Is it possible to have a lot of friends once you're out of high school and college?

[disneyfan90]

I recently went to a family friend's high school graduation party. Pretty much the entire room was filled with her friends from school--there were so many of them. At least 80. Everybody else was a family friend like me.

 

This made me think back to when I was in high school and I had a lot of friends. I wasn't a social butterfly by any means, but it was just so easy to make friends. You naturally spent so much time with a ton of people your own age. Now that I'm in my mid-20s, I'm finding that it's harder to make friends like that. Of course, I attend things like meetups. I've met some awesome people, but I haven't made any lasting friendships. The only real friends I have now are 2 or 3 close friends from college.

 

When you're an adult, is it possible to make friends the way you did in high school and college if you put in the effort? Is it really possible to have a wide network of friends?

[d0nnivain]

Some people are naturally good at making new friends. Like you I found it easier to make friends in school but as an adult some of my best "new" friends came through shared activities: work, various summer beach house shares I did, volunteer clubs, business clubs etc -- things where circumstances forced us together through a mutual interest for a long period of time.

[Morro72]

One factor that stands in the way of making new friends is that, as you get farther out of school, a lot of the people you meet are people who you are in competition with, in one way or another. Even if you're not in direct competition (e.g. for a job, a promotion, a spouse), they may be in a position to influence your competitive situation in one area or another. This by no means keeps you from forming friendships, but you will need to be increasingly careful to understand and manage the relationship between these friendships and the rest of your life. It's not a bad thing, just a fact about adult life.

 

You will also learn to really treasure and work hard to maintain the "you can always count on me, no matter what" friendships that you have. There won't necessarily be a lot of these, but they are the ones that count.

[ASG]

I have more friends now than I ever did in school, as I've added them up... So I still have some friends from school, then some from university, then some from the various jobs I've had over the years, then some from hobbies...

 

Not all of them are CLOSE friends, though. There are just a handful of those. But I know I can count on most of them (the not so close friends, that is) if I need a shoulder to cry on or am going through a rough patch in life.