Marisa Franco - 5 skills to make friends as an adult

  • 2019
Table of contents hide 1 1. Initiative 2 2. Acceptance 3 3. Security 4 4. Persistence 5 5. Open

If making friends as an adult is a crisis for you, you are not alone. It is much simpler to go into solitude instead of making friends. Even when we are surrounded by people, we may have no idea how to make those people friends. While I have been writing a book about making friends as an adult, I have realized several skills that each of us can cultivate to make friends. Here are five.

1. Initiative

People assume that friendship must begin "organically" and appear in their lives as the years go by, but this is not true when we are adults. When we were young, we used to find ourselves in contexts that have all the ingredients to nurture friendships: continued interaction without planning and shared vulnerability. As adults, we no longer have these contexts by default. Adults who have "aggressive friendships" or a radical responsibility in making friends are those who own them.

What does this look like? Invite a co-worker to go for coffee, attend events, take classes, introduce others to the gym, attend meetings.

2. Acceptance

One myth about making friends is that we have to be fascinating, charismatic, or funny to enchant others. But to be the type of person that others like is not to be particularly surprising, but to show that you like and approve of others. People like those who accept them too. Think about it, who would you rather be a friend of: someone charismatic, or someone who makes you feel comfortable and accepted?

What does this mean? Flatter others, tell someone about a time when you thought about them while they were gone, scan for things you like in each person you meet, share if someone made you learn something new, show enthusiasm when you meet people.

3. Security

Here is why making friends requires security: you find yourself horribly exposed when you try to connect with another person. We run the risk of being rejected. Safe people assume that others like them, and this helps them gather the courage to initiate interactions and persevere in building friendships. When someone rejects them, they know that it has nothing to do with who they are. In addition, they do not quickly accept rejection in an ambiguous circumstance. After all, safe people trust that they are nice and have valuable aspects to offer to other people.

What to do? Do not take someone else's response to you as personal, assume that others have a positive intention (they were probably busy and did not respond, instead of hating you), trust that others like you until they explicitly tell you otherwise, have a friendly internal dialogue.

4. Persistence

Making friends is a process for which many of us do not believe we have time or energy. Even after starting, it can be easy to fall and our blooming friendship wilt. Holding on to the idea that friendship takes time and is a process, can help us gauge our expectations, and not put pressure on others during the early stages of interaction. Just because you don't feel like your best friend doesn't mean they won't be friends. Friendship is cultivated by spending time together, and your friendship will probably evolve as you get to know each other more.

How to act? Stay optimistic about new friends (and also don't make premature judgments about other potential friendships), continue to introduce yourself in social gatherings.

5. Open up

Accepting radical responsibility in making friends also means that it is your obligation to open up. When you meet someone, at first make sure you are constant and find time to connect. It's simple to be bitter and feel like others should approach you, but that kind of strategy will make you bitter. Also, with the passage of time, friendships tend to be more reciprocal, so just because you put more effort into making a friend now does not mean it will always be that way. Reciprocity will come, but in the earliest stages of the relationship you have to be prepared to open and approach yourself.

How? Invite someone to share, write to someone to see how it is, comment on someone's post on social networks.

It is difficult to work on making friends as an adult, a type of work that many of us are not used to because it used to happen effortlessly. Starting and facing a potential rejection makes us vulnerable, but starting is also necessary to connect. Using these five skills to make friends as an adult is to cling to the idea that we have the power to create the social world we want for ourselves, and that we are prepared to act on it.

Translated by: Diana Mart nez, editor and translator in the big family hermandadblanca.org

Channeled by: Marisa Franco, a former professor at Georgia State University, where she became an expert on the subject of friendship and human relations.

Original page: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/platonic-love/201909/5-skills-making-friends-adult

Next Article