What do you do to start and develop friendships?

The ones that are worth it happen by themselves.

If one or both people are mainly trying to make friends, the driving force is transient & non-intrinsic - at odds with that which endures.

Whereas with relationships that "just happen", there is a cascade of circumstance and shared interest, and those rise greater than any desire to connect. The connection is intrinsic and unstoppable as opposed to cultivated.

Pursue your own interests and the truth of your circumstance as fully as possible, as often as possible, and - crucially - for its own sake. Not to meet others, but to meet more of yourself.

Your friends will appear.

I know I'm not answering the question, but I felt like spilling out my opinions and experience on the topic.

I don't really have many friends. For someone to be my "friend" they'd have to be a person I'd spend time with when I'm bored, and who I could reasonably count on to have my back when I need it.

At the moment, I don't really have any people I can consider "friends" by that definition - I either don't like spending time with people (nothing to do, no place to be, too stressful, etc. etc.) or I'm simply "just another friend" to people. There is a certain type of individuals that like to be friendly with everyone. They radiate an "aura" of deep connection with you and make you feel special... When in fact they're that way with everyone, and you're just another victim of their well-trained manipulation techniques.

I don't really know how to get those "real" friendships. I remember I had some as a kid. I don't even know how I got those - was it just geographical proximity? Being forced to be in the same room for 8 hours a day?

I wish I knew. But solitude is pleasant, too, even though it's not as profitable.

I think you have to genuinely take an interest in the other person and look for areas of commonality. That gives you ground to interact with the other person.

Networking is complete bullshit because people who are highly social recognize potential areas for self-interest in relationship-building and any behavior that follows that path gets flagged subconsciously as disingenuous. Make friends and treat other people as you would like to be treated.

There is also a need to communicate, in order to give the other person a sense of your investment in the relationship (as represented by your time, effort, and candor) and material with which to formulate substantive responses and reciprocate with their own time, effort, and candor.

You have no control over how other people connect with you, and frankly, their opinion and feelings toward you are none of your business. Don't overtrain your behavior upon your perception of the progress of bonding. Just do what is right, fun, kind, and ethical. The rest falls into place.

> "... being genuine, about having something to offer, about the importance of being liked, but I think I'm missing something a bit more fundamental"

My experience has been "having something to offer" is far and away the biggest factor, or rather what they think you have to offer. Everyone has plenty to offer, but not everyone immediately sees it, let alone appreciates it. The majority of people you meet won't be a "genuine bond" right away.

What works the best for me is simple. You focus on them without betraying yourself. It's sort of a dance. You treat discussions like a ball that cannot be dropped and listen well. You aren't afraid to take the lead and always have something new when things get boring. You avoid going deep into a topic until you've tried at least a few others or get a strong reaction. You keep how often you talk about yourself in check and keep it relevant. It's really a broader mindset in life of constantly searching for common ground. You are not trying to please them, but just asserting what you both want in a natural way. You're keeping them involved and not being awkward sharing control of the interaction.

> "it happens sometimes, but infrequently, and doesn't seem to be under my control at all."

So it's that last part that was my problem. I used to be pretty awkward sharing control in social interactions. I would ramble without ever looking up at their face or willfully ignore body language stubbornly thinking it was what I was saying rather than everything else. I would zone out because I didn't know how to say I didn't know what they were talking about. I was too inside my own head. My thoughts about them would pile up and go unresolved. I was more comfortable making assumptions and trying to guess rather than just asking them. In short, I was afraid.

No clue if this helps you or anyone. I tried. That's all we can do.

Since I've been married, I make no particular effort to maintain or establish friendships. The small social circle of my wife, her family, and my family is more than enough for me. And I have never been more satisfied with my social life, such as it is.

That's not to say there are no people I am on friendly terms with (coworkers, exes, ex-coworkers, people I knew 20+ years ago in college, etc).

From a utilitarian standpoint, it's important to have a few people you can reach out to to find work. And from a social standpoint, the times of my life where I had no social connections were difficult. But people have different needs, and my social needs are very modest. Do not feel bad because you don't have friends just because you think you're expected to.

As far as the title of the book, I believe eating alone is one of the great joys in life, especially when it's a respite from the forced social atmosphere of an open-plan office.

Finding a reason to regularly meet up. It takes away the mental load of having to arrange a time to meet up. Do X with someone weekly/monthly and you’ll become friends if you get on.

> developing a genuine human bond is somewhat of a mystery

I think shared experiences are key to creating a common bond. If you talk with old school friends, most people will end up talking about past events, this is a re-enforcing mechanism.

I think also that there is an intensity to the shared experience that matters as well. Sitting across the desk from someone for 10 years might build a bond, but it might also not last long outside of that workplace. Whereas people doing something physical and emotional together creates a stronger bond.

Personally, as someone with older kids, I'm now trying new physical activities and meeting new people. I can see I am making new friends, I've created conversations and interactions which go beyond just the original weekly activity.

The conclusion I got from everything I've read on relationships is this: friendships are built when like-minded people spend meaningful time together.

The time spent together is significant and often underrated in my observations. No: I don't believe you can maintain, even less build, a friendship with only a few hours of occasional monthly talks over coffee. This is no surprise why BJJ courses are renowned for being so efficient at creating and solidifying friendships; you have similar people meeting regularly and struggling toward improving a specific skill.

The amount of time spent and the quality of that time will vastly influence the likelihood of friendships forming.

Analyze how you and your closest friends get/got along initially. Meet lots of people, be vulnerable, and let your guard down. From there, it's just a numbers game.

For me, I normally share something mildly personal and see how they respond. Most of my closest friends and I clicked as soon as we met each-other, and talked about our hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, traumas, worries, or some other personal topic right off the bat. If people are weirded out or uncomfortable by me being vulnerable, that means they're probably not in the same position, or we probably aren't very compatible.

Go out there, don't judge, and be yourself.

I'd argue it's a game of chance. You already mentioned a lot of things necessary to "build" a friendship, but I dislike the word "building". While there certainly are mistakes you can do, friendships are usually not "build" - maybe some work needs to be put in to be "maintained" in the long run.

Genuine friendship comes with shared interests (which is why it's easier to find friends in common activities that you are genuinely interested in), but also the simple chance of meeting interesting people. The best predictor of friendships in student dorms seems to be the relative distance of their rooms - see Kurzgesagt's "Why You Are Lonely and How to Make Friends" at https://youtu.be/I9hJ_Rux9y0 for some more interesting facts.

It's completely normal to have different level of friends - some to party with, some to nerd around certain topics with, some to have deep meaningful talks but you only can stand a meeting once a quarter... And you are only able to actively maintain a certain number of friendships.

I found that I don't have nearly as many "friends" as many of my peers have (being a 40-something doesn't help much either), but the friends I got are rock solid. They are kinda lopsided because I'm offering too much help most of the time without accepting much help from them - that's what I need to work on.

Wish I knew! I've spent the last 1.5 years intentionally putting myself out there, going to events, starting events, seeing shows, sitting in cafes, joining a maker space. All together, they introduced me to a small number of very infrequent acquaintances, which are not showing any signs of turning into friendships.

Maybe you should do the things I haven't tried doing: get a dog, have children, and join BJJ, Crossfit, and a church.

Here is what I do, and advice:

Just visit places of your genuine interests. And suit it to your age or don't bother at all.

- Join interesting online forums with offline presence. Be a regular in those places. It can be a book club, a chess club, a science club, coding club or anything. Be true to your interests and start visiting. Or join a fully offline one in your locality. Actively interact with new people.

- Join a class. A gym class, karate, dance, art, pottery, recreational math- doesn't matter. Join a class and be a regular. Actively interact with new people.

- Join a one-time activity group. Like building a school, Christmas drama group. You get to spend time with new people over weeks regularly.

- If you are religious or can tolerate religion, join a church, or your-religion-equivalent of it. I have seen lifelong friendships develop out of them.

- If you are politically active, or want to do so, work actively for a political party for an election. Actively interact with new people.

- Join an NGO or a charity or actively volunteer your time for a cause that you believe in. Actively interact with new people.

- Catch up with college/school friends with whom you were never that close. People change, and you might find the new-old-acquinstance quite interesting.

You see, friendships need to evolve naturally. You cannot choose or take scrupulously calculated steps.

Just spend time in an interested area, you already have one interest overlap. When you find 2/3, that person starts to look interesting.

Please let nature take its own course. You just increase your probability by mixing out with a lot more newer people.

This is my advice to "how to find a romantic partner" as well.

My wife and I joined a local group of conservation volunteers when we were new to the area. Great fun, new skills, new friends. We had kids and stopped going. I've just recently started going back and nearly all the same people are still at it. I joined them at the pub quiz last night and we won. The theme was "Bees".

You are probably overthinking this.

All it takes is to start talking.

Also not all friendships have to be the same.

Some are in person, some are online, some are not as frequent, some are inactive, and some might be gone.

Most of the friends I’ve made in later life has been through work. Started by having lunch together and then meeting up after work every now and then.

I still keep in touch with and meet up with people I’ve not worked with in years.

I think that looking how to build friendship is seeing the end of a book before read the content.

Friendship is the result to be good people, to take care of others, to be trustworthy, to be a good listener, etc. Friendship will come after that.

Maybe 1 out 100 people you meet will be a friend, and 1 out 10 will last. Anyway, they will be with you because how you are, not just with them, but with others, even when you thinks you don't have anything to offer.

Networking is just other thing, totally different.

go to undergrad with someone for years of shared suffering that binds us together while in an environment with close quarters living and high shared context.

.. oh, you mean now. Uh. hmm…

I like Nassim Taleb's adage that if you can say why you are friends with someone you probably aren't their friend. You need a funnel of potential candidate friends and the best ones emerge from that. If you go one by one and decide whether they meet this or that criteria, you will end up with none. Practice openness, it's an acquired skill, especially when you learn to balance it with setting boundaries for yourself as well.

I don’t know that book, but I enjoy eating alone. Sometimes when I used to work at an office, I would leave early for lunch because I wanted to eat alone. Other days I would wait for people to eat with a group. Your description of the book appears to be those are advice for professional networking, not friendships. I think you are right tb at friendships are not under your control (although you, obviously, have influence).

But answering your question… I was at a point of my life with 40+ years old that I thought I would never (or wanted to) make new friends. Totally ok with that. But then I decided to write a novel and enrolled in a fiction writing course.

The course had a few characteristics. It was long. Every Thursday from March to November we would meet online. The teacher had an approach of quickly summarizing a topic and leave the rest of the class for discussion. So, it was not just a bunch of people listening a lecture with the camera and mic off. We were talking with each other all the time. Also, it was a topic that everyone was very invested in and generated initiatives to continue to talk about it outside of regular Thursday classes, like a Telegram group first and then an extra-official meeting almost every Tuesday.

When you spend almost a year, talking to the same 20 people once or twice a week, about a topic you care, you create some opportunity for new friendships. So I do now, two years later, consider that I have made a few new friends.

The unlucky part is that those people are from all over the country, just one or two in my city. And, of course, for now, they are not like old friendships that I have. But, who knows, in twenty years or so they might still be around and be really close friends.

So that’s how I started new friendships

You got convinced that it's important. What if it's only natural that it happens infrequently and you aren't missing out on anything.

1. Spend time with them. A lot. Do things together.

2. Have shared interests. This one it's not going to be under your control, because you won't be able to force yourself to like something that you don't, consistently.

3. Throw "guides" and books about making friends and connections in the trash.

I think it can be tough for technical minded people like us. It’s tough for me. My most lasting friendships have been the ones I made in grade school. I hear that is strangely common in Minnesota because so few leave, and when they do, they often return.

There was a similar thread to this a couple years back, and I had a number of people contact me. I honestly tried and I just didn’t connect with any of them.

I think it comes down to the specificity of our interests and having trouble even finding a shared vocabulary.

I think that is part of why so many of us rally around fandoms so fervently, it’s a strong shared interest and culture. For better or worse I have just never cared about a fiction enough to have much to say.

> ..and doesn't seem to be under my control at all.

Correct. You don't control someone else, and it takes two to become friends.

I don't think there is a secret trick. You can try to increase the chance to meet someone. Take up a new sport, charity work, etc.

When topics like this do appear then I do wonder

Is it really genuine if youre preparing a strategy?

My recommendation for you is to check out this blog: https://www.raptitude.com some of the posts deal with that subject.

Oh look there is even a post title that seems to be what you are looking for: https://www.raptitude.com/2021/01/how-to-make-friends-as-an-...

What is HN's experience with summer camps or those kinds of things? A lot of friends I have who went to them as kids said you forge connections very quickly in those environments. I've been to (non-silent) meditation retreats where this kind of thing has happened, too. And I guess for programmers the Recurse Center is probably the most similar: https://www.recurse.com/

It comes down to spending time with a person. I think it also depends on where you are in life sometimes. When you are younger, it is easier to get out and do things.

Once you have kids, it often happens that you only have time to see the parents of their friends. Sometimes you don't have a choice, but sometimes you find like minded parents that turn into friends.

Almost exclusively through school, work, shared hobbies and volunteering. As I age through my kids friends too.

Friendships often endure or are made because both sides have made sacrifices for each other. Usually these start small like making time to talk semi regularly. Friendships are like growing plants: they are fragile at start and require just the right amount of care (from both parties) to flourish.

My girlfriend and I have been struggling this since we moved to the suburbs. We have found classes to be helpful. It’s a somewhat forced social dynamic, but your classmates are likely to be geographically near and in search of a social outlet themselves.

Split who you know into two groups. Those who you know would enjoy hanging out with you, and those who you know wouldn’t.

For those that you know would enjoy it, get a rhythm of regular correspondence, and that should turn into quality friendships.

This rhythm IMO is the missing part

Dungeons & Dragons. Seriously.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33774353 - discussion from a few months ago. I found the article there pretty useful

Train jiu jitsu. I’m currently in Paris for the week with 12 of my teammates who are also now some of my best friends, all of who I met after I was 30.

Pokémon Go was a key for me six years ago when I just moved. Haven’t needed much else since.

Talk about shared hobbies, usually videogames or programming

All of the best and longest lasting relationships in my life have been from a shared experience or challenge...school, a band, sports, sometimes work (those seem to maintain a work barrier though).

These things tend to occur less naturally later in life for most people, so you have to go out and find them. I'm just approaching the age where my kids will be entering a school system and sports of their own soon, so I expect some relationships will form with other parents through that shared experience. I'm fortunate to have maintained great relationships from high school and college though...not everyone is as open to adding new people to their circle at this stage of life.

tldr: find other people to share passions / challenges with. Don't worry about moving on if it doesn't click.

can relate, i feel meeting people and building that initial foundation is easy but it rarely develops from that and just stays as a contact in my phone.

I see people asking about friendships on here (and elsewhere) all the time and I commiserate. But over the last few years I have been greatly expanding my friend circle very naturally. And for baseline, I'm 39, married, no kids (yet), and a full time SRE.

For me its been all about hobbies.

A few years ago i started asking myself "What would young Colin want?" IE, what was I interested in as a child, that as an adult I could learn from.

I realized there were big aspects of who I was, or how I grew up which were simply missing from my current life. So I started to add them back in in the simplest ways I knew how.

For me that meant that over the past 5 years I've added, short backpacking and canoe trips (rental canoes), learning to snowboard, playing golf, Ice Climbing, Photography, going deeper on my electronic music production.

The biggest wins have been snowboarding, camping, and by far golf.

With snowboarding, I was able to get some existing friends and then coworkers to start going on quick 3 hour drive day trips. A few existing friend got back into the sport, a coworker started and bought gear, I met 3 more coworkers outside of my team by organizing work trips. I just went with two guys this weekend who were old workers from a few years ago, its our 4th season doing these trips and Ive probabbly expanded my circle from 1 friend to about 10 who have participated.

With camping, it was similar. I had one friend who started with me, then he invited some of his friends and they invited theirs. The group keeps finding more people and coming up with new ideas. Weve probably got a circle of 8 people who have gone and weve done about 3 years or regular trips. there are more people who WANT to go though, its just a matter of time.

BUT GOLF IS THE REAL WINNER. Everyone seems to know these days of the "third place" problem, or the "Bowling alone" problem. Golf really has avoided these issues and really after 2020 lockdown expanded a ton. With golf, first of all... you can go alone, and you will meet usually 3 strangers every time. And in the last 3 years of doing that, I have met amazing people 99% of the time. really it would be very difficult for me to name a time i met someone i didnt like on some level... and some of the people ive met have been amazing. BUT, the old adage that "business happens on the golf course" is still true today, even in tech. We have a golf chat at work, and I regularly play with our CTO and other bigwigs at the company that I would never have met otherwise. In fact the very first person I met at the company (its a remote job) was the CTO... because we just both wanted to play golf. I am personally NOT a networking guy, when i play golf.. i dont talk about work. some do and that fine, but I let others decide. Besides work, I have about 10 people that I have kinda integrated into little outings. some are just terrible golfers and we go to terrible cheap courses and enjoy the sunshine, losing balls and then finding them in the woods. I have a best friend at work because of golf, and my work connections spread far over the company into areas i absolutely would never have ventured otherwise. Ive played with people from finance, law, tech, commercial real estate, medicine, advertising, film production, people from other parts of the world... so many that I have played with over the last few yearsthat it is simply uhh, mind boggling. I could go on and on about golf, but im gonna shut up about it.

Start doing things you love, pursue things you think are out of reach, bring a couple people you might know along, ask them to bring their friends, ask to play again when you meet someone cool. Its often awkward!!! and often fails... but you have the ability to open up your own world, and the world of those near to you.