This funny New Yorker post on how to make friends as an adult takes a light-hearted approach to solve this problem. Jokes apart this is a problem that afflicts more than just young people people coming out of the bubble of college where the demands of socialization in the real-world are comfortably absent. It's easy to fall into the trap that the ease of making friends and acquaintances in college just follows naturally into the real world. It takes a while for reality to set in.
The pattern continues into much later life - for those who had many fits and starts to establish their place in the world. Each change takes away some of the community the person had created around them, time and distance fray the bonds between people. So in the second half of a person's life they might find themselves in the need to make new friends and struggle with it. What's funny at twenty something is much sadder by that age.
I have a few friends my age who chose to never marry or have kids. From what they tell me, that is the hardest category to be in if you are looking for a vibrant social life. All well-meaning people around them are trying to get them paired and just that is enough to trigger alienation. They don't want to look like people in need of a rescue and the truth is they are don't need these lifelines. The choice to be single and/or childless they made thoughtfully. It was not an act of desperation or a consequence of failure. But they are not given enough credit - people are too eager to normalize and mainstream them. Having been an odd misfit for most of my life, I feel a kinship with this set and do my best to stay close to them without telling them how to live their lives. I know they enrich mine and I hope they can say the same of me.
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