The Dispatch
HOW TO MAKE A FRIEND AT 35
A practical, unsentimental field manual for the strangely difficult adult task of turning a stranger into a friend, with the one step everyone skips
LOS ANGELES — Since the last column charted the friendship recession in alarming detail, this one offers the practical antidote: an actual, unsentimental field manual for making a friend as an adult, a task that is genuinely harder than it should be and that nobody teaches. Your correspondent has field-tested this. It works. It also requires doing the one thing everyone skips.
Step one: show up repeatedly to the same activity. Friendship needs repetition, so pick a recurring thing — a class, a league, a game night, a volunteer shift, a run club — and go, again and again. One appearance builds nothing; the magic is in becoming a regular, because familiarity is the soil friendship grows in. Consistency beats charisma every time.
Step two: have a shared activity carry the early interaction. Don't try to befriend a stranger through raw conversation; let the thing you're both doing do the social work, exactly as it did when you were kids. The activity gives you something to talk about and a reason to be together, which removes the terrifying blankness of "so... wanna be friends?"
Step three — the one everyone skips — explicitly initiate the hangout outside the activity. This is where adult friendship lives or dies, and where almost everyone fails, because it's awkward. You have to actually say: "hey, a few of us are getting food after, want to come?" or "we should grab a coffee sometime — what's your number?" Adults treat this small directness as strange, and so they stay in the pleasant-acquaintance limbo forever, waiting for a friendship that never spontaneously ignites because nobody ever takes the initiating step. The friendship recession is, in large part, a recession of people willing to be the one who asks. Be the one who asks. It's mildly awkward for four seconds and then it's just a plan.
MOOD's platonic MOODs are built to make all three steps easier, especially the hard one. Event Friends and Nerdy Times supply steps one and two — the recurring shared activity, the built-in reason to interact — while removing the weirdness of showing up alone. And Just Friends is, in essence, step three made normal: a declared, romance-free space where "I want to make a friend" is the whole stated point, so the initiating ask isn't awkward, it's simply the function of the room. The structure lowers the barrier. But you still have to be the one who asks. That part, no app can do for you — and honestly, you wouldn't want it to. The asking is where the friendship starts.
From the Screenshot Museum
Exhibit 24-2A. Step three, executed bravely.
HIM (after 4 weeks at the same climbing gym): ok this is going to be very earnest but — we always end up climbing near each other and you seem cool and i'm trying to make actual friends as an adult which is apparently impossible. coffee sometime? no weird agenda, just friend stuff
OTHER GUY: honestly THANK YOU for saying it, i've been thinking the same thing for weeks and being too awkward to ask
HIM: the mutual awkwardness ends now. saturday?
*Curator's note: They got coffee. They are now, per follow-up, "actual friends." The entire barrier was four seconds of earnest awkwardness that both men were independently too scared to cross. The museum salutes the one who asked.
Readers Also Ask
How do you make friends as an adult? Show up repeatedly to a shared activity, let that activity carry the early interaction, and — the step most people skip — explicitly initiate a hangout outside it.
Why is making adult friends so hard? Adult life lacks the automatic repetition and shared activities of school, and adults treat directly initiating friendship as awkward, so most stay stuck as pleasant acquaintances.
How does MOOD help you make friends? Event Friends and Nerdy Times supply recurring shared activities, and Just Friends makes the direct "I want to make a friend" ask normal instead of awkward.