me_irl

I make 3 new friends at every stage of my life, career, and living situation. I also lose those same 3 friends and never speak to them again if any one of those variables changes.

Ok well I followed you with the lost part, but I’m lagging behind on making new ones…
- I'll be your friend. But also I won't. Call me if you want to hang, and I will make a poor excuse
God, down to the exact number...
Same.

Both are mentally and emotionally taxing
- The extroverts feed on us like we're their cattle

i mean i'm well over 40 and haven't seen anything to demonstrate that life is better with more than 3 friends

I need 4, but that's because one of my hobbies is being in a 5 piece band. I need the other 4 people to carry my untalented ass and I can't be in a band with folks I'm not friends with. They like me because due to my obsession with being on time and prepared we get called back for gigs and booking agents (or sound guys, honestly) recommend us as local openers for large acts because we never let them down.

Then after 20 years of friendship you learn their real name

That's true, although I lost contact with those friends so now I'm stuck at 0 :c

I'm a friend :3
me too thanks
Yeah my 3 friends all decided to do meth so I quit highschool and got a job.

Unironically yes

Had this. Stopped because being social with them was a hassle. Finding people you enjoy being with goes a long way.

Don't ever feel stuck.

How do you get adopted or befriended? I'm too anxious to talk to people and don't go outside much.
- Initiative, feel the vibes for compatibility, try to find out subtly if he/she has good friends that might be interesting and do the same thing for him/her.
  People are awkward, they all feel nervous to a certain degree. Be forgiving with yourself and others, but don't bite more than you can chew.
  Really it's about saying to hell with privacy and not thinking about intruding in other ppl lives: most of the time they actually like it if it was a cool interaction at least!
  If you really are nervous, try starting with saying randomly hi to strangers that aren't in a hurry maybe add a platitude, ask the time by "accidentally" forgetting your phone, bum a cigarette off the cool guy, comment on the weather for old people. Give a compliment! Enjoy living, and don't mind if you ever get a bad interaction, sometimes you randomly encounter someone at their lowest point or at their worst because of a personal problem, hangryness, or they just talk rudely by habit.
  And if you want to meet specific people with specific interest: where do they hang out? Online? Offline? Then you proceed with a friendly hello or smile.
- Develop a hobby and interact with others in it
  We may be autistic

Quality > quantity

Is there a correlation, inverse or otherwise, between the quality of friendships and the quantity of friends?
- I don't know about other people, but my body produces a limited amount of friendship juice

I'm actively working on making a new friend and it's some work, but I only have 1 really close friend and I'd like more. 3 would be great.

I think for our next date I'll take him to the graveyard so we can memento mori among the stones.

Its funny because when I had the time 3 was about the number of folks at any one time I hung out extensively with unless you include rpg groups because that met regularly.

I'm baffled by some of the responses in this thread. Yes, it's harder to make friends in one's 20's than in the teens, and harder to make friends in one's 30's than in one's 20's.

But to act like it's inevitable, or even desirable, to not make new friendships after the age of 20 seems like overstating things.

The people you grow up with and befriend at a young age share those similar roots. That will always be valuable in friendships.

And the people you befriend later in life, through your hobbies, your career, your neighborhood, your mutual relationships also share those commonalities, and that will bring something valuable to those relationships, too. One of the most things I love about meeting, dating, and marrying my wife is that it mingled our two worlds of friends, and a lot of the friends I met through her in my 30's are now some of my best friends today.

I rely on local friends for things that require geographical closeness. I rely on fellow parents for parenting support (including favors, advice, even jokes/rants). I am close with former and current colleagues, and we talk shop, careers, people we know, and sometimes refer each other to job opportunities or other work.

There is a certain richness that comes from multiple social relationships evolving and developing over time, including repeat acquaintances, superficial friendships, all the way to very close or very intimate friendships. We're all just walking through life in different stages, and each stage has different needs and opportunities to rely on and provide support to your social network.

Sir/ma'am, this is a Wendy's..
- I'm making lifelong friends in this Wendy's right now.

I dont like these General statements on boys and girls. I dont think its good to strengthen the stereotype by stating things like that.

Of course i do know a bunch of men, where this is true and then i go "haha so true" and stereotype is reassured. But when i think of it, i know quite a lot of men that have larger circles of friends and also met them much later in der lifes. Also i do know women that only have 3 friends from highschool.

Its just another Version oft the stupid stereotype all women are extroverted and all men are introverted. Its not true. And the stereotype might influence how men and women behave in the end.

I guess whats influencing the number of friends more than Gender is:

are you more extrovert or introvert
did you move from your hometown (then the need to make New friends is a bit higher)
do you have hobbies done in groups, like some sports or choir, etc. Where you constantly meet people
are your friends extroverts and bring people to your life or are they introverrt and only meet you?

Of course it might be that some of these points are statistically more valid for women or men, but just generalizing doesnt help.

That’s because it is.

That's 100% me. I got into my friend group when I was 16 which consists out of 3 other people. I got like 2 other friends in University and that's it. I do have another friend group left over from my childhood in my hometown, but I Am nowhere near the level of closeness with them than with my other groups.

However in University I did in fact gain quite a lot of connections to people that I wouldn't call friends, but people you hang out with due to us engaging in the same circles. Not that bad to have these circles, but I'm also fine with it.

Wait, theres one more person that I would call my friend and this is someone who I met around last year over Lemmy. Theres also someone that I met through one of my school friends that I would call a friend. With these two I am totaling at 7 very close friends, and 3 semi close friends.

I have a male friend (we dated in high school, it’s been 20 years since then) who went this way. I remember even as teens, he’d complain that his friends don’t get him. But they “were friends since kindergarten” and sunk cost fallacy prevented him from reaching out to new people.

Today he’s a father and it’s even harder to make friends. I feel for him. He doesn’t talk with the friends from high school anymore, and laments the paths in life they’d chosen since. It just sucks, because I’d been encouraging him to get to know new people since the days we dated, but he didn’t practice then and has no idea what to do now.

Accurate. Although it was more like 2 after high school, and 1 now.

I'm very grateful to have 7 buddies that I grew up with and still hang out occasionally. I've known 2 for about 50 years and the rest since HS nearly 40 years. I'm having brewskis with one of my BFFs (also my son's Godfather) after work tonight.

Socializing is exhausting. I usually have a couple of people besides my girlfriend that I chat with, and it's more than enough for me.

I understand that socializing is an important aspect of life. I'm certain there's all sorts of papers detailing the benefits of it, but I do also think it's important to learn to be comfortable spending time by yourself.

Loneliness is generally not a choice.
But given you use words like “retard” as an insult, there may be a reason…

What exactly counts as 'friends'?

I am very saddened by the general attitude people come at about making new friends with age, on any side of the discussion. I've got like 30 friends right now (active, some friends are still friends but show up once a year or something), and I started with half that in my 20s. It has been growing slowly. Yeah some people fell out (Trump related more than anything else) but like, I just made 7 new friends in the last few years and it wasn't hard. It was just being open to meeting new kinds of people.

By the way: I'm an introvert

Not me

Works... until they die.

I would call bullshit, but out of the real friends I have, there's exactly one I didn't know back then. There's a couple I wasn't really friends with then, and friends from then I'm no longer in contact with, but yeah.