates everything in her life.
I'm married to boot.
All my friends and wife are back home. My immediate family is here but we couldn't be any more different. My situation is complicated, but for all intents and purposes, you can say I was adopted.
I moved here for a better job, yet it happens to be a city I hate; a city in which driving and huge cars is a fact of life, yet I absolutely despise cars. I am used to taking public transport, cycling, walking, and even running. I run 5 times a week. The air is so bad here I had chest pain yesterday after running. I still do it.
I observe the people in this dreadful city and feel they are either extremely superficial, cliquey, and stereotypical or go-getters who do nearly anything to go up the corporate ladder in a dog-eat-dog 'world'.
Where is the substance?
If you've not guessed already, I'm trying to get out of here, but it would be nice to have meaningful conversations or form some type of meaningful relationships along the way.
Most Americans (and maybe Canadians) will guess what city I'm in, and as others have mentioned, the American west coast just works differently, especially the southwest. It's definitely not me.
(Sorry if this sounds like a soapbox, corny or like I'm wearing my 'heart on my sleeve' - I know it's not a social norm. It wasn't my intention and I hope someone can extract something useful out of it.)
>The air is so bad here I had chest pain yesterday after >running. I still do it.
Pro-tip: Don't run in the streets. Try the trails in Runyon Canyon, Lake Hollywood, Griffith Park, Dockweiler Beach or the Strand in Venice.
Do you know how accurate areavibes.com is? I'm trying to move to a city with cleaner air within the incorporated or unincorporated LA area.
Thanks again for the suggestions! I will have to check them out!
Come do some 5k loops with me.
Come visit us some time.
thomashartman1 gmail
But I digress. I just wanted to let you know there are others that feel the same way.
When I first moved here, people were surprised I wasn't into cars and told me, "Don't worry, give it a few months!" And I just smiled and said, "I don't know!"
What made you leave, out of curiosity. I've told my wife many times that I'd love it if we moved there (we live in the Seattle area). She's a PT and worried about getting paid less there because of the health care system. (I know they get paid well, and tried pointing this out - I've looked it up)
As for living there, it depends what part of the city you'd like to live in and what vibe you like. Generally, housing in Vancouver is expensive, but the rule of thumb is the more east you go (Lougheed area, Burnaby, New West, Surrey, etc.), the cheaper it gets to buy. My wife and I live a 5-minute (Sky)train ride from downtown. Buying in and close to downtown can be cheaper than or the same as renting. We've not bought a condo because we didn't know where we'd settle.
I moved to LA because of work - that's it! The job market for my specialization in Vancouver is really bad (I have an Arts degree and do copywriting/content writing). The LA weather is a nice bonus for me, but I really couldn't care less about it. My worldview and priorities are just vastly different from the Southern Californians I've met thus far, minus the obvious (desire for safety, a family, a good group of friends, etc.).
It's funny you should ask, actually, because I will know by the end of this week if I am moving back to Vancouver. If I do move back, it will be by the end of the year.
My wife studied Computer Science and we have a lot of CS friends. All of them are doing well, for the most part. But I think that sector has its own set of problems, which were recently talked about in an HN post titled "Canada's vanishing tech sector". Most of our friends are doing well, though.
But yes, I miss my Vancouver life dearly; my wife, my friends, our hangouts, taking the ferry to the Island, wild salmon/fresh fish, hiking through forests, the fresh BC air - too many things to mention.
Mind you, if I go back I'd still take my car up there, but we plan on only using it to get away during the weekends or holidays, but we would still bus and/or take the train to work.
What I mean is, when you're in high school and college, everything just seems bigger, and any help from anyone counts a lot. Helping someone pass the exams, get a girlfriend, restore their dad's car (which they wrecked :-) can be instant reasons for that person to start considering you a true friend, and that sticks around for a looong time.
When you're an adult, you support yourself, and it takes much more to get to that point: heck, I don't even know what it would take to make a best friend - help him/her get out of jail, get a green card, buy a house or something?
Everything else are just little things that don't count for much in the minds of most adults...
He's an HN regular, so maybe he's reading this and will chime in and offer his view on the subject. :)
For me, there are all sorts of practical reasons, but a lot of it just boils down to the fact that there aren't a lot of people around me that I share common interests with. So most of my lasting adult relationships have started as online acquaintances that grew into real, meaningful, "offline" friendships (that's also how I met my husband 16yrs ago).
I moved to Los Angeles in 2004. The next year I organized a softball team, mostly coworkers at the time. There are six of us that have been playing since we started, going on seven years now, even though we've almost all since changed jobs. Even though it's "just softball" (and our league is about as uncompetitive as possible without being totally beer-league), we've all made attempts to make it to games that bordered on absurd. I'm talking like, having a game end like 90 minutes before a flight I had booked, so I brought my luggage to the game, planned for a cab to arrive right as our game ended, and changed in the back seat of the cab on the way to the airport. Sure, I could have just skipped the game. I don't know if it's as contrived as "not wanting to let the team down." But these guys were my friends and I wanted to be there. Outside the six of us, we've had countless guys come in for a season or two, and then kind of fall off and stop playing. Almost all my post-college "good friends" -- the kinds of guys I invited to my wedding, for example -- have played on this softball team.
So I've thought about this a lot. I guess I've concluded that male friendships in particular are more easily forged in some environment of "commitment." In the "you've been there for me, so you're a good guy, so I can feel comfortable about opening up to you about subjects you only bring up with your good friends," sense. Also, I don't think this happens overnight, at least not for me. We were playing for two years before we'd do something like get dinner after the game. It was another long while before we'd talk about deeper friendship stuff like career advice, girlfriend problems, etc.
Hopefully I'm not making this sound like you can only make friends when you're a "bro" who plays sports. When we're younger, these organizations exist everywhere: high school, college, school clubs, sports teams, whatever. Just any place where you're expected to give more than what may be convenient and everyone else does the same. Going back to the softball team, let's say I get two emails the day of a game. One guy says, "hey my boss wants to pull me in a meeting that probably run long, I managed to tell him I have a hard stop at 7:00pm, but I may be like 10 minutes late to the game." Another guy says, "hey, I had a big lunch, I'm gonna skip the game." Which guy am I going to end up being friends with?
So I suppose my conclusion, at least for me personally, is that it's usually not enough to find people I have something in common with, but something in common that we're both committed to. It's tougher to find that after high school and college, but it's not impossible.
It's just people who come to a normal bar once a week and play trivia. Think Jeopardy with teams and booze. Sometimes there are prizes for winning/losing. There is an entry fee that goes toward the prize pool and compensation for the person running the trivia.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Men-Jack-Donovan/dp/0985452307
I think it's an interesting distinction that this is not really true of women. Women can get close over various shared interests and activities.
We could have a much deeper discussion on the evolution of society and how the gradual reduction of physical survival difficulty has eroded a lot of the male bonding development that used to exist. But a lot the OP was about difficulty making friends even when people had a lot of things in common, so I was sharing an anecdote on how a shared activity and commitment, even for a mostly trivial hobby, still led to what I considered good friendships.
You may consider bonding through my softball team "play time." I posit that it's better than not bonding at all, but if you really want to dismiss my friendships and suggest the only way to forge lifetime male bonding is to form an underground anarchist militia and make bombs out of soap, I'll take that under consideration.
Based on nothing more than armchair psychology!
Maybe he's trying to gain entertainment.
Just because someone isn't getting X now doesn't mean he doesn't know how to. Maybe he's after Y.
However, 23 years later and I only have contact details for one of the 8, and even though he and I are friends on Facebook we never exchange more than the annual "happy birthday". Back then all 8 of us were in the same hole. Today we have different lives, with little (if anything) in common. Anything we have left for each other belongs to another time, and place.
A softball team is going to provide far more rewarding and, importantly, long-lasting friendships than "shared struggle and purpose".
My hunch is (and excuse me for suggesting this, since I don't know you at all) that if you ever got in touch with any of those 8 again and spent some time with him, you'd be able to reconnect very quickly.
In high school I had two teachers who were involved in the bush war or 'spent time on the border' as it is often referred to, both of them clearly very scarred by their experiences. One of them outright shell shocked.
I'm guessing that there may be some level of self preservation in leaving experiences like that in the past, reconnecting with your life and getting on with it.
I cannot imagine how some kind of reunion would be good for remembrance:
"Do you remember that time when we got a granade and almost died?" "aaah yes... bad times"... "Or what about when corporal Jones was blown into pieces" "aaah yes... that morning we played poker toghether".
It may not fill the cockles of your heart with technical wonder, but like Craigslist for classifieds, it's where the "market" is.
Edit: Unfortunately not that many meetups in the summertime. ;)
I decided to start playing tennis, and it changed my life.
I had taken a few lesson when I was very young, and I played on my high school team, but it was not a very competitive or serious thing. I decided to dig my racquet out of the closet and give it a shot. Worst case scenario, I get some exercise.
As it turns out, my city has one of the largest, most active network of local tennis leagues in my state. There are hundreds of young (and old) people who play regularly. I signed up for a random team, and before I knew it, I was meeting 10-12 other guys for tennis practice and playing in league matches two to three times a week. I met some guys my age who were similar to me. We started getting better at tennis. The next year, I started my own team and a lot of the guys joined. Three years later, I've got a small network of about 20 guys I can comfortably call or text to meet up with to play tennis any time, and half of them are close enough with me to go out for a beer afterwards. Just last month, our team advanced to the state championship tournament, and it was a pretty awesome bonding experience to go on a road trip and stay for 3 nights.
I don't know what my life would be like if I didn't pick up tennis 3 years ago. I'm in better shape, I have more friends, and I am addicted to those endorphins I get every time I go out and play. I have to get my fix 3 times a week, at least.
If you're interested, google USTA and find out if there's a local league in your area.
Even if you are not athletic, give it a shot. There are a dozen different divisions, separated by ability level. Find a local tennis instructor and join a 'group lesson', where you and a handful of other beginners just hit balls and receive instruction from the coach. It's also very cheap, compared to golf or skiing or other sports mentioned in this thread. For starters, buy a $30 racquet and some decent $40 tennis shoes, and that's all you need.