‘It gets harder as you age’: Singaporeans discuss making friends later in life

SINGAPORE: Building new friendships in your 30s and 40s can truly feel different, especially when your friends are now prioritising their family commitments and other life-changing decisions. 

A netizen shared his own experience online, stating that given the busyness of family life, he hasn’t been proactive with maintaining his relationships.

“I find that my own friends are all so busy with their own family life that they hardly have time to meet,” he shared. Additionally, he mentioned that he is going through a rough divorce and is feeling lonely lately. 

With this, he sought advice on Reddit, asking what are the avenues where one can meet new friends and create new and lasting relationships. 

“I tried going to certain online meet-up events, but it’s hard to really make friends due to their one-off nature, plus lack of shared recurring activity. People don’t stick around. I feel that people need to be involved in the same activity for a longer period of time to create bonds,” he declared. 

Many netizens expressed their thoughts and opinions in the comments section. One netizen agreed to his sentiments and said: “I agree that it tends to get harder to create and maintain friendships as we get older, due to spending more/most of our time at work, where workplace conversations/relationships are mostly transactional.” 

Another netizen suggested that he should find activities and communities that are like-minded individuals. The comment shared that most meetups failed because there is no commitment to meet again after the first encounter. 

For some, one of the barriers to making friends in this age group is income disparity, and what they do for work. In the case of introverts, a netizen shared: “I realised that we need to find extroverts to adopt us into their friend group. Because fellow introverts don’t want to include anyone new, or they’re not even out and about in the first place.” 

“Online communities help a lot with this. You talk to people online, bond over common interests, and then meet up once in a while. That’s one way I’ve made friends the past few years,” a comment concluded. 

In these kinds of problems, small and steady actions such as showing up, checking in, and following up after first meetings can lead the way to building closer relationships with new people. Being intentional about where and how you meet people in any age group is what’s important.