Loneliness, Effort and Desire: Modern Friendship in a Nutshell

And I answer a reader question about how to make friendships stick

A quick lesson

In my book, Modern Friendship, I touch on three important ideas to explain why maintaining friendships today feels harder than pushing a Volvo uphill while wearing flip-flops.

Loneliness
We live in a society that resembles a spoke (think: a bicycle wheel). We have many friends from different parts of our lives, but they only share a common history with us, not each other.

Effort
We have unprecendented flexibility with who we can befriend, but the burden of keeping those friendships active rests on our shoulders alone. Most of us don't have help from an institution (a school, a church) to keep friendships afloat. It’s up to us, individually, to be our own personal social director.

Desire
Every friendship needs a clear and compelling ABOUT so both people make time for the friendships. Friendship ABOUTs can change, become outdated or be absent.

Um, this whole friendship thing sounds like a lot of work lolsob *wipes off sweaty brow*

Help me, Anna

With this in mind, a reader recently reached out to me with a question about how to make friendships stick. You can see how it touches on the themes of loneliness, effort and desire.

Hi Anna,

I've noticed that in this stage of life, most of the women I'd like to be friends with already have full lives and no room for new connections. As a successful entrepreneur and mom of young kids, I am really craving connection with others in that same place.

The problem: they've all already got friends and impossibly busy schedules, so my attempts to initiate go nowhere. Whether it's one-on-one (a coffee or walk), with kids (a playdate), or in a group (organizing a meetup/support group for local entrepreneur moms), they're not into it. Whether it's personal (see a museum or check out a fall festival) or professional (attend a networking event or brainstorm about our business challenges together), it doesn't go anywhere.

I try a few times, get a clear message that they're not interested, and move on to the next person. This must have happened a dozen times at least already.

There's Claire, who shares my passion for mental health and is trying to launch a nonprofit bringing free mental health care to kids in need (on top of her job as a therapist and raising two kids). There's Melanie, who runs a local meetup that's grown to thousands of members. Jules, who has three kids and leads advocacy efforts in DC. Talia and Liz, both local Ukrainian moms like me who run immensely successful nonprofits supporting Ukraine.

Meeting these kinds of people is not the problem. They're friendly and polite when I run into them. The conversation flows smoothly. But they are closed off to any attempts to deepen the relationship.

And trust me, I get it. I can see how busy they are. I have the same busy schedule - the only reason I am making time for connection is because I'm new to the area and feel lonely. These ladies (plus a couple men) are not lonely, so they have no incentive to turn their schedules upside down to find time for me.

In the meantime, I'm hanging out with people who have more time, but they don't understand huge parts of who I am and the relationships are necessarily limited by that.

Do you have any advice for me and others in a similar situation (hopefully it's not just me!)

Sincerely,
At A Loss

At A Loss, on the surface, it seems like you’re doing everything “right” by being open to these connections. However, you don’t seem to be getting traction.

So what’s going on here?

I made a video explaining it all!!!!!!!

What do you think about my advice? Do you agree or disagree? Tell me in the comments!!

Cheers,

Anna