Summary: This article is about making friends as an adult, specifically why it quietly slips away during the busy years and what surprisingly small moves can actually bring it back. You’ll hear two personal stories, three practical strategies, and the moment that shifted everything for me.
There was a period in my life when I reached out to two different women because I needed something I couldn’t quite name.
I wouldn’t have called it friendship exactly. What I think I was looking for was someone I trusted enough to help me make sense of parts of my story. Someone who could function like a counselor without the formal arrangement.
The first woman I reached out to, I think I freaked her out. I used the word counseling, and the conversation never really went anywhere. What’s ironic is that all these years later, I do have exactly that kind of relationship with her. It just took that long to get there.
The second woman agreed to meet for a drink. We had a really nice time. Shortly after, she invited me into a group thing she was doing. We didn’t love the group, but we loved talking to each other. So we just read the book ourselves and started meeting every week to discuss it. Then we read another book. And another. One of them was about personality systems, and that’s when we discovered we were both ENFJs.
That weekly ritual became one of the most significant friendships of my life.
But here’s what I want you to notice about both of those stories. I didn’t stumble into either of those friendships. I reached out. I showed up. I steered toward what I actually needed. Making friends as an adult, it turns out, is not something that just happens to you.
Why making friends as an adult quietly disappears
When your kids are growing up, life is full of other people. Their activities, their schedules, the parents connected to all of it. You are surrounded by people constantly.
What you don’t necessarily notice is whether any of those people are actually your friends.
The busyness creates an illusion of connection. You’re never alone. You’re always needed. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the question of your own friendship just doesn’t come up.
It’s not until things slow down, or shift, or your kids start leaving, that you look around and realize the gap has been there for a while.
Most women say making friends as an adult is hard. I think what’s closer to the truth is that most of us just haven’t been paying attention to it as something that requires our intention.
Small moves that actually work for making friends as an adult
Before I get to the bigger shift, I want to give you some practical moves. These are simple. They work.
- Capitalize on existing proximity.
You don’t have to manufacture new social opportunities from scratch. If you and someone else are both going to the same event, ask if they want to drive together. If you’re in a recurring meeting, sit next to the same person every time. Repeated proximity is how connection builds.
- Text someone to ask how you can pray for them.
My book club friend texts me every single morning to ask how she can pray for me. It takes thirty seconds. Over time it creates a kind of consistent, low-pressure intimacy that is hard to build any other way. You don’t have to wait for a significant conversation to happen. You can create small touchpoints that add up.
- After a group program, put three people into a group text.
This one has been surprisingly effective for me. When you go through a program or a course or any kind of group experience, there’s a natural window at the end where everyone just goes their separate ways. Instead of letting that happen, I’ll choose three people I connected with and put them all into a group text. Sometimes it becomes a cohesive little group. Sometimes I end up staying friends with just one of them. But it keeps the connection from dissolving the moment the program ends.
None of these moves are dramatic. That’s the point. Making friends as an adult doesn’t require a bold social overhaul. It requires small, repeated intention.
The moment I realized I had more choices than I thought
A few years ago I went through Profiler Training, a live event centered on Myers-Briggs cognitive functions.
What struck me wasn’t just the content. It was the freedom I felt to actually show up as myself.
Everyone there knew my type. They expected me to show up in my cognitive functions. And because of that, there was no need to manage or minimize or adapt. I could just be exactly who I am, and it was not only accepted, it was anticipated.
It was remarkable. And as I grew in my self-knowledge, I realized I was allowed to have preferences and make choices.
Making friends as an adult becomes a different project entirely when you realize you have preferences. That you’re allowed to have them. That you can steer toward the kind of connection that actually works for you rather than just accepting whatever proximity provides.
Self-knowledge: the basis for making friends as an adult
The work I do through The Congruence Code starts with exactly this kind of self-knowledge. When you understand your cognitive functions, you understand your flow state, what drains you, what energizes you, and what you actually need from the people around you. If that sounds like a missing piece for you, I’d love to show you what that process looks like. You can find the details here.
That free Myers-Briggs video masterclass is also a good place to start if you want to understand the cognitive functions before we ever talk. The link is in the show notes.
Here’s something simple you can do this week to integrate these principles into your life: Dunbar’s Number Diagram.
Grab your journal and sketch out your own concentric circles. Then begin to add names to it.
- Your innermost circle holds one to three people, some people say up to five. These are your closest friends, the ones you tell everything.
- The second ring holds around twelve, maybe 15. These are your favorite people, in addition to your inner circle.
- The next ring is around 50 and could be thought of as the people you would invite to a party.
- The next ring is more of your village or community. This is where the Dunbar number of around 150 comes in. This is theorized to be the number of people one can have stable relationships with, tracking how they are related to one another, without structures and rules.
- The fifth ring is around 500.These would be acquaintances, maybe people you would say hi to if you saw them at a restaurant, but you wouldn’t expect them to sit down and join you.
- The sixth ring is around 1500 people and considered to be the number of people you can recognize by face.
You are not going to completely fill these with names.
Now, look at your inner circles. Most of us are sparse here. Look at the people in your intermediate rings and ask yourself: is there anyone here who is promotable? Someone you’d like to move closer in? Then pick one small move and make it toward that person this week.
Understanding that you have choices is one thing. Knowing specifically what you need from connection, based on how your mind actually works, is another. The Congruence Code starts with a two-hour conversational profiling session that gives you exactly that clarity, along with your personality style blueprint and a custom color palette. If now feels like the right time, click here to book your session.