Adult friendships don’t seem as organic or effortless as friendships in our younger days. Sometimes, I can be surrounded by a group of women, talking and having a great time. However, at the end of the night, I leave feeling more lonely than when I came. Other days, I see a ton of people, many whom consider me a friend, but wonder how many of them actually see or know me.
Building Friendships
As much as we attribute the difficulty of making friendships as adults to busy schedules, it’s more than that. Some days, it seems like we are sabotaging potential new friendships by letting our internal narrative take over. At the same time, we are often actively stunting the growth of our current friendships. Getting inside our heads, we convince ourselves that no one has time to hang out, so we just shouldn’t ask. Or worse yet, we convince ourselves that we are undesirable as friends.
These are both lies, and we must rewrite the narrative of our friendships.
To do so, we need to focus on three main areas: Availability, Authenticity, and Mindfulness.
Availability
In today’s day and age, it’s the norm to be rushing to school drop off, work, school pick-up, musical rehearsal, baseball practice, church functions, etc. We have allowed our schedules to become packed and complicated with endless to-do’s and not any space for much else.
This is sabotaging our relationships because we come to the conclusion that we “just don’t have time for friends.” That needs to change.
If we fill our days and weeks with more and more to-do’s, we are ultimately saying that our time is more important than our relationships. Instead, we should be thinking of our relationships as a resource, especially if we are wanting a return on our investment.
Authenticity
Shakespeare said it best when he penned Hamlet and included the line, “To thine own self be true.” There is no better advice when it comes to how to make, keep, or deepen a friendship. When we try to impress others by pretending we are something we are not, we are essentially lying to them and ourselves. Pretending to be something/someone we are not also takes a lot of work and is exhausting. In addition to this, it also means that the fake person they might end up liking isn’t a real person; rather, it’s someone we have created so that we would be accepted.
Best to be ourselves, flaws and all, and let the chips fall where they may.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness takes a variety of shapes in friendships. To me, being mindful means fully focusing on my friends when I am physically present with them. I typically demonstrate this by making sure my phone is turned on silent so that I have no distractions. In addition to this, I make time to be with my friends at times that aren’t solely play-date related. Because while that might feel like “friend time,” moms always have one ear/eye open when their children are around, causing them to be distracted. In addition to being present physically, we need to let our friends know that they are on our minds even when we aren’t together. Check in with each other via text or phone call to follow up previous discussions or just to say hi.
Making deep connections as an adult doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it out to be. And while yes, it does take some effort on our part, the returns on the investment are well worth it.