I’m 35 and I just learned why making close friends is so hard. Research suggests it takes around 50 hours to become casual friends, 90 to friends, and 200 plus to close friends. Adult life rarely hands us those hours

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A few months ago, I had one of those strangely adult realizations that arrives quietly and then refuses to leave. I was sitting at home on a Friday evening, scrolling through old messages, when I noticed something uncomfortable. I still knew plenty of people. My phone was full of contacts. My social media looked busy … Read more

I grew up in the 1990s and the thing nobody warned me about is that the resilience my generation was praised for was just the absence of anyone asking how we were — and the adults who admire us now for being “low maintenance” don’t realize they’re describing the exact training that made it almost impossible for us to ask for help in our thirties.

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There was a sentence adults used constantly in the 1990s that sounded like praise at the time. She’s so easy. He’s so mature for his age. They never cause trouble. Children heard those sentences and interpreted them as evidence that they were succeeding at being lovable. What many of us did not understand until our … Read more

The people who reach 70 without close friends didn’t usually choose solitude — they chose everything else, repeatedly, until friendship had no room left in the schedule

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There was a woman in her late sixties who once said something to me over coffee that I have never really forgotten. The older you get, the more your life becomes a list of people you either kept calling or didn’t. She said it casually, almost like she was talking about the weather. But the … Read more