Why Adult Friendships Take More Work—and Why They Matter

Insights by Cynthia Vejar, Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Lebanon Valley College

Key Takeaways

• Making friends as an adult often takes more effort and intentionality than it did during childhood and adolescence.
• Life transitions such as moving, parenthood, retirement, divorce, and grief can disrupt established social connections.
• Meaningful friendships depend on quality and connection, not simply the number of people in your social circle.
• Repeated interactions, shared interests, and stepping outside your comfort zone can help new friendships grow.
• Opening established social circles to newcomers can make a meaningful difference for people looking for connection.

For many children and teenagers, friendships develop almost automatically. Classrooms, sports teams, neighborhoods, and other activities provide regular opportunities to spend time with peers navigating the same stage of life. In adulthood, those built-in opportunities often disappear.

Work, family responsibilities, caregiving, and other obligations compete for adults’ time and energy, making it more difficult to establish and maintain social connections. According to Cynthia Vejar, Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Lebanon Valley College, building friendships as an adult often requires greater effort and intentionality.

“Adulthood provides fewer natural opportunities to develop friendships,” Vejar said. “As children and teens, we spend a lot of time with same-age peers at school, in our neighborhoods, and through sports and other recreational opportunities.”

The workplace may introduce adults to colleagues at many different ages and stages of life, but that experience is different from entering 10th grade surrounded by hundreds of peers at a similar point in their development. Friendships formed during childhood and adolescence also carry a shared history that can be difficult to replicate later. Those friends knew earlier versions of one another as they developed their identities and crossed important milestones together.

Adult social groups can present another obstacle. Although cliques are often associated with adolescence, exclusionary group dynamics do not necessarily disappear with age. Established circles may have unspoken roles, expectations, and ways of interacting that make it difficult for a newcomer to find a place. The behavior may become more sophisticated and less blatant, but it can still leave others feeling excluded.

The difficulty of forming friendships can become especially noticeable during a major life transition. Graduation, a new job, a move, parenthood, divorce, grief, and retirement can disrupt routines and reduce repeated contact with familiar people. New parents, for example, may have little time or energy left for friendships after meeting the demands of work and caring for a child. Retirement can remove the daily contact that once came from the workplace, while divorce or bereavement can alter both a person’s identity and social circle.

These changes matter because friendship plays an important role in emotional well-being. Meaningful relationships give people a place to speak openly, share everyday experiences, laugh, pursue common interests, and hear honest perspectives from people they trust.

“People are social creatures, with an innate need to connect and belong to something bigger than themselves,” Vejar said. “Having friendships provides deeply pleasurable opportunities for laughter, to engage in fun hobbies and interests, and to find a sense of companionship.”

Loneliness, however, is not always the same as social isolation. Social isolation refers to an objective lack of contact with others, while loneliness is the subjective feeling that meaningful connection is missing. A person can interact regularly with relatives, neighbors, coworkers, or even friends and still feel unseen or misunderstood. Someone with a much smaller social circle may feel deeply connected and supported.

“The quantity of social interactions does not equate with the quality of our friendship bonds,” Vejar said.

A prolonged lack of connection can affect mental health in different ways. Possible signs include increased sadness, irritability, frustration, or anger, along with changes in sleep, energy, motivation, or interest in activities that once brought pleasure. Loneliness also can become cyclical: A person who feels disconnected may withdraw from others, and that withdrawal can deepen the original sense of isolation.

For adults hoping to expand their social circles, Vejar recommends spending time in activities, organizations, or environments connected to their interests, values, or passions. Recreational groups, sports, volunteer opportunities, classes, museums, and libraries can provide starting points. The most useful settings are often those that allow people to encounter the same individuals repeatedly, creating opportunities for familiarity and trust to grow.

Meeting people is only the first step. Turning an acquaintance into a friendship may require someone to leave their comfort zone and initiate contact outside the original setting. A person who connects with someone during a photography class, for example, might suggest meeting for coffee between sessions.

Initiating plans can feel awkward because doing so requires vulnerability. A declined invitation, however, does not always reflect a lack of interest. The other person may be busy, overextended, shy, or equally uncertain about developing a new friendship. Continuing to reach out can make the process feel more natural and help people become more comfortable with occasional rejection.

“Practice builds comfort,” Vejar said. “The more often a person steps outside of their comfort zone to initiate plans, the more comfortable they may become with the process—including tolerating the occasional declined invitation.”

Not every new connection needs to become a close friendship to have value. Acquaintances and casual relationships can provide a sense of community and belonging, and some may develop into deeper friendships over time. There also is no universal timeline for forming a meaningful bond. Friendship usually grows through repeated interactions, shared interests, consistency, reciprocity, and trust.

Social media and online communities can support that process, particularly when they help people maintain relationships across distances or find emotional support. Online activity also can intensify loneliness when passive scrolling replaces meaningful conversation. Rather than treating social media as entirely positive or negative, people can consider whether their use leaves them feeling understood, engaged, and connected.

Adults who continue to feel isolated should avoid assuming that something is wrong with them. A particular setting may not provide the repeated contact needed for relationships to grow, or a promising connection simply may not develop into a close friendship. Finding the right people and circumstances can take considerable time.

Professional support may be appropriate if loneliness leads to hopelessness or a decline in mental health. The emotional impact of isolation should not be dismissed as silly or unimportant; a lack of human connection can affect both emotional and physical health.

The responsibility for creating connection also does not rest only with those who feel lonely. People with established social circles can pay attention to newcomers, including someone who recently moved to the area and may not yet have a support system.

“Opening the gate of an established circle typically requires little effort from someone on the inside, yet can make a meaningful difference to the person on the outside,” Vejar said.

Adult friendship may rarely develop as effortlessly as it once did on a playground or in a school hallway. But with repeated contact, patience, vulnerability, and a willingness to extend—or accept—an invitation, meaningful connections can still take root.

Clinical Mental Health Counseling at LVC

Turn your passion for helping others into a meaningful career. Lebanon Valley College offers a CACREP-accredited Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling that prepares students for licensure as professional counselors, with flexible pathways for both undergraduate and graduate students. Explore our accelerated 3+2 program or our post-baccalaureate master’s program to take the next step toward supporting individuals, families, and communities.