Building and Maintaining Friendship in Adulthood
A New York Times article I read this week captured something that comes up often in my work with clients. - making and keeping friends in adulthood is hard. The article names something many of us quietly feel: friendship gets harder as life fills up. Work, relationships, moves, caregiving, commitments, parenthood, stress, and plain old exhaustion can make connection feel like one more thing to manage. And when friendship doesn’t happen naturally, we often turn it into a story about ourselves: I’m too much. I’m not interesting. Everyone already has their people.
From a psychotherapy perspective, that makes a lot of sense. Friendship isn’t just a social activity - it’s nervous system regulation, identity, belonging, and attachment all rolled together. When we try to form (or deepen) friendships as adults, we’re often bumping into old learning about closeness: how much to reach, how much to need, what it costs to take up space, and whether the other person will respond (and how it will feel if they don’t).
1) Initiating is not neediness, it’s leadership
One of the article’s biggest themes is that adult friendship often requires someone to be the initiator. In therapy, I think of this as practicing “relational agency”: choosing connection on purpose rather than waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect signal that you won’t be rejected.
If reaching out feels vulnerable, it may help to reframe it as a values-based action:
I value community, so I take small actions that build it.
I can tolerate a little awkwardness in service of connection.
I’m not asking for a guarantee - I’m offering an invitation.
2) Make it easier than you think it has to be
A common friendship trap in adulthood is waiting until you have energy for a “full production” hang. But closeness is usually built through repetition, not intensity. Therapy often comes back to the idea that consistency beats perfection.
Try lowering the activation energy:
A quick walk.
Errands together.
A 10-minute phone call.
A standing monthly coffee.
“I’m free Tuesday at 5:30. Want to join for a short walk?”
When connection becomes part of your routine, it stops competing with your life and starts becoming one of the things that sustains it.
3) Plan for how you connect best
Not everyone bonds the same way. Some people connect face-to-face through conversation; others connect side-by-side through shared activity. In couples therapy, we normalize different styles of connection all the time - friendship benefits from the same normalization.
Ask yourself:
Do I feel closer through talking, doing, laughing, learning, or collaborating?
Do I need structure (classes, volunteering, recurring meetups) to make it real?
What kind of interaction actually leaves me feeling restored?
Friendship isn’t one-size-fits-all, and you’re allowed to design it around what works for you.
4) Vulnerability builds intimacy - even in friendship
The article highlights something I regularly see in therapy: asking for help is often a shortcut to closeness. Many of us overestimate how “burdensome” our needs are, and underestimate how meaningful it can feel to be trusted.
This doesn’t mean oversharing too soon. It means letting friendships have some honest depth:
“Can I run something by you?”
“I’ve been a little isolated lately.”
“Would you have bandwidth for a quick check-in this week?”
Healthy friendship includes room for mutual support, not just pleasant company.
A gentle experiment for the next 7 days
If friendship is something you want more of, try this small, concrete practice:
Think of one person you genuinely like.
Send a simple message:
“Hey — you popped into my mind. Want to [walk/coffee/quick call] sometime this week?”Put a date on the calendar, even if it’s brief.
Connection often starts with one small action.
If you’d like to read the original piece that inspired this reflection, you can find it here: How to Make and Keep Friends