How do I make friends in this new era or do I make peace with being friendless?
Dear Friendless Fretter,
Firstly, as a lover of alliterations myself, I appreciate your sign off. Thank you for taking the time to create it. I also haven’t seen the word fretter written out before, and I don’t yet know how I feel about it aesthetically.
Secondly, I love my gal-pal friendship movies as much as the next girl, but they do us no favors when it comes to depicting how to make friends, you’re so right about that.
The “to-try”: while I am all for a comfort movie, if instead of re-watching a classic that could be contributing to your nightmares and you are wanting to learn more about making friends (I say more because of what we will address in the point below), try looking up podcasts, books, articles, or video essays about making friends! There’s a lot out there from many different perspectives, give it a go if you’re interested. (I am also very honored by the idea that you wrote this letter first and I do hope there is some helpful wisdom in this response)
Thirdly, I want to reframe this idea that your high school friends were built-in and therefore you don’t have any friend making skills. Think about how many classmates you have had since elementary school - spoiler: it’s roughly 400 or so. I think it is probably a fair assumption for me to make that you don’t consider all 400 of them your friends.
Which means, you practiced discernment and checking in with yourself about your emotional wants & needs, you noticed where your interests aligned or where they diverged in a way that added something to your relationship, you fumbled your way through all the awkward growth stages of middle school or high school friendships as you grow into more of you are. All of those big things make up a friendship and requires many skills: communication skills, rupture & repair skills, building blocks of emotional intelligence, etc.
Therefore you HAVE friendship making skills.
This is just a new arena to try them out in.
The “to-try”: Title a blank page “My friend making skills” and make a list of these skills/qualities for yourself. Sometimes our brains need the clearest and most obvious information possible to build confidence. I love a paper list myself but this can be done online or through another art form like collage. Some ideas:
I text about meaningful dates (e.g. when a friend’s interview is or following up about an exam they were really nervous about)
I tell my friends when they have hurt my feelings so I don’t hold it against them secretly
I ask questions and/or check in on other people the group chat
I remember their coffee order and bring it to them on a hard day
Fourthly, I am going to invite you to lightly hold the idea that your college friends could be built-in similarly to what I assume you mean from your childhood friends, which is proximity. You (and most other people) likely made friends in your classrooms, on your sports teams, neighborhood kids, the people who were involved in the same hobbies as you, hell maybe even your sibling’s friends siblings!
Within all of those communities and connections from throughout your life, you have made effort to become friends with some and not others. College can work in the same way for you. And I said hold this lightly because you may not want it to go the proximity route or you may find the first few weeks challenging, and I don’t want you to give up.
The “to-try”: try to talk to five new people in the first week (repeat until you make your desired social circle). One from a class, one from your dorm hall, one from that random event you went to, one from a party, and one from the activity club you signed up for. These are proximity people, these are the ‘built-in’ friends of this time in your life. You don’t have to be friends with your proximity people; you have a lot more autonomy with how you spend your time and who you interact with than ever before. But don’t feel like you will never have built-in friends at this stage of life, because you definitely can if those people pass the vibe check and friendship feels! Use your skills from the ‘thirdly’ section.
Fifthly (I’ve felt committed to the numbers format since thirdly), lean into the fun and play and ‘magic’ of connecting with people and making new friends. The dire ending of your letter of being friendless doesn’t allow space for what John O’Donohue wrote perfectly in Anam Cara:
“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here”
I love these lines so much because they’re weight shifting. Meaning, applied to this situation, the weight changes from being framed as an individual experience, centered on your skills only, to a mystical collective human experience.
You are not deficient in the ability or skills to make friends.
Are you entering into a college experience at a time where the world is increasingly lonely? Yes, unfortunately.
But I say that to remind you of what is and isn’t in your control. You have your world within you, a world that has the skills and experience to make friends, and you will come into contact with the world outside of you to which you have no control over. You cannot control who is in your classes, down the hall from you, on your sports team, at that party and how open they are to making new friends or how alone they feel.
You do have the ability to tell an accurate story about the world you come into contact with (like ‘not clicking with this one classmate is only that, not clicking with one person; it does not mean I am un-friendable’). And you have the ability to bring a fun and playful and curious attitude toward building community, connections, and developing friendships.
There are SO many different people you can meet during college, it’s a brand new social ecosystem, you can be friends with as many or as few as feels right to you.
I’ll end this long letter here (I have lots to say on the topic of friendship; I used to tell people that if I didn’t do my doctoral dissertation on the topic I did, I would have done one on friendships) with some things to hold in mind for the first few weeks of college.
And keep in mind that all the freshman around you are having varying but similar experiences to this, having left friends and wanting to make new ones. You are not alone in this; usually that means people are mostly open and friendly as they navigate their new social situation too!
Some considerations, for always really, but especially Welcome Week/Freshers Week:
Your emotional capacity: starting college is full of feelings (excitement, doubt, nervousness, confidence, anxiety, joy, fear, nostalgia, envy, worry, disappointment, etc.). Give yourself space to feel the feelings, which could require different expectations of yourself than maybe you previously thought. For me, my emotional breakdown when I move/start a new chapter, is always in the grocery store; you can and will find me crying in a random isle in whatever new place I call home now. I offer that as a reminder that feelings can come in during the most mundane or surprising of moments and you deserve your own responsiveness when that happens.
Your social battery: there are SO many things happening when you first start college. Social but also academic but also co-living situations but also work. I have a hunch many of our social batteries have not quite been the same since the COVID-19 pandemic lock downs and whether or not yours feels impacted, just know that missing that party, that networking event, that sports game, will not determine your entire college experience. If you feel energized by all that is going on and feel like you want to be at every thing possible, that’s wonderful. Follow that gut feeling!
Long distance friendships: I get the impression that your high school friends are important to you and I want to leave you with the reminder that long distance friendship while requiring effort and work, is still a social support system that can be relied upon. It may require conversations about expectations or acknowledgement of resentments (e.g. if one person is always the one reaching out or if one person is constantly cancelling FaceTimes, etc.), or scheduled catch ups in the calendar, or some other change from when you lived in the same place, but it does mean you’ll never be friendless.
Long distance is a playground for creativity in keeping in touch too - I used to long distance color with some of my college friends, like we would color some parts of a coloring page and then mail it off (like the traveling pants, but different). I use Marco Polo (app) with my current long distance friends who I’m over 8 hours apart from, but before have emailed some, and had standing FaceTime wine nights with others. You will find what works for you, but remember that they’re having their own, but likely somewhat comparable, busy first weeks as you and it’s worth checking in while also giving everyone some grace to figure out long distance friendships.
I believe in you.
Team Always New Friends!
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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