[gringoDan]

I think this phenomenon is part of the reason it's difficult to form friendships as adults. The shared context that the article mentions requires a lot of time around your circle of people, just "hanging out". It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc.

This may be why college friendships can be so strong – often a lot of time is spent living and working around friends by default, without needing to schedule it.

[danenania]

A hack that takes advantage of this is to look for activities/events where you spend a lot of sustained time with others.

So instead of a meetup once a month, go to a week-long retreat or an all weekend hackathon.

Or if there’s someone you’d like to get closer to as a friend, instead of just inviting them to hang out once in awhile, invite them to go on a trip somewhere.

Once you reach the tipping point of enough shared time/context by fast-forwarding in this way, it’s easier to then settle into a more ordinary rhythm where you see people periodically but still feel they are real friends.

[crossroadsguy]

Neither of the two examples are sustained time events.

Retreats are rather group focused (and even if it’s just two people — it can’t be regular and long enough; especially in the beginning) and a hackathon is, well, a hackathon. One has logistics challenge and another has logistics as well as intimacy challenge (or maybe we are talking about different kind of hackathons).

I’d rather suggest activities which are regular and repeated. That’s how I have made friends after college ended and I started working. Sports has worked for me in this regard.

[autoexec]

> Sports has worked for me in this regard.

For the on-athletic amongst us, regularly volunteering can help you to meet more people and find friends, but as with all "work friends" bridging the gap between "work buddy" and "friend" can be difficult. I imagine it's easier if you can get a gig helping out with something you're both passionate about since it can help give common ground quickly.

[nicky0]

Joining a running club made a huge difference to my social life, personally.

[Cd00d]

Running long has a fascinating effect of getting people to talk about things that they normally wouldn't, in my experience.

I have a close friend that I've known since we started graduate school 20 years ago. For 4 months we trained for a marathon together, and the majority of my understanding of his deeper thoughts comes from those hours in that short period of time. In fact, I'll claim that anyone I go on regular long runs with will be someone I end up having a far deeper relationship with overall.

[tomc1985]

If you're into music, festivals are fantastic for this. I was just at such a festival, in an MDMA-fueled reminiscence of just how lucky my friends and I are to have found each other. Through years of simply showing up, gifting my art, and being open to new people, I now have a tight party crew which has supported each other through some of the darkest shit I have ever experienced in my life. Deaths, overdoses, bad trips, poverty, angry neighbors/property owners, whatever... these guys have my back and I have theirs.

I may be a thirty-something loner and introvert, but these guys are my bass music battle buddies. Highly recommended.

[danenania]

That's awesome. How long did it take/how many festivals before you started to feel they were real friends you can count on in day-to-day life rather than just being 'festival friends'?

[tomc1985]

The relationships are generally cultivated over time. I have been active in the local dance music underground for all of my adult life, but in this case familiarity was established after showing up at a couple of desert events and hanging out. Later on, I was invited to a house party with some of the same folks where I was accepted into the "family". During all this I would show up at events with my camera, take really good photos, and then give them away, and that got me noticed and made me the unofficial-official photographer of the group. This was several years ago, and the story has advanced considerably since then.

edit- To answer your question directly, it took a few years to really feel that these guys were more than just party friends. I think the catalyst here was us, as a group, navigating through shared tragedy. The 'family' was already formed when I joined, and it definitely took a while to feel like I was someone more than just a guy in the periphery. Gifting is big in my scene, and if you want to speed up the process that is probably the best way to start -- art, food, whatever you can provide that other people might want or need.

edit2- It just occurred to me that gifting is a great lifehack in general for ingratiating yourself into a new group. The key is that it has to be something they genuinely want. For example, I went to visit a friend of mine in Chile and filled up about half of my luggage with candy, alcohol, and some other things that I knew my friend would appreciate. She was so happy and told all her friends, and in an instant I had a whole group of people to hang out with -- who very specifically told me that they appreciated the gifts -- while I was visiting.

[gumby]

> A hack that takes advantage of this is to look for activities/events where you spend a lot of sustained time with others.

This is a good one. I really like camping, so being out in the backcountry for a week or ly helps you understand if you really get along with someone. Planning a trip, dividing up who brings what etc let’s you see how the other person approaches things.

[andrewljohnson]

Backpacking was how I spent a lot of time with who turned into my wife and cofounder. It’s fun but can also be slightly stressful at times and you see many aspects of a person. 15 years into our relationship and I felt like we’ve known each other very deeply since the beginning.

[ajmurmann]

I think stressful situations are good for building relationships. Even if the stress is conflict with each other, of you break the relationship it will frequently be stronger after. I think psychology refers to this as Rupture and Repair.

[em-bee]

it's how you handle those stressful times and seeing those many aspects which make the difference

[BeFlatXIII]

Pokémon Go was good for this before the pandemic. I had a Wednesday evening raiding group. Before then, I had a Friday night all-night gym takeover caravan.

[fleddr]

I think you're right, you need proximity and significant time together to create and maintain friendships. Which is very hard to organize with adults.

Another way to look at it is the shift in priorities. When I was young, all I cared about is friends. I found it more important than school or my parents. I maximized my time with friends.

As adult "friend", you're way down the list of priorities, after the job, family, personal health, chores, recovery time...and then there's you, the friend. It's not malice, adults simply have too much shit to manage.

Some might be so busy that the last thing they need is a new friend.

[eastbound]

Need? They need friends, they don’t have time for any.

I went to ICMI (International Conference on Men’s Issues) 2018 and the thing I was most surprised of is, a men help group is often just having a beer together. Fathers have been so busy with raising babies, maintaining the house and performing at career, that when it breaks down, they just need a beer, even with unknown people.

[fleddr]

I get what you're saying and couldn't agree more.

My take was a bit more literal, the situation were one already has "enough" friends and is not in search of making new ones. Not to say that one is not open to meeting new people if it happens by chance, instead to say to not being open to turning that into the commitment of a new friendship.

I'm saying this mostly for people that lack friends and are looking to make new ones. It's good to understand the sobering reality that some may dodge the chance of a deep new friendship developing. Not because they don't like you, simply because they can't take on the commitment.

[ungamedplayer]

We're in an odd world where this is the case.

[ajmurmann]

The priority thing is an interesting one. When I was a kid I was just frequently bored and so were the other kids, so we'd hang out. I'm never bored anymore. I might be depressed and not want to do anything, but that's different from bored. With all the entertainment and things to do at all times, I wonder if current children will have the same experience as we did.

[the_only_law]

Unfortunately I’m bored a lot still but never at a time where I could really go do anything.

[ajmurmann]

Wouldn't it be great if you could just call a buddy and then walk over and hang out? I miss that so much!

Last year I visited Bonn in Germany where I still have some family and friends. It was an unplanned, emergency trip. Within an hour of arriving at my hotel a friend texted me and let me know that he and his partner were randomly at a restaurant nearby. I just walked over and had dinner with them. I want that all the time! Most people hardly have time, for some reason we don't feel comfortable pinging people on short notice and even if it were to work, it would most likely require getting in a car.

I wonder if part of the problem is also a higher perceived barrier of how close one already has to be with someone to just hang out. As kids, we'd just hang out with pretty much anyone available. As adults we rarely make it to that level, because we don't hang out because we aren't close enough yet. So it hardly ever happens.

[fleddr]

This was at least 25 years ago and it's very odd that I remember such insignificant detail. I was watching an American TV show where a person opened his front door to find his friend at the doorstep. He then proceeded to ask:

"what are you doing here?"

I remember thinking: Americans are so rude. What do you mean, what are you doing here? He's your friend. He's obviously there to see you. What kind of hostile way is that to greet somebody so close to you?

Now I'm exactly the same, although I'd not say that phrase out loud. I cringe when somebody ruins my plans with an unannounced visit. I'm not proud of it. I think the main cause is that we allow ourselves to be overloaded, leaving no room for "nothing" time or spontaneous time. Whilst that is exactly the time in which life happens.

So create the room. Society tells you that life is about juggling 10 balls in the air but this is nothing but an illusion. Just drop a few balls and decide they're unimportant.

Then the next day, you spontaneously come up with the idea to take a ride with the bicycle. When somebody asks, where are you going, and when will you be back, you give the only correct answers: I don't know and I don't know.

Perhaps you'll drop by the forest, take a stroll through it, and see a fox. The thing about life is that had you put in your calendar "in two weeks, go to forest to find fox", you would find zero foxes. The fox happened.

Or perhaps you'll take a ride downtown and spontaneously go to this dodgy coffee place, purely triggered by seeing it. A place you would have absolutely never attended had you done an internet search filtered by reviews. You go in, and who knows what will happen. Maybe it's a treasure, maybe you meet new cool people.

Or maybe nothing memorable happens at all and you cycle back home. You still had exercise, fresh air, were able to clear your thoughts...that's quality time and the "worst" outcome, in any case better than "Netflix".

[PragmaticPulp]

> It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc.

It's more difficult than college, where everyone is thrown together into close quarters.

However, it's not impossible. It's just different and requires different techniques. If you sit back and wait for the contexts to come to you, it's going to be a slow journey. If you go out of your way to create those contexts, it's actually not that difficult to find and make new friends.

Hosting events, BBQs, get togethers, and any other social event is an easy way to start it off. This gets massively easier when you have kids, IMO, because you can now also host play dates, invite other families along to activities, meet other parents through daycare or school, and so on. It won't happen if you're staying at home or waiting for people to come to you, of course, but it's not that hard to get out and meet new people and friends-of-friends once you start getting out there and making an effort.

Even work can be an easy pivot to new connections if you make an effort. In-person makes this especially easy: Get into the habit of inviting people out to lunch with you once a week and ask if they can think of anyone else to invite along. The bigger the company, the easier it is to be exposed to a lot of new people this way. Again, it won't happen if you're not making an effort, but the amount of effort required is much smaller than it may seem.

[gumby]

I became closer friends, and even friends at all, with folks I knew from college years after graduating. As noted in this discussion, we had a lot of shared context that became more meaningful as we grew up.

[goethes_kind]

The reason friendships between adults are hard is because adults are reluctant to make themselves vulnerable, but opening yourself to others and making yourself vulnerable is exactly what you need to start building a shared history of living (shared context).

[bradlys]

YMMV. I found that least in SV - people are so guarded that they’re rarely ever going to be vulnerable even with anyone new they meet.

Maybe it’s the crowds I keep meeting but everyone is uncomfortable with even talking about what they want from life - let alone what they struggle with.

I think many people here don’t ever open up except with their therapist and parents.

[renewiltord]

It has to be something like this because I add to my list of close friends fairly often - so I have lots of people to lean on (as I discovered when I found myself debilitated by an accident recently).

I'm mid thirties and the last close friend who was willing to help me shower when I couldn't is someone I got to know 3 months ago.

[kelseyfrog]

I just learned this in my mind 30s. So many hollow friendships before.

[JamesBarney]

Yeah it's this, just shared time, specifically time hanging out shooting the shit.

For instance of all of my coworkers I am paradoxically the closest to are the ones from out of town. I think this is because when they visited they had no other obligations so we ended up shooting the shit a lot. Where co-workers who lived here were always busy with family/life obligations.

[formerkrogemp]

When working 'busy season' in accounting 50+ hours per week for 4 months, there's not time for friends, and barely time for family. I won't work for that toxic culture again.

[hosteur]

If this is the case then why wouldn’t workplaces create lots of strong friendships? There is a lot of shared context. I’m not sure I buy author’s brushing this away as being because coworkers are trained to replace you. There is lots of competition in school and college also.

[Enginerrrd]

In my experience, workplaces HAVE created lots of strong friendships in my life.

Though, it's interesting, it varies tremendously by workplace culture and the work you're doing. In my jobs doing manual labor or jobs involving a lot of boring hanging out (as a cashier / supervisor / lifeguard) I made lots of friendships. In jobs where it's been primarily knowledge work, I had a lot of good acquaintances, but rarely did that turn into more. I think that being able to talk makes a big difference. It's worth noting though that when I was a lifeguard, I was a long lived employee surrounded by short term employees. The culture was in flux. There are times when I fit in and we became good friends (which remain to this day) and there are times when I didn't fit in or like the people and didn't make any friends. The manual labor jobs produced more lasting friendships than the lifeguarding for whatever reason. Something about actually suffering with others and working toward common aims and being able to talk about stuff produced the best friendships. (I also think that the nature of the work filtered out some of the lower quality people too, and that played a role.)

[armchairhacker]

I doubt “coworkers trying to replace you” has much of an impact.

The bigger issue with some workplaces is that they’re not really close-quarters, because they’re very impersonal. Sure you might be all in the same room a lot, but you’re largely discussing business stuff or working independently. Even corporate “parties” and retreats can be surprisingly professional and unnatural. It’s almost like you don’t really “interact” with the person, you interact with their business facade.

If you’re not just talking business with your coworkers, you’re actually talking about life and hanging out and not having a fake professional personality, then you do form friendships. I say this from experience.

Though talking about non-professional things and not putting on a facade also makes you vulnerable, so those companies where everyone is competing against each other happen to be the ones where everyone is impersonal.

[Karrot_Kream]

It does. A lot of younger knowledge workers (not at all restricted to STEM) make good friends in their first job because of shared context. Eventually increased responsibility through experience means you necessarily open yourself up less and spend more time mentoring, guiding, or otherwise leading.

[Dracophoenix]

The workplace is more like a relay race than a basketball team. Everyone may share the same project, but they all have different parts to it, and are unlikely to share the same or a sufficiently similar understanding of it.

[bobsmooth]

Pretty much every friend I have is a co-worker.

[zeroonetwothree]

Friends happen when you spend time with the same people in different contexts. That’s why most workplace relationships don’t result in friends.

[renewiltord]

Workplaces do create lots of strong friendships. In the past, they were also one of the biggest sources of romantic relationships. Though that has changed, people are still friends through work.

[bitcurious]

To make friends you need to make mistakes. Litigation culture in the workplace prevents that.

[jacquesm]

I don't see this. I've yet to be afraid of being sued by a co-worker and after a couple of decades I can assure you that I've made plenty of mistakes.

[bitcurious]

In the edge case, your failed-friend coworker would sue the corporation.

This would cost corporation money.

The corporation doesn’t care about you having friends, but does care about losing money. As such structures the workplace to minimize the sorts of free expression that creates “shared context” but also creates room for error - discussions of politics, religion, your health, ethnicity, age, etc. - topics that in the best case build trust and curiosity and lead to friendship.

My comment isn’t a commentary on people - who are mostly loving, reasonable, and forgiving. It’s a commentary on incentives and the structures those incentives lead to.

[slothtrop]

If you aren't more guarded around co-workers than your friends, maybe you should be.

[jacquesm]

Why on earth would a co-worker sue me?

[slothtrop]

Suing? They can get you terminated, or hinder your advancement. Anything that can be construed as reflecting badly on you or the company can be used against you.

[Sirened]

is this a thinly veiled complaint about being hit with sexual harassment complaints? The simple trick to solve this problem is not to sexually harass your friends either

[nickff]

Why did you make two logical leaps just to arrive at an accusation?

From the HN Guidelines: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

[eyelidlessness]

Having backed out of including a reply with my downvote—which I seldom do, but couldn’t find a productive response in me despite some effort—I’m curious what your charitable interpretation is. I went through all of mine, and none of them reflected well on the commenter.

[bitcurious]

Bizarre but illustrative that I have to defend myself against a nebulous “uncharitable interpretation.”

Are you free (according to corporate policy) to ask your coworkers about religion, health, romance, politics, ethnicity, etc.?

I’m comfortable discussing all of the above with my friends, yet each is to some extent restricted in the professional context, either by default or with seniority.

[bitcurious]

No? It’s lived experience, having seen a culture other than American, I can assure you that how most folks communicate at work is guarded, and very controlled. The folks that speak freely don’t get ahead.

Your comment is a great example actually - imagine being presumed a sexual harasser because of your attitude towards tort law! I wouldn’t want my coworkers to take such leaps. Much easier to avoid the question of loneliness in America.

[Sirened]

You say this, but this is also my lived experience. I have worked with and interacted with many who bemoaned the rise of ""PC culture"" and complained they couldn't ""make jokes anymore"" when in reality they were just getting in trouble for harassing their coworkers.

[zamfi]

Having a family offers a natural avenue for this, though: parents of your kids' friends share a lot of context with you.

[88913527]

I regret not going to college in the city I ultimately knew I'd end up living in. It was a ton of wasted social capital. I did end up saving money though (college city was cheaper), but it probably wasn't worth the savings. I still do keep in touch with a few people, but it's "annual Zoom call" catchup level of socializing: not enough to fill the day-to-day.

[the_only_law]

I regret not going to college because here I am now with near 0 social capital (and very limited with how I can pivot my professional life).

[throwaway290]

IRL I find it exceedingly easy to form connections with others (in my 30s), it doesn't take much time at all. I tend to be in situations where meeting new people happens (coworking spaces, cafes, big cities, going to other cities and staying in places with shared spaces etc).

However, 99% of the time I feel disinclined to solidify those connections and create the dependencies the article calls "shared context", because I actively do not find I have much in common with these people. Often I resist accumulating that "shared context" and actively evade and ghost them, other times I don't but later I wish I did. The reason is that by now I have a pretty well-formed worldview, and I know most others have one as well, and I am correspondingly sensitive to finer differences between them. And with meeting people in various IRL communities, the likelihood you are compatible in this way is hovering around zero.

***

Generally, I strongly disagree with the article, find it meandering and struggle with the unorthodox meaning it's trying to force onto the phrase "shared context". In fact, in the very next paragraph it gives a stark but much more suitable term for what it wants to say: a web of dependencies.

Friendships may form via such a web, but good friendships usually don't. It's a legacy way of sorts, and in our age worth actively avoiding.

An example of friendships formed via these webs is often childhood classmates. The only reason you may end up being friends is geographical proximity. There may well be nothing in common between you otherwise. If you let such friendships solidify, they will weigh you down or you will have to endure the psychological pain of ripping yourself out of that web of dependencies.

Meeting people in IRL communities is like that, it suffers from people being randomly put together. Accumulating "shared context" (again, web of dependencies) due to geographic proximity alone is the last thing you want to be doing. If you happened to meet someone due to chance IRL encounter, you have to vet them 10x more carefully before letting the web grow, because the chance the encounter is worthwhile is very low.

By contrast, shared context (the actual thing, not the meaning forced by the article) is easy to come by thanks to the Web, and there're plenty of people who have compatible worldviews yet are different enough to be interesting to engage with. All you need is try and get a feel for all the various ways of signaling. If you are sorta good at something like art or engineering (yes, this can be hard to know for sure), be a bit brave to go more public with it through social channels, etc. Establishing IRL acquaintance later with casual meetups is easy thanks to relaxing travel restrictions.