How to Make Friends as an Adult

It feels like a losing game to me. Pre-covid I decided to try and get out more and be more pro-active about meeting people. There also happened to be recent changed in my life that made it a lot easier to do so. When I moved there wasn't a ton of opportunities to meet people, but I found a group that went out regularly and so I decided to start attending. Overtime though I noticed that I judt had nothing in common with most of the group and while I formed a somewhat amicable relationship with a few other "outliers" I just wasn't connecting with most people and became more of a face. Nothing against them, we just had much different interests, hobbies, priorities, etc. Meetup gets thrown around a (poor) generic advice but in my experience Mertup is modtly fronts for MLMs and other scams, demographic specific groups or tech meetups. Look I'm a hacker at heart but tech meetups always just seemed so awkward to me and often felt like an advertisement. In fairness I have some other unique qualities / issues / etc. that make it more difficult.

This is more challenging now with the pandemic in full swing, but it's certainly something I need to work on. At 45 I've got a handful of friends, but when I look around me I see a ton of people my age, particularly men, that don't have many friends. It isn't clear to me that they see this as problematic or not. I believe it is for me.

there is too much pressure and hype about &#x27;friends&#x27;. the article(i skipped the research &#x27;statistics&#x27; part) misses the part where literally millions of people are just fine being introverts or even &#x27;friendless&#x27;.<p>also..its speciesism to imagine friendship only occurs between human beings. of course, &#x27;friendship&#x27; evolved for the survival of the species. it is an acceptance of differences so we can all &#x27;get along&#x27;.<p>finches dont have &#x27;friends&#x27; who are of a different colour. thats their survival code. woodpeckers are solitary and are infamously anti social. cheetahs are like not tigers or lions. Carpenter bees are solitary vs honey bees that exhibit hive mind. Sheep are..well..sheep. They follow and they need to stick together. You dont see praying mantii flocking together. Snakes..dont even care.<p>The pattern seems to me that the weaker one is in their ability to survive by themselves...could be bird, beast or insect. or man...they cant afford to be solitary. with mammals, the need to &#x27;get along&#x27; with their own kind emerged from the lack of the protective shell of their eggs..for mammalian babies are born naked and vulnerable. tribe becomes important. groups become protective shields so the young would survive the traumatic phase of early infanthood rife with mortality challenges.<p>Evolution of &#x27;friendship&#x27; is a survival hack. Vulnerable populations need to flock together. Women are known to have more friends because they had to...our biology makes us vulnerable as does procreation. As does society. even as early as cavemen days, the cartoon notion is that men dragged their women by the hair to their caves. a caricature, no doubt. but that..my friends..is a depiction of rape. and that&#x27;s why women surround themselves with their girlfriends.