School, university, starting your first job with a group of others at the same time gives you ready made friends (provided you can sit next to them).
Friendship is basically a function of time and proximity. This has been shown in several studies and is accurate by my own experience anecdotally. Meeting people who already have a social circle or all their time allocated won't be conducive to making deeper friendships. Once you're in the world of work, going from one job to another, it can suddenly be very difficult to make deeper friendships, especially those that will endure one of you changing jobs (if they're colleagues).
Have links to these studies?
How can I have so much in common with a person, yet completely dislike them?
Computing events (so many stereotypically smelly antisocial people)
Fight sports (many wannabe criminals and general low lifes)
Ecological gardening (lots of self righteous hippies)
Then again, I guess if there are so many people I'm not fond of interacting with, maybe it's not them...
(to be fair there are also people in the above groups that are normal, but they're minorities)
Of course there are also people with social skills who attend those meetups, because e.g. they're just new in town, but if they meet some other people with social skills they will probably become friends with them, start organizing private meetups, and drop out of the public ones.
This seems to often be a problem with public board gaming groups -- they get filled with players with antisocial tendencies, who scare off any new players.
In bigger cities, though, there's a constant influx of new arrivals so it's not so bad.
It is not comfortable, but you will regret more not attending an event than if you did. It took one or two times of realizing that "I'm tired" at the end of the week was no excuse to avoid making friends.
You have to go out there and meet people, they don't necessarily have the will to meet you.
But eventually I realised I mostly regretted attending. Sure, you can meet people, but it's a setting that creates an initial bad impression and with people who are probably a bit socially awkward. Doing the initial greeting stuff got really old (job, home country, etc...) and most people were uncomfortable skipping it.
So now I never go to events to meet people. I only go if I would go anyway, because I'm curious enough or know I will enjoy myself. That's my recommendation, anyway.
Photography. I love the image making and the enjoyment of the subjects, but most of the photographers I've met through clubs / trips seem more motivated by having the latest kit. Which isn't me at all.
Group-led scuba diving.
We are all multifaceted people and we often don't acknowledge that. Even Richard Feynman played the bongoes.
Except: Church organizations. And it seems such organizations prefer that you are also Christian or are willing to fake it.
Furthermore, the poorer one is, the less likely one can take advantage of these things, especially in a town of around 50k or less.
I have lived the past 13 years in 3 tiny towns (under 100); just go to the bar every night. Made both good shallow and good deep friendships like that while I was over 30 most of that time. Mind you that was in another country with another language than my native. Personally I get depressed by big cities much faster; people I met when living in those are far (acting) busier and so need to keep things shallow.
Also, I seem to have some thing that people find weird; I can make and sustain deep friendships via internet chat alone. I have friends I speak to every day, who would do anything for me and I for them who I do not even know what their voice sounds like. I have started, ran and sold companies with friends who I have never seen or voice chatted to.
The digital equivalent of those places are Facebook groups. meetup.com, although their mobile redesign is a complete joke. Linked in groups. In the UK we have gumtree, probably Craigslist in the US. There's probably more, just sounds like you never looked.
You're looking for digital bulletin boards for your area, groups need new blood as much as you want to find them, you've just got to look.
Plus, of course, the local college night classes.
I just searched meetup for my costal corner of a home town of 20k in the UK and it had a bunch of meetups nearby, so it's pretty easy to find stuff.
Another observation -- finding new friends usually requires spending money for social activities. That's OK, but one has to be ready to spend more money than usually. I'm not saying that "free" activities never work. It just gives you fewer chances.
Yet this doesn't drive toward social interaction. That's why you see lonely people standing in the back of the party, watching everyone else. Gardner's research suggests that people struggle to "self correct" (as you phrase it) because of feelings of loneliness. [0] This doesn't sound intuitive, but here is the idea.
When nonlonely people are surveyed, they cite commonsense solutions to making friends: clubs, sports, coworkers, coffee dates with acquaintances.
But when lonely people are surveyed, you'll likely hear something researchers call fantasy findings. Instead of planned coffee dates or the monthly photography club, lonely people believe that friends are made in chance meetings, blind luck, unlikely encounters, chatting someone up on the domestic flight. Lonely people may be unable to think practically about social outcomes and devise effective social strategies.
The author says "The ratio of times I hear, 'We should hang out!' to actual hangouts is about 10 to 1." These kind of fantasy offers express feelings of connection that bypass the difficulties of forming real relationships. Lonely people are very good at relying on these when thinking about forming connections.
It's not that lonely people don't know how to meet other people, it's that they associate friendships with daydreams, conjuring up images of togetherness.
I've learned a lot about the mechanism of establishing friendships, though. As niftich points out above, I had the tendency to consider friendly encounters as one-offs; more specifically, "Oh, that happened. How pleasant." And then go through the mental acrobatics of wondering if the person would like to continue being friendly or [s]he was simply being polite. So the idea of "broken fantasy world" works in reverse here: I have a broken core belief where I don't understand the value someone gets out of hanging out with me.
Just a week ago, friends came over to celebrate my birthday and watch the WFTDA champs. Another friend who is not part of that circle remarked on something that hadn't really clicked for me -- I must be a good friend (and loved) because my house was full of people. So the feeling of loneliness, somehow baked into a bunch of erroneous core beliefs, also masks reality and hinders the formation of relationships.
[1] http://www.ibblaw.co.uk/insights/blog/boarding-school-syndro...
I don't think this is a "forever" state as you put it, but I think this is why some people suffer for so long (some researchers call this chronic loneliness [0]), and turn to fantasizing friendships as a way to cope.
I want to believe there's a way out, I'm not certain, but I think therapy and mindfulness could help, and also being around secure/empathetic people. Loneliness is kicked around as the bastard child of psychology and most practitioners will disregard a lonely person as simply depressed.
But taken to an extreme, according to attachment theory, there is a class of people who naturally gravitate to social isolation yet, paradoxically, desire closeness -- they're called avoidant personality types [1]. There is early research (Bowlby, Ainsworth, lots to read online) that trace the development of this behavior to experiences as an infant. I think these types of people could get stuck in their ways through their 30s and 40s.
[0] http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1012/features/the-nature-of-lon...
Thank you for the description of avoidant personality types, I recognise elements of this in myself.
Similar themes were explored in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I would suggest the main protagonist Shinji definitely has these traits (probably expressed mostly directly through the 'Hedgehog's Dilemma'). I felt a certain amount of relief after finding that show, that at least the creators understood. It also helped that it was a great anime.
To be honest, whilst I don't have the same desire for friendship that I once did, the main thing I do have desire for is a form of sensuality (not sexuality). Moments that are complete without words/with very few words. That's not exactly the easiest thing to communicate to other people, so most of the time I'll just enjoy it in my own time.
When it comes to activities, I'm not short of options. There are new things I want to try, and things I've already enjoyed. What I find less easy is to enjoy them with other people. For example, whilst I've danced with partners before, I tend to prefer dancing by myself. I'm very happy just closing my eyes and letting my body move to the music.
That's almost a useful place to start, as long as you're not being judgmental about it. No one should think lonely people are stuck in a fantasy world.) If you can recognize that something is broken, then you can work on fixing it.
Recognizing that lonely people have fantasy notions of how friendships work is recognizing that in your 30's, it's a bit more work to form a friendship, compared to the lifelong bonds forged by the act of sharing a juice box during recess.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is widely used to help reframe and de-fantasize a number of unproductive thought patterns so that instead of fantasizing about a chance meeting where someone instantly becomes your new BFF, mental energy is spent planning and arranging aromantic dates to form the foundation of a friendship, much like trying to find a romantic partner. It's an evidence-based practice for treating mental disorders originally for depression but it's proven helpful in a a wide range of mental health conditions, including identifying upsetting feelings and anxiety that frustrates the a person's attempt to make friends.
Although I'm hesitant to generalize this to everybody, I've definitely observed this in my own life. I know that sometimes I could use some pleasant social interaction, but most of the time I just want to be left to myself. I assume other people are the same way, so I leave them alone.
The thing is, if everyone went off of the probability argument (they probably don't want to be bothered because most of the time they want to be left alone), no one would ever talk with anyone. We need the overly outgoing people--who aren't quite so sensitive to other people's alone time--to keep the communication flowing. I had a number of very close friends in high school, but only because a few of them would constantly get everyone else in our group together. Those people (who can get annoying, sometimes) are absolutely necessary for everyone else to form social bonds. Those types of people become busier as adults, and so they stop forming the groups that everyone else depended on. No working adult has time to hang out dozens of hours every week. The old friends might last, but the new friends are almost always kept at arm's length.
I think that friend dating is actually pretty great. It's not the kind of thing I'd take part in, but I absolutely see the value in a service that helps people meet on friendly terms.
It seems as people in general become less religious, there's less of a default gathering place. But I've noticed that various types of fandoms seem to be filling in some of that gap. For example, if you have an interest in old computers and games there's a couple dozen big shows all over the U.S. every year and it's my understanding that many people have formed regular friendships because of these shows.
I almost wish there was a "Church of the Rational Mind" that met for service every Sunday morning at a local University auditorium, and you could hear lectures on various topics for an hour, then socialize afterwards. The Bible provides fodder for a tremendous number of sermons, on many topics, but there isn't the same kind of focused equivalent book for secularists.
The UU Churches are often very focused on their socialization side, with an old joke being that the UU sacrament is the social "miracle" of turning water into coffee.
There are a lot of more secular/atheist attendees of UU churches and UUs tend to embrace the diversity and the spectrum of beliefs. It's not a bad idea to give your local UU church a try if you haven't already.
[1] The interesting history of it is that both the Unitarians and the Universalists (once different groups) split from the mainstream Christian churches surprisingly early and relatively much more quietly compared to the Protestant revolution. The Unitarian dispute, especially, dates back the Nicene Convention that resulted in the Nicene Creed still central to modern Roman Catholicism and still often referred to by Protestants as well, although the organized church is quite a bit newer than that originating dispute in which the Trinitarians won the orthodoxy; UUs will tell you've they've been bucking orthodoxy for centuries.
To me it's not a "attract them" problem, it's a "keep them" problem.
I know that I've long considered myself a UU "irregular", which makes me "part of the problem". I show up as I feel like it when the whim hits me or there's a lecture/speaker I want to hear that week or I generally just feel a need for some coffee with a group I know I can typically count on to socialize with. Without the implicit coercion of "traditional" services have behind them telling people they must show up every week, UU can be seen as having a bit of a disadvantage on that front in keeping/maintaining/growing their communities over time. (The little UU church that is my favorite in my hometown is not quite 150 itself yet, I don't think, but probably shares a lot of similar tales of growth and shrinking over a nearly as long of a lifespan.)
At that point, so far as my advice may be, for what little it might be worth, finding repeat visitors that become irregulars that become regulars are a marketing problem like just about any other social club or an MMO videogame. There probably are things to draw from some of how those cope (or don't) with very similar problems. Help people feel welcome, help them feel engaged, help them find reasons to keep coming back.
That's a nice phrase, and it seems to describe be at the moment as well.
In Silicon Valley I've seen non-theistic churches sprouting up. I believe the Society for Ethical Culture on New York is similar.
For one thing, full membership requires you to tithe a fixed percentage (2%) of your income to the organization. Maybe I'm just being cheap, but I don't make a ton of money in research and that coupled with living in the most expensive area of the US makes me less inclined to seek out membership in their congregation.
I also feel weird about how they discuss their founder, Felix Adler. The number of times they invoke him seems almost like it's a cult of personality for him / he serves as a Jesus stand-in, and while I can't say I feverishly dislike the man, that was a huge turn off. If the group's observances were less centered around him and more concentrated on a broader variety of humanist figures, I would be able to get behind them a bit more.
The last issue I have with Ethical Culture is that it felt very monocultural / like an echo chamber. I'm fairly liberal by most standards, but I like to have exposure to individuals with different viewpoints from my own, be they conservative or libertarian. In Ethical Culture, any group other than die-hard liberals would meet with stiff opposition rather quickly and this was something I wasn't very comfortable with when I did attend services there. When I was religious, my church congregation was a much better mix of political perspectives (and even theological disagreements occurred occasionally).
In NYC, I've had much better experiences with the Secular Humanist Society of NY. It's much less formal, much more cost-effective for an expensive city (their meetings are in the back rooms of bars for the most part and yearly membership is only around $20 last time I checked) and it feels a lot more egalitarian / less hierarchical.
Or does that deeper topic interplay with meeting and socializing with people?
I think this is very much a density thing. In an urban environment, it would simply occupy too much time and effort to acknowledge people because there are too many of them. That leaves this environment where if someone does start speaking to you, you assume (often correctly) that they want something or are weird.
Whereas if you're out in the middle of nowhere it would be extremely odd not to acknowledge the few people you did meet.
> mentally filed as one-off events not requiring a follow-up -- talking with the person next to you on a plane
The protagonist's "single serving friends" from Fight Club.
Because most problems are not self-correcting -- they require real and conscious effort, and even that can be futile if it goes against larger forces (e.g. economic downturn / necessity).
Poverty, sexism, discrimination, bullying, corrupted politicians, bureaucracy, the examples of not self-correcting issues are countless.
Sexism, discrimination, bullying -- there are no aligned incentives on opposite sides of these, by definition, so no expectation whatsoever that they'd be self-correcting.
If 20 lonely people are sitting in a room, no one's going to stand up and say, "Hey, I bet a lot of us are lonely. Why don't we hang out together?" Even though they're right that everyone is lonely, what are the chances they'll all get along? Or maybe one person goes around to the 19 others and individually asks each one to be friends. The success rate on that is going to be rather low, and it'd take a lot of time.
Your rhetorical question is misguided because it presumes that loneliness implies an already existing effort ("quest") to be less lonely. I think it's safe to say that most lonely people have no idea how to go about being less lonely (and if they do have an idea, it's daunting to them).
There's a useful distinction to be made between lonely and just being alone. Alone is the state of not having anyone else close to you in that moment, lonely is a negative emotion that comes from being alone.
It's quite possible to enjoy being alone, I know I do, my mind is much freer to wander, and I sure I'm not the only person that feels this way. As Byron put it...
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more"
There's also a style of alone that can be very enjoyable, which isn't so widely commented on, and that's to be part of the hustle and bustle of a big city, with lots of human activity around you, but where you're only involved as a passive observer. Buses are good for getting in this state, as is exploring a city by foot (even better in a country where you don't speak the language), but really it's a mindset that's available anytime.
That said, if someone wants to overcome loneliness, it's possible for them to make their own opportunities to interact. Finding people with shared interests is easier than ever, now that we have the Internet.
After 30 you are dead to your genes. The machinery that drives you before then expires, and you have to find another way.
It's pretty hard.
Those take much more than the entire recorded human history to change...
The modern problem is that you don't even know where initiating a conversation falls. Even saying "hello" is a hate crime in some people's minds. Who wants to take the risk? Even if you're with your friends, you never know who's listening at the next table, with their finger on the tweet button... It has a chilling effect.
Edit: I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad change. Perhaps it is in fact better to avoid the small chance of great harm by sacrificing the larger chance of small benefit.
Downvoters: This is not meant to be a political point, just an observation of my own behavior.
I interpreted the term as a way to vet potential friends before becoming actual friends, to reduce the risk of having to deal with a somewhat incompatible person in an adult and non-structured manner.
My hypothesis is that cultural changes have caused interactions with strangers to be largely perceived as unwelcome. When interactions do occur and aren't immediately dismissed, they're mentally filed as one-off events not requiring a follow-up -- talking with the person next to you on a plane, or striking up a conversation in the store.
There is a wide continuum of behaviors and interactions between courteous banter and harassment. This isn't the usual lament about how people don't talk to each other; this is the lament that people don't talk to each other because we don't want to be bothersome to others, even if sometimes we wouldn't mind being talked to.
The fact that 'friend dating' is now a real phenomenon, where people explicitly consent to having a mutual conversation, potentially pre-selected by interests and appearance, lends credence to this hypothesis.