Making friends is hard, I won’t lie to you. But, it’s worth all the effort. A good friend is worth more than any amount of suffering faced in the efforts to get there.
To lay my cards on the table, I’m a very social person. I love talking to people. So, I know that I may be coming from an angle that many people might not be able to personally relate to. However, I think the experience of being lonely, or feeling like you don’t have any good friends around you, can be universal.
There was a significant period of my life where I felt that way. I had lots of friends, but I didn’t really like them. I felt lonely and isolated for most of the hours in the day. I’d be talking to people, hanging out, going to parties, but still feeling lonely. Bad friends are more draining than having no friends at all. That was a hard realisation that I had to come to. It’s a realisation that you may need to come to yourself. If you are feeling drained by your social interactions, you might not be an “”introvert””, you might just have bad people around you.
In my experience, you need to first cut the dead weight before you can truly make new friends. I spent years of my life trying to build new relationships while clutching onto my old ones. I was scared to be alone. I was scared that I would have no one, so I clung to people that were only hurting me. No matter how much I was wronged or slighted, I wouldn’t give up on people. I would tell myself that I was being loyal, that it was an important trait to have. I was just being too afraid to do anything else.
Eventually, things will get too bad, like they did for me. The world has a funny way of pushing you in the right direction, even if it hurts. I eventually had to just cut the dead weight and see what the world had in store for me. Once you’re free of the past, then you can fully embrace moving forward.
And yeah, I know I’ve mentioned “cutting the dead weight” a lot. That’s the next piece I’m working on, my tips, tricks, and advice for doing that.
The Simple Action that Helped Most
So, I didn’t want to spend hours making an exhaustive guide, so I’ll give you a quick “silver-bullet” solution.
Step 1: Start rock climbing.
Done. That’s it.
Literally. There’s your cheat code.
If you do nothing else and ignore everything I say past this, just go sign up at your local bouldering gym.
The modern world seems to have stripped most social spaces from society, for better or worse. Bouldering gyms are one of the last, or perhaps newly emerging, bastions. I started rock climbing something like three years ago, a time where I had almost no one in my life that I truly felt close to anymore. I started climbing as a random surprise I arranged for someone’s birthday. Little did I know that it would change my life.
Now, unlike anyone you know who oversells rock climbing, I have a different tact. Yeah, yeah it might be the world’s fastest growing sport and its super fun. Also being a great way to work out and get resistance training into your life, blah blah. That’s not it. The best part of this damnable sport is how social it is. I entered with nothing and left having met some of the best people I ever have. Some really interesting ones as well, but you know, swings and roundabouts.
The sport is just inherently social. A bunch of people in a strange building trying to work out physical problems. Strangers will share tips and advice, sometimes a little too much (beta-spraying is looked down upon among the more experienced). Then there’s the celebrations. Any completed climb, called a send, is celebrated. Nothing brings a room together like a climb sent. Congratulations are shared without hesitation, and sometimes even admiration if the climb was impressive. There’s also the physical contact. A fist-bump is the standard acknowledgement for a send. I won’t go too into it, but physical contact is a massive part of relationship building, so this is huge.
I remember the first two friends I made at the climbing gym, we may not be friends anymore, but for two years I had made a best friend. I quite literally walked up to them as they were struggling with a climb and showed them how I did it (it was more difficult than the usual beta). They laughed at me and I awkwardly hung out with them for the rest of the day. After weeks of climbing at the same time together, we eventually went out and got lunch after a climbing session, which is another staple. Exercise followed by a meal, is an easy way of bringing the activity-based friendship beyond being just that. It’s genuinely such an easy method for meeting people and making friends.
Another, less daunting, story I have where I made a friend goes like this. There was a young man who always wore a face mask and sat alone at the gym. He didn’t really talk, but he was getting good at climbing quickly. It started with me simply giving him a fist bump after a send, with a short “nice climb”. That was it. Even if you’re not a social person, that’s a very simple and normal part of climbing. Weeks went by and those fist bumps evolved into actual conversations, eventually he came out to lunch with the other two I’d befriended. Then we started lining up our climbing sessions together. Weeks went by and we were hanging out more and more. In no time at all, I had a very close friend in my life who I’m still friends with to this day.
Bringing it in to Land
Now, I’ve offered something very simple. I’m not giving you the little conversational or behavioural tips and tricks, I can always do another piece on that, but something straightforward and easily actionable right now.
This weekend, or even this evening (maybe tomorrow evening), go to your local bouldering gym. Even if you’re the most awkward person in the room, you can do it. These places always have beginner programs or classes if you really want some training wheels, but you can just turn up, rent some shoes, then get climbing. Watch people climb, that’s normal. Congratulate them when they send or do something you find impressive, that’s normal.
You might not immediately strike up conversations and be a social butterfly, that’s also normal. But keep turning up, keep climbing, keep giving people props for their hard work. That will eventually snowball into conversations and, if you’re committed, friendship.
So, there it is. Something you can do right now. Look up your local gym.
I can’t force you, the choice is always up to you.
What are you going to do?