Why it's hard to make friends as an adult

Been thinking about friends and community lately… and why it feels so hard to build and maintain those as we get older. 

And it makes sense. 

When we’re young, community is pretty much built for us because life feels kinda sequential. 

FIRST GRADE… okay, now we’re all in SECOND GRADE… then eventually HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, JOB… 

We’re all kinda living life in the same order, inside the same infrastructure. 

You see the same people in the same places over and over again. And eventually strangers become acquaintances, acquaintances become friends, and friends become community. 

Then… you get older, lol. 

Timelines shift. People move away. Others get married, have kids, fall off the map. Careers take people in different directions. Interests change. Priorities change. 

WE change. 

The infrastructure that used to create connection for us starts disappearing. 

And suddenly everyone starts asking the same question: why is it so hard to make friends as an adult? 

Mel Robbins (who I have mixed opinions on, lol) actually summed up part of this nicely in her book The Let Them Theory. It's not a new concept, but she sums it up well.

She talks about three factors that play a huge role in adult friendship: 

TIMING 

Are we actually in similar seasons of life? 

This one gets more important as we get older because there stops being one universally shared timeline. One friend is single and wants to go out every weekend. Another just had their second kid. Someone else is building a company and working 70 hours a week. Another is traveling constantly. Someone is settling down. Someone else is blowing their life up and starting over. 

Nobody is necessarily doing anything wrong. We just don’t all need the same things from our lives at the same time anymore. 

And naturally, our friendships start reflecting that. 

Married couples often spend more time with married couples. New parents find other new parents. Entrepreneurs gravitate toward other people who understand why they’re answering emails at 11pm. 

Sometimes someone you deeply love simply isn’t in a season where your lives overlap very much (I’ve… been there). 

And sometimes, years later, they do again. 

PROXIMITY 

Are we actually AROUND each other? Physically. 

This sounds obvious, but I think we underestimate how much friendship is built through sheer repetition. You don’t necessarily become close to your classmates because you’ve conducted an exhaustive search and determined that these are the most compatible humans available. 

They’re just… there. Every day. 

You have lunch together. You walk home together. You sit next to each other. You accumulate thousands of tiny interactions without scheduling any of them. 

Adult life removes a lot of that accidental repetition. Now every interaction requires logistics. 

“Are you free Thursday?” “No, how about next Tuesday?” “I can do Tuesday after 7.” “I’m out of town.” 

Even in LA, an East Sider and a West Sider can basically be in a long-distance relationship. 

Proximity creates opportunities for connection that intention alone sometimes can’t. It’s why the gym you go to, the coffee shop you work from, the neighborhood you live in, the events you consistently attend… these things matter more than we realize. 

Showing up somewhere once lets you meet people. Showing up REPEATEDLY lets you know them. 

ENERGY

This might be the biggest one. 

Because even if the timing works… even if you’re physically near each other… someone still has to DO something. 

Someone has to send the text, suggest coffee, make the reservation, or introduce themselves… 

Someone has to risk the tiny possibility of hearing “no.” 

And as adults, we’re tired lol. 

We got careers, relationships, family, errands, inboxes, responsibilities, and 900 other things competing for our attention. 

So it’s very easy for two people who genuinely like each other to sit there waiting for the other person to initiate. 

And nothing happens!! 

That last one has been hitting me a lot lately. 

Because I think a lot of us are walking around waiting for someone else to go first. Waiting to be invited, for someone to introduce themselves, for someone to suggest coffee… to tell us we belong there. I’ve done this for a huge part of my life… and I cringe now looking back on it. 

Because I think the answer is incredibly simple: 

JUST. GO. FIRST. 

If you like someone’s jacket, tell them. If you’re new somewhere, say, “Hey, I’m new here.” If you meet someone interesting, ask them to grab coffee. If you keep wishing your friends got together more often, organize the damn dinner. If the community you’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist, start bringing the people together yourself. 

There’s this strange thing I’ve noticed about people: we’re all a little afraid of each other until somebody opens the door. 

And it often takes remarkably little to open it, lol. A compliment. A question. An invitation. “Hey, what are you working on?” “Wanna grab coffee sometime?” “I’m having a few people over Thursday. Come through.” 

Someone just has to go first, man. 

And often… it’s gotta be YOU. 

I had a bigger version of this realization recently. 

There was a music-industry event happening in Los Angeles that I wanted to participate in. I reached out about speaking. They totally downplayed me… then ignored me. An older version of me probably would have interpreted that as the end of the story. 

“Guess I wasn’t invited.” 

Instead, I started thinking about all the live electronic musicians and communities I’d been meeting around LA. I was already showing up to their events. I knew these people existed. So I thought: why am I waiting for somebody else to create the room? 

I put together MORE – a small gathering built around musicianship, originality, risk and evolution in live electronic music. I invited the communities. I invited the artists. I found the space. And we made our own room. 

Something interesting happened when I stopped trying to get let into somebody else’s thing: I became an epicenter of my own. 

Not because I appointed myself one. Because I went first! 

And I think that distinction shows up everywhere. 

Dating. Friendship. Career. Community. Creative work. 

So much of life gets spent waiting for some invisible authority to tap us on the shoulder and say: 

“K, you’re invited now.” 

But there may be no invitation coming. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone rejected you. 

Sometimes everyone else is waiting, too! 

So… the zag? 

Go first. 

Introduce yourself. Compliment the jacket. Plan the dinner. Send the text. Start the group. Make the thing. Create the room. 

You don’t need to wait to be let in. 

Go first… and watch what happens.