Name: 全英｜长大以后，朋友越来越少，正常吗？Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T18:12:55.000Z
Duration: 6 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult or why is it so hard to keep the friends that we do have?

Basic quantifiers

A year ago I made a video talking about how I don't have any friends and to this day I still get a lot of messages from followers telling me how they related to my video and they had a lot of similar experiences to me which really made me think about why so many people have such a hard time keeping and making friends as an adult.

Adverbs of frequency

I think when we were younger, whether that be like middle school, high school, or sometimes even college, it was a lot easier to make friends simply because we were around each other for long periods of time every single day and this creates a kind of common denominator or common environment that brings us all together.

So we might be from backgrounds, we might have different interests, but at the end of the day we're all stuck in this classroom so we're gonna find things that we have in common, we're gonna find things to talk about to make things a little bit more enjoyable.

There are many different life paths to follow.

Some people focus on family, they get married, start having kids, and others might focus on their career.

Whatever it may be, as an adult people are more usually focused on themselves and doing things that they want to do.

So naturally we don't have as much time to focus on friendships and we also start to lose these common denominators that brought us together when we were kids.

And it's not even just about the lack of free time or the convenience.

I feel like when we were kids, friendships were pretty innocent and pure, but as we get older there are other things that come into play like social status, personal motives, or anything like that.

And this can make it kind of hard to open up to people and really trust people.

For example, when I was in college I thought I had a really close friend, a really good friend of mine, and we had a lot of classes together.

We would always go and get boba together, we'd study together, always hang out.

We had a lot of inside jokes and to me it seemed like a really perfect friendship.

But the minute I graduated she stopped responding to my texts.

To be honest, I was really confused at the time and I didn't really understand what was going on, but then when I started to look back on our friendship I realized that she was actually just kind of using me to get through all the classes we had together.

She would always ask me for help, she would always ask to see my work, but the second I was no longer useful to her she just cut me off.

This experience was honestly kind of heartbreaking for me and it made me rethink my entire outlook on adult friendships.

And I also started thinking about all the other people in my life and if they would just suddenly leave if they realized that I was no longer any use to them.

But why else is it hard to make little bit harder to be vulnerable with strangers?

And being vulnerable is a big part of making friends.

We don't want to come off as too strong when making new friends, so we might wait to respond to a text message not wanting to seem too desperate.

And it's almost like we don't want them to think that we care more about them than they care about us, which is a valid fear I think.

It is really hard to accept that someone we see as a best friend might only see us as an acquaintance or just a normal friend.

So naturally in order to protect ourselves we come off as a little bit more reserved, but when everyone does this it's really hard to make close relationships.

For me it's not even about finding it hard to make friends right now, it's also hard to keep the friends that I did have in the past.

Whether that's from high school or from college, after graduation people just move on with their own lives and get super busy.

And they might move to different cities or even go abroad doing their own thing.

And of course I'm very happy for them, but it just makes it harder to have this connection.

We see each other less and less and then naturally grow apart and share less of our lives together.

Honestly if I think about this for too long it does make me pretty sad because it's sad to think that the people I grew up with and shared a lot of really really important and perfect memories with are no longer a big part of my life.

But I do think this is a normal part of life.

Some people are only going to be there in a specific phase of your life.

Some people grow apart and that's totally normal.

And the good thing is nothing in life is ever permanent.

Old friendships can always be rekindled and you can find new friends, it just might take a little more effort and time.

And sometimes you have to wait for the right person to show up in your life.

It's all about finding the right timing and being patient.

So if you're struggling with making new friends or keeping the ones that you do have or maybe you're just feeling a little bit lonely, just know that it's totally normal and you're not alone.

Life moves in phases and just because you don't have any close friends right now doesn't mean you're never gonna have any close friends.

And the right people will show up when they're meant to.

We just need to be patient and let things happen naturally.

These are just some of my thoughts on why it might be hard to make friends as an adult.

And let me know what your thoughts are on this topic.

Or you can share your stories in the comments if you had anything similar to me happen where you thought you had a close friend but it turned out to be something totally different.

So just let me know in the comments and I'll see you guys next time.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

全英｜长大以后，朋友越来越少，正常吗？Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?

vulnerable

struggle

effort

desperate