Social question - When did you meet your friends?

[Gorgon_Heap]

Amid lengthy conversation with some recently made acquaintances some months ago, we discussed my own and a mutual friend's lifelong relationship and people got to asking about their own friends.

Which got me wondering about where these friendships develop. My buddy and I have been close since childhood, and many of my other friendships have lasted many, many years, but other groups of people I know have only been recent.

So what's most common? Or more common? Where and when do people make the most lasting friendships? School, college, work, or activities/hobbies?

(I do wonder about the possibly skewed demographic while asking this on a geek-oriented internet message board, but I'm working with what I've got where anonymity is still safe.)

[Knaight]

Depends on the friend. Some from school, some from work, some from hobby spaces, and then spread from all of these (where you meet and hit it off with friends of friends) along with spread from family.

There's definitely a level of drift, where the further back a friend group was the fewer people are left from it, in terms of people drifting away, losing touch after people move, etc. Such is life.

Some of these could technically be broken into an ex girlfriends or friends through exes group, which might be useful in a comparison set, but everyone I've dated I've met through the same list of things I've made friends in.

[Aedilred]

Mostly school and university. My university friends can be divided fairly simply between the people I lived with, and people I shared a society with.

In my experience, friendship is formed principally on the basis of proximity and time spent together in a social environment, because it creates more shared experiences that offer opportunities for bonding. Yes, it helps if you have compatible personalities or common interests because you're more likely to tolerate them for long enough for those experiences to develop, but forming friendships purely on that basis will require a lot more active effort, on both parts.

To take a university example, you're probably more likely to form a lasting friendship with your roommate than with someone you meet at a lecture. You might share more common interests with the person at the lecture (indeed, you probably do, because you're attending the same lecture) but you're going to see your roommate every day in a fairly freeform environment, rather than once or twice a week in a fairly restricted setting.

This is why it can be - and in my experience has been - difficult to make new friends once you're a gainfully employed adult. The people you spend most time with are at work, but a lot of people draw a line between colleagues and friends, which can make it difficult to establish any kind of proper friendship with anyone there. If your colleagues are up for socialising outside work, then this can be a fruitful source of friends, but it's also common for them to decline once one of you leaves the job - because you might find that you talked mostly about what was going on at work and now that you don't have a shared environment you no longer have so much to talk about.

Otherwise, you may meet people at clubs and social events, but that's usually for a couple of hours a week and unless you hit it off so well that you agree to meet up outside that, it will take years to develop the same level of social bond.

The other problem I have found is that as people get older, they tend not to have so much room in their diary themselves for establishing and maintaining new friendships.

I have made friends through hobbies since becoming an adult, mostly online, because the remote nature of the contact means you can converse and "hang out" more conveniently for longer, without the need to specifically commit to a chunk of time to go to a place and/or see a person. But otherwise, most of the new friends I've formed as an adult (which have been few in number) have been friends of existing friends, to whom I've been introduced.

Obviously, though, where you are on the introvert-extrovert spectrum will make a massive difference to how easy you find it to make new friends, at any time of life.

[Tvtyrant]

At this point I have all of one friend and one sibling I talk to regularly, and it feels overwhelming sometimes. My best friend I met at the tail end of high school, 13 years ago. Since I sit my nephews daily, work, date and talk to my BF and brother daily I find I actually socialize too much and feel burnt out by the end of the day.

[Tarmor]

My main social group are almost all people I went to University with about 30 years ago, and pre-Covid-19, we were getting together 2-3 times a month. There are three exceptions - one guy from this group I only see a few times a year, mostly due to his work & family commitments, and another friend would probably be a regular but for moving interstate a decade back and more recently overseas. This second friend who still keeps in good contact despite distance I actually met at High School. He was two years lower than I, but we've always had common interests (most notably RPGs) and we probably would have drifted apart except that he ended up at the same University as me and got along with the new friends I'd made there. The third friend was someone I worked with and again, common interests (especially RPGs) and getting along with the other guys has made him a semi-regular. He'd love to join us every time we get together, but his work/family means he's always available to join in.

[Mastikator]

My main source of acquaintances is my friends' friends. Sometimes I convert acquaintances into friends but mostly I prefer not to. I don't have any close friends, the people I'm closest to is my family, whether they count as "friends" is a question I leave to the philosophers of the playground.

[Scarlet Knight]

My oldest and truest friends are from college. One introduced me to my wife and I'm godfather to his son. In turn, his other son married my goddaughter.

Never really made any at work that stuck. They tend to dissolve when you no longer work together.

I also tend to have family fill up my time & activities (ie go to ball games, operas, etc).

[Telonius]

Pushing 40 here. I can count on one finger the number of grade school friends I still keep in touch with on social media. Maybe 5 or 6 from high school. More from college. I don't live anywhere near the place I grew up and went to high school, but am still in the same city as my college (though a lot of my classmates moved out).

My actual, physical get-togethers have been severely limited due to family health concerns (even before COVID). Making sure all of the physical housework gets done is a full time job, on top of my full time job. It's basically my D&D group, and that's it.

[JeenLeen]

My closest friends are those I've known from elementary/middle school onward, but it's only 3 people. We don't get together as often since I had kids, but still hang occassionally. One of them moved out-of-state for work, but we get together when he visits. Those are probably the guys I can be most honest with.

I have other friends, mostly from church. (Some overlap with church/university friends, but all of the "kids my age" from college have moved away. So we talk when they visit family, but aren't that close in a social or knowing-daily-details sense.) I'm lucky in that there's a small "nerdy" contingent at my church, and we're also all parents with kids of similar age, so there's a lot of overlap for stuff to discuss. But, between work and family, it's hard to actually hang out.

I've never really made close friends at work. There's a couple people I have lunch with a few times a year. I think I would've become closer to a couple people if we had shared hobbies, but we basically just have enjoying programming and being honest about the inanities of the office environment in common.

[Willie the Duck]

I have one friend I knew from age 5 onwards who I just saw (we both did a socially distancing visit to our respective parents, who live 2 blocks away). I have 5-10 friends from high school that I keep up with regularly, if not see (back when everyone still came 'home' for the holidays, we saw each other more). I have been to college so many times (3 undergrad attempts, then 3 graduate programs) that I have 1-2 people from each of those whom I keep up with. I have two main gaming groups. One spun off of my FLGS from back in the day. The other was recommended by a HS buddy who knew I gamed and had some former coworkers who also did, but otherwise was unrelated to my HS circle. I have a few friends who I met through socially conscious volunteer work. I have friends who are former coworkers (from banking, programming, public health, and law, so 4 groups). I of course have a bunch of friends through my wife, including people who work or work with her brother, went to school with said brother, work with my wife, are childhood friends with my wife, and a few of her cousins. Finally, I have a few women who are either exes, or people that I met through dating but didn't get to the level of girlfriend.

That's well past monkeysphere levels, and clearly I'm not really on top of everyone's lives like I could (actually probably can't). Mind you, with the TBI and how exhausted I am at the end of the day, even before the Covid-inspired isolation, much of our connections involved emails or shared activities, rather than specifically going out and visiting with each and every one.

[danzibr]

Wow... I’m kind of jealous of you all.

I keep in touch with 0 people from anything before college. Then kind of 1 guy from college. Then more or less 1 guy from school/work.

[Mavezius]

I met my best friends during my university years. In general I love this period of great parties, entertainment with friends every weekend, cool communication and a lot of acquaintances. 90 percent of people with whom I am now close friends, including friendly families, are my friends who came into being during the university.

[Velaryon]

My oldest friend is my next door neighbor growing up. We met when we were both babies, so I literally cannot remember a time before I knew him. We only talk about once every year or two anymore, but it's the kind of friendship where we can pick back up where we left off regardless of distance or time.

Gonna leave out some people from grade school that I'm not really in contact with anymore other than being Facebook friends who might wish each other happy birthday or comment on life milestones like marriages, new jobs, etc.

My next oldest friends that I have any contact with anymore are from high school age (I'm 36 now so that's ~20 years ago). Got a couple of those that I talk to somewhat regularly. We don't see each other in person super often, but I game with some on PS4, Roll20, etc.

Got a few more from college and from just after college. Some I'm in regular contact with, some I see a couple times a year, some less.

Only really two or three friends that I've made within the last couple years, other than coworkers whom I like, I guess.