Her two good friends have both moved away this year. She just broke up with her boyfriend (amicably) because of work schedules. Her roommate is on a different shift and they never see each other because one is always sleeping! My daughter is in her early 20’s, just started a new job. She now comes home to an empty apartment and it just sucks. I feel bad for her. I told her she can always come over to visit with me and her dad, and I think she’s wondering if she can ask if she can move back home! I think this would be a big step backwards and she should tough it out, grow up, and adjust. But I do feel badly for her.
The reason I bring this up is, some time ago one of the posters here related a similar story. She had a daughter with a good job who had bought a house and was lonesome, as she worked with older people who didn’t socialize after work. She was asking SDers if they had any suggestions. (volunteering, matchup.com, etc. were suggested)
I can’t find the thread, but I am wondering what ever happened with her daughter, with that situation.
A lot of my friends have gone through this (I’m 27 now). In particular it seems to be people who go straight from high school to college who have a very difficult time making new friends after they are no longer in a school environment.
The new job sounds promising, unless she works only with people of very different ages/stages of life… be as friendly as possible.
I always recommend meetup.com and lots of people I know have made friends through attending groups. If she wants to date, most people in that age group are comfortable with the idea of online dating. okcupid is free and full of educated 20-somethings. Actually, many people do use it to ‘make new friends’ (as you can check off as your intention in your profile).
If she doesn’t want to use the internet to find those who may have common interests, she just has to get out of the house and start talking to people as much as possible. Clubs, volunteering (lots of young people serve food at homeless shelters), the local pub, local free concerts and events. Introduce yourself, be social, and invite those you like to join you in doing something else. Voila, friends.
Your tough-love approach seems best. Making friends and learning how to entertain oneself is a life-skill that she’ll have to pick up, and coddling won’t help her. Some people never have to learn how to make friends. They settle down in their hometown and have the same friends as adults as they did in middle school. Nothing is wrong with that, of course. But tell her to stick it out.
My daughter is in the same boat. Out of grad school, bought a house, and co-workers are older and don’t socialize. She has taken classes, tried online dating, and gets herself out there, but nothing.
Where does your daughter live? If it’s a city like New York, Boston or Chicago, There are a million things to do and a milion young people in the same boat as your daughter. Even if she doesn’t know a single person, she could easily spend months keeping herself busy exploring around town.
That said, going from college to living on your own, even in a big city (or maybe especially in a big city) can be a bit of a transition. College tends to have a pretty rigid social structure. Everyone is in the same place in life and you tend to define your relationships between your living mates, your hall mates, class mates and any clubs or sport teams you belong to.
Real life isn’t like that. Unless you join some company like Deloitte or Accenture where they hire hundreds of kids right out of school and they all go to happy hour together every thursday, your coworkers probably will be in different stages of life and have different interests outside work. Indeed your daughter should probably find friends and interests outside of work because IME work friends tend to talk about work too much, it can create conflicts of interest at work and its nice to have a support group or other distractions when work isn’t going well or if you change jobs. The other problem is that in a big city, you may hit it off with someone, but then never see them around again unless you have a regular activity you both go to.
Of course it doesn’t matter how many clubs and activities you go to if you don’t actually make an effort to meet people. It’s actually a lot of work. You have to throw parties. Invite people to dinners or drinks. Send them periodic phone calls, emails or text messages. Even just striking up conversations with people and remember important facts for the next time you see them takes some effort.
Really what it comes down to is 90% of friendship is proximity and length and frequency of contact.
I feel like I’m in a similar position as your daughter, except I haven’t seriously dated anyone. Nothing seems to move past the second or third date either because we just don’t click, or the guy’s still in school (I’m 23), etc.
One of my good friends moved across the country to get her MBA and I’ve kind of lost touch with some other friends due to being scattered all over the country (or world). Facebook helps, but not much. So I’m down to around 5 or less friends who are still in the city, and half of that 5 are actually friends of friends who I really only keep in touch with because of another friend. I also keep different hours from my roommates. The saddest part though (although I actually found it funny) is one of my roommates told me she didn’t know my name! We hardly ever talk- I guess she just forgot. Anyway, I told her she could refer to the pile of mail we frequently have in the kitchen if she needs a reminder.
I do get along with and have fun with my co-workers though, so I guess that helps me feel less lonely. I also just got a promotion at work so am working constantly, which makes me so tired that I don’t necessarily care about not going out with friends- I’m just tired and want to sleep.
I keep meaning to do things like volunteer, do a class, join meetup.com, etc. to meet new people. There are also amateur sports leagues- one of my friends who ended up with not too many friends after college joined one of those to meet people and it’s worked out really well for her. Is she in a position to care for a pet? Coming home to a creature, even if it’s just a fish can help ease loneliness as well. Best of luck to her, hopefully this is a temporary situation.
(continued) - my daughter graduated from college, worked for a year, moved into an apartment with a good friend. Then she went off to another city and…out of sight, out of mind. She came home to visit.
Then she grew lonesome for all her old friends here, and the job market stunk in the other city, so she moved back into her old apartment with her good friend. She is now pretty much alone in her apartment due to different working shifts, and her two good friends here are gone, she broke up with her boyfriend.
She has started a new job here, and hooray! There are a lot of people, and they are nice! (I don’t have to hear “my new job is horrible, mom!” on top of everything else). so there is that.
You always hear people spitting out, “get a life!” She has a lot going for her, but getting a life is HARD.
I’m at the same place. Single, living alone, 25 years old, 4 hours away from my family. I have some work friends, but we haven’t quite made the transition to out-of-work friends yet. Having social anxiety doesn’t help much either. I guess I’m doing okay mostly because I’m an introvert and I don’t mind being alone a lot.
She is about an hour from Chicago, and most people she knows there aren’t interested in driving out to do things, plus everybody works such long hours that for her to drive in all the time just doesn’t work.
“Exploring around town.” What does this even mean? Yes, large cities have lots of young people, and lots of young people who find it tougher to make friends outside of school, but they don’t walk up to you and say “O hai, let’s hang out.” You could go to a million concerts, or art walks, or to the beach, and see a million people your age, and that doesn’t make it any easier to make friends. Who are you going to go exploring with, or to these concerts or pubs with? Alone? Do you just walk up to people and say, “I can’t help but to notice we’re in the same age group,” et voila? No, and that’s the whole problem, remember? That they’re not in some large setting where it’s easy to mingle with and meet new people? We know there are gallons of people out there. The question is how do you make friends with them?
Anyway, as someone fairly young who just moved to a city alone a little over a year ago, I know what your kiddo is going through. The first few months were infuriatingly rough, but I got myself out there, and somehow managed to meet enough people that it got to the point where I’ve made a conscious effort to stay home. Just a year ago I only had something like 1.5 friends here, and finally declared “Enough! I am tired of Netflix being my best friend.”
The best thing I say she can do is join a sports league. I joined one soon after I moved and met some of my favorite people through the league either directly or indirectly. Volunteering also works, but not as well. A sports league is more likely to attract younger, more fun and athletic people, so most of the members are viable friend candidates. Volunteering draws a more diverse crowd with a disproportionate amount of housewives and retirees who need something to do with their time. Nothing against those groups, but probably not ideal buds for a 25 year old. I’ve also tried MeetUp which generally sucks, but if you manage to meet someone who’s cool, just friend date them. I totally did that with the handful of chicks I met who were cool. I told them something like, “Hey, you’re pretty effing cool and we should hang out again.” You kinda feel like a pervy guy, but it works. Hey, they’re there to meet new people too, and if you find someone you have friend chemistry with, lock that shit down. Don’t be like, “Oh, I met this really fun girl who I’ll never see again.” I don’t use MeetUp anymore because it’s generally awful, but I managed to escape with some kickass buds from that site.
Just for some concrete examples of these things actually working, coming from a real person who this has worked for, and not just generic “Oh, take a class and you’ll meet people!” advice from your Aunt Helen who hasn’t met a new person in ten years, tonight I’m going with a girl I met from volunteering to a drinkingstravaganza thrown by a bunch of folks in my sports league. Should be fun times. Next weekend I’m going to a BBQ at the place of two super cool broads I friend dated at a MeetUp event.
So there you have it. The system works. If a mean old lady can make friends, so can your daughter! Buona fortuna.
Sadly, for my daughter at least, there are no rec league teams in her town except church leagues, and none of the Catholic churches are involved. She likes to golf, and she is a good softball player, but there’s nowhere for her to do it.
I guess she could join a country club and then maybe a golf league, but she really doesn’t have the money for that. I’m at the point to tell her to just go Protestant to meet people (none of the Catholic churches have any kind of young adult groups, either), but I hate to do that.
My advice to lonely people is to join stuff. If you’re shy or anti-social, it can be very difficult, but if you’re lonely, you need to find a way past that. I love sports, so I always recommend social sports clubs, but there’s a massive array of social events that force people to interact with you - book clubs, vacation tours, cooking classes, art classes, etc.
OP, what your daughter is going through is very common among people her age. Just look at how many people have agreed in this thread already. As already said, that transition thing is hard. Besides, Catholics and Protestants are all Christian, so it’s not like they’ll reject her for being some sort of heathen barbarian.
There’s a group here in Nashville and in a number of other cities called “Events and Adventures”. I’m not a member, but they say they have over 40 events a month open to local singles. They don’t matchmake, they just have group activities like hiking, concerts, pub nights. It might be a place to meet new friends of both genders.
