I’ve always had trouble making friends.
I was the awkward kid. The nerd. The teacher’s pet. I liked school, liked knowing the answers and never quite mastered the art of pretending I didn’t care about things just enough to be cool.
And unlike the people who can still get together with friends they’ve known since kindergarten, I don’t have childhood friends.
I don’t have college friends either.
Or university friends.
Somehow, I managed to make it through all those places where you’re supposedly forming friendships that will last a lifetime without making any lifelong friends.
There were people, of course. Acquaintances. People I liked. A few actual friends here and there. But friendship has never come naturally or easily to me.
Then I got married.
My first husband had a way of pushing away the few friends I did have, and over time, my already small circle became even smaller. Looking back, I can see how isolated I’d become. At the time, though, it happened gradually enough that I don’t think I fully recognized what I was losing.
Then I became a mom.
And motherhood is strange when it comes to friendship, because suddenly you’re surrounded by other women.
There are playgroups, preschool hallways, and school pickup. Birthday parties. Baseball bleachers. Soccer sidelines. Field trips. Years and years of standing beside other moms and talking while our kids do whatever it is they’ve brought us there to do.
I met a lot of women that way.
Some of them were literally in my phone as “Kieran’s Mom” or “Kelsey’s Mom Annette.”
Sometimes I knew their names.
Sometimes I only knew their names because they’d been written on a birthday invitation.
We exchanged numbers because somebody needed a ride, or there was a playdate to arrange, or we were trying to figure out who was bringing what to a school event. We could spend hours together at a hockey tournament or stand talking in a school parking lot long after pickup was technically over.
Some I genuinely liked. Some I saw several times a week for years. We talked about our kids, our husbands, our jobs, our schools, our frustrations and all the ridiculous logistics of keeping a family running.
But proximity isn’t the same thing as friendship.
Sometimes the kids were the only reason we were in each other’s lives. When they changed schools, quit an activity or stopped being friends themselves, the relationship between the moms quietly disappeared too.
I don’t say that as a criticism. I think that’s simply the reality of a lot of mom friendships. Our children bring us together, and sometimes that’s as far as the connection goes.
For someone who had never found making new friends particularly easy in the first place, motherhood gave me a much bigger circle of acquaintances.
It didn’t necessarily give me a circle of close friends.
Then I found my invisible friends
Over the past 15 years or so, something interesting has happened.
I have found some really good friends.
I call them my invisible friends.
I met them on the internet.
Some came through work. Some through shared interests. Some through social media or online communities. They started as names on a screen and somehow, over time, became people I genuinely care about.
And they’re not really invisible anymore.
I’ve met many of them in person at conferences. We have text chats and group chats. We check in on each other. Every once in a while, we manage to have an actual meetup. Some of these women know what’s happening in my life in far more detail than people I see regularly.
They’re real friends.
They’re just not necessarily here.
And that’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately.
I don’t have a lot of local friends.
I don’t have a big group of women nearby who I can text on a Saturday morning and ask if anyone wants to grab lunch. I don’t have many people I can spontaneously ask to go for a walk, have lunch or come over because I feel like talking to another human being.
Ironically, the internet taught me something I spent much of my life doubting: I actually can make friends.
Apparently, I’m just particularly good at making new friends who live several states away.
Working from home doesn’t exactly help
There’s another practical problem: I work from home.
I love many things about working from home, but expanding my local social circle isn’t one of its benefits.
There’s no coworker in the next office who gradually becomes a friend. Nobody to grab lunch with. No conversations in the break room. No after-work drink that turns into discovering you actually really like the person you’ve been sitting beside for two years.
My commute doesn’t provide many opportunities either. I walk from one part of my house to another.
Working from home means I have to be much more deliberate about getting out into the world.
And when you’re already someone who doesn’t find making new friends as adults particularly easy, it’s remarkably convenient to stay home.
I have work to do. I have a house full of things that need doing. I can communicate with clients, colleagues and friends all day without actually seeing another person.
I could probably go days without needing to leave the house.
That’s comfortable.
It’s not necessarily conducive to making local friends.
So I’ve had to put myself out there.
I volunteered for something I actually care about
One of the best things I’ve done is volunteer my time with an organization that genuinely piques my interest.
That last part matters. I didn’t go looking for an activity with the sole purpose of finding friends. I got involved because I was interested in the work and wanted to contribute.
But something else happened.
I made friends.
Not instantly. I didn’t walk into my first meeting and emerge three hours later with a new social circle. It happened gradually. I kept showing up. I worked with the same people. We had things to talk about because we already shared an interest. Conversations that started around the work wandered into our lives. I got to know people beyond their names on a meeting agenda. And some of those people have become friends.
For me, that’s probably one of the most important lessons in all of this. Maybe making new friends in adulthood works better when friendship isn’t the only objective. Do something you’re genuinely interested in. Volunteer for a cause you care about. Join an organization. Take a class because you actually want to learn the thing. Get involved in your community.
At the very least, you’ve spent your time doing something worthwhile. And you may repeatedly find yourself in a room with people who already have something in common with you. For an awkward nerd, that’s a much better starting point than walking into a room of strangers and hoping to dazzle them with my social skills.
Making new friends as adults is surprisingly vulnerable
There is something almost embarrassingly vulnerable about trying to make a friend as a grown woman.
Kids can walk up to another kid and ask, “Do you want to play?”
Adults don’t really do that.
Imagine meeting a woman you like and saying, “You seem great. Would you like to be my friend?”
I would rather crawl under the table.
Instead, we have this strange adult ritual.
We have a good conversation. We discover we have things in common. We laugh. We say: “We should get together sometime!” And then nobody does anything.
A few weeks later, between memes, we text, “When ARE we going to have lunch?” and then text more memes.
Six months later, we see each other again. “We REALLY should get together!”
Still nothing.
One of the things I’m learning about making new friends in adulthood is that someone has to be the one to actually follow through. Not “sometime.” Tuesday. Lunch. At noon. At that new café we were talking about trying.
I’m starting with people I already sort of know
When I think about ways of making new friends, my first instinct is to imagine that I need to go somewhere completely new and meet entirely new people.
Maybe I don’t.
There are already women around the edges of my life whom I like.
The woman I always enjoy talking to when I run into her. The acquaintance whose Facebook posts make me laugh. The person I know through work who I’ve always thought I might like outside of work too. Someone I’ve met through volunteering whom I always end up talking to long after the meeting is technically over.
Maybe friendship doesn’t always start with meeting someone new.
Maybe sometimes it starts by paying more attention to the people who are already there.
I’ve begun thinking less about “finding friends” and more about noticing potential friendships.
Who do I look forward to talking to?
Who makes conversation easy?
Who leaves me thinking, I really like her?
And then comes the difficult part: doing something about it.
I’m trying to make an actual plan
“We should get lunch sometime” is apparently where potential friendships go to die.
I’m guilty of saying it.
Other people have said it to me.
We all mean it when we say it.
And then life happens.
So I’m trying to get better at turning vague enthusiasm into something concrete.
“Do you want to get lunch next Thursday?”
“Want to go for a walk this weekend?”
“There’s a thing happening Saturday. Do you want to go?”
It’s a tiny difference in wording, but it’s actually a fairly big emotional leap.
Because now the other person has to answer.
And yes, they might say no.
I’m learning not to treat every no like a rejection
This may be particularly important for those of us who have always found friendship difficult.
When you already carry around the belief that you’re not particularly good at making friends, every unanswered text or declined invitation can feel like evidence.
See? This is why I don’t do this.
But adulthood is complicated. People really are busy. They have work deadlines and sick kids and aging parents and appointments and spouses working shifts and weeks where they’re barely holding everything together.
A “no” to lunch isn’t necessarily a “no” to me. Sometimes it actually is a no to me. That’s okay too. I’m not going to click with everybody. Everybody isn’t going to click with me. I don’t need everybody.
I’m looking for a few people with whom friendship feels mutual.
I think repetition matters more than chemistry
We tend to talk about friendship as if we’re supposed to meet someone and immediately know we’ve found our person.
But when I look at the friendships that have actually lasted in my life — including my invisible friends — most of them weren’t built in one dramatic moment.
They grew through repetition.
Another conversation.
Another message.
Another conference.
Another meeting.
Another joke.
Another check-in.
Another shared experience.
My volunteering experience has reinforced that for me. I didn’t need to manufacture a friendship. I just needed to keep showing up somewhere that interested me, with people I enjoyed being around, and give those relationships time to develop.
That’s made me rethink a lot of the usual advice about joining groups, taking classes or volunteering. The activity itself may not matter nearly as much as whether I keep going. A one-time workshop gives me one chance to meet someone. A weekly class gives me months.
A single community event may be fun. Volunteering regularly means seeing the same people again and again. Familiarity gives friendship somewhere to grow.
That may be especially useful for people like me, because I have never been particularly good at walking into a room full of strangers and charming everyone within 20 minutes. I do much better when I have time.
Mom friends don’t have to stay “mom friends”
This is something I wish I’d understood better when my children were younger.
Sometimes we mentally file people according to how we met them.
School mom. Soccer mom. Dance mom. Neighbor. Coworker.
But occasionally there’s someone underneath the category whom we genuinely like.
The kids don’t have to remain best friends for the mothers to stay friends. We don’t have to talk about our children every time we see one another.
And as my kids have gotten older, I’m much more interested in the women themselves.
What are you reading?
What are you doing?
What’s going on in your life?
What interests you now that so much of our identity doesn’t have to revolve around arranging somebody else’s activities?
Maybe one of the ways of making new friends as a mom is realizing that the woman you already know as somebody’s mother might actually be someone you’d choose for yourself.
I’m not trying to build a giant friend group
This has taken some pressure off. I’m not trying to recreate the social life I think I was supposed to have had at 17.
I don’t need a group of twelve women who’ve all known each other for 30 years and have matching bracelets and an annual girls’ weekend. That ship has sailed. Also, twelve people sounds exhausting.
I would like a few local friendships that feel comfortable.
Someone to text about lunch.
Someone who wants to go for a walk.
Someone who sends me something ridiculous because she knows I’ll find it funny.
Someone I can invite to lunch without both of us needing to consult calendars for the second Tuesday of next month.
That’s enough. Maybe more than enough.
My invisible friends taught me that I’m not actually bad at friendship
This may be the biggest thing I’ve learned. For a long time, I think I confused having difficulty making friends with being bad at friendship. They’re not the same thing.
My invisible friends are proof. We’ve sustained relationships across cities, states and countries. We’ve gone from usernames and profile pictures to real conversations, real support and real history.
And now the friendships I’ve made through volunteering are proof too.
The problem wasn’t that I was incapable of connecting with people. Maybe I just needed the right people. Maybe I needed time. Maybe I needed spaces where being a nerd, having opinions, asking questions and caring deeply about things weren’t characteristics I needed to tone down.
The internet gave me some of those spaces. Getting involved in something I care about has given me another. Now I’d just like to find a little more of it close to home.
Somebody still has to ask
I don’t think I’m ever going to become the woman who effortlessly walks into a room and leaves with five new best friends. I’m still awkward. Still a nerd. I’d probably still be the teacher’s pet if anyone would give me the opportunity.
But I know something now that I didn’t know when I was the kid standing on the edge of the group.
I’m capable of friendship. I’m capable of finding people I love and who love me back. And I’ve learned that sometimes making new friends means doing something uncomfortable first.
Leaving the house.
Joining the group.
Volunteering.
Showing up again.
Starting the conversation.
Sending the text.
Suggesting the lunch.
Maybe it’s not about becoming a completely different, more outgoing version of myself.
Maybe it’s just about putting myself in places where I can find people I genuinely like — and then being brave enough to let them know I’d like to see them again.
The grown-up version of what I never found easy to say as a kid:
“Do you want to play?”
Except now it’s:
“Want to grab lunch?”
