The boxes stacked shoulder-high in the garage. Tomorrow, the moving truck would come, and we’d be on our way to the next state.
We sipped Gatorade and contemplated what it meant to start over again. The reorganization of a house and onboarding for a new job were challenging but expected. The harder part? Building a new community of friends.
Vice, Boston Magazine, RealSimple, and others have all published articles declaring making adult friendships hard. Our multiple moves across states drove this home in very real ways.
“You thrived in Sarasota,” my husband pointed out. “I had more friends in Kentucky.”
The observation rang true. Each of us thrived in different states. The pattern lay in our sports.
We Accidentally Designed Adulthood to Be Lonely
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that it took 50 hours together to move from an acquaintance to a casual friend, 90 hours to become a friend, and 200 hours to form close friendships.
Making acquaintances and friends in school was easy. You see the same faces in the classroom, dorm room, and campus activities for weeks. The hours spent on the campus newspaper trying to beat the deadline bond you in shared late nights over cold pizza.
Time spent working together doesn’t count as much toward making friendships as an adult. To form friendships, you need three ingredients:
- Exposure to the same people, repeatedly
- A low-stakes shared activity
- A built-in commonality to bond over
It’s why the idea of “work friends” is harder. Sure, these are people you see probably every day. The problem is work isn’t low stakes. The power dynamics between managers, colleagues, and clients muddy every interaction.
Doing fun things outside of work was easier when I was a young professional. I volunteered at a library and a civic group for other young professionals. I started rowing and ran 5Ks with strangers at a pub.
Commitments started to eat into leisure time. As a teacher, I spent long hours reviewing essays and writing lesson plans on weekends and evenings. Buying a house meant mowing the lawn and fixing the deck. Becoming parents meant less flexibility in eating, sleeping, and free time.
Moving away from an established social network didn’t help. Nor did the pandemic that sent everyone home.
Now both of us work from home. A coffee break means the counter, not the office break room. Meeting people for power lunches and happy hours isn’t possible when they work in different states.
Where in the act of managing daily adult life is the 200 hours of free time to nurture a friendship?
Why Sports For Adults Create Friendship
As kids, we became friends because we played together. Somewhere along the way, we stopped playing.
Perhaps playing is the answer.
That pickleball league? Chances are, it fits into your schedule on nearly the same day and at the same time slot. Go repeatedly, and you start to recognize the faces on the court.
Introduce yourself to those familiar faces. Get some tips from more experienced players. Ask their opinion about the court shoes they like, a low-stakes easy question. Soon you have people greeting you by name. Standing courtside, you learn about the people–their family, work, and life experiences.
50 hours fly by when you’re having fun.
Rowing Shaped My Community
Decades later, I still call and text my Sarasota friends. Rowing is how I made them.
Pinning down exactly how many people engage in rowing is hard, with estimates ranging from 600,000 to 3 million. Either way, it’s still a niche sport. Saying, “you row?” to a stranger wearing a CREW-emblazoned hat instantly bonds you over a shared understanding of blisters and early mornings.
To become competent requires much more than 50 hours. And it’s not one of those you can master from watching YouTube videos. Coaches and fellow rowers teach you the quirks of pushing an oar and navigating a river. Most begin in team boats with other novices or experienced rowers.
The people I hear from the most are rowers. We are scattered all over the country, but pick up wherever we left off when we run into each other at events in Tennessee and Michigan. Rowing gave us a shared identity that bonds us all.
Find Your Friends in Sport
It doesn’t have to be rowing or pickleball. For my spouse, it’s whitewater kayaking and rock climbing. Maybe it’s CrossFit or a cycling team.
The idea is to find a place where the same people keep showing up, and you show up too. Be there for an hour a week, and you’ll have 52 hours invested by the end of the year.
Well on your way to moving from stranger to a friend, to people you’ll text years after you’ve moved.
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