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How are you going about making new friends or are you? Are you drawing off your cache of old friends? I'm pretty much doing the latter, I've got some great old friends but I'd like to add a few new ones but it's not easy at this age. I'm not a group person. I'm a one-on-one, girlfriend-type person. I think the minute you add a third person to the the party the conversation shallows out to accommodate the three-way. I'm a firm believer of doing what you love and hoping you'll meet like-minded people in the process.
Also, after 55/60, we have baggage. We have illnesses, we have ailing parents or spouses. We are pretty much our beliefs from previous years of experience. We have opinions that aren't changing anytime too soon. Some of us talk too much from loneliness some of don't talk enough or we talk about mostly ourselves. Sometimes it's just easier to stick with old friends that don't test our tolerance.
Very similar to yours. I stayed in place upon retirement and I am part of a small group of friends (myself and two women) who were in graduate school together. We are REAL friends, as opposed to acquaintances who are on friendly terms. I think it's important to distinguish between the two categories. In my experience "real" friends are a bit rare, but acquaintances on friendly terms are not. I value those real friends highly, but we are 68,69, and 71 and all three of us are not going to be around forever. I can foresee some degree of loneliness in real old age. I have three first cousins with whom I'm pretty close, but we do not live anywhere near each other so we keep in touch with occasional phone calls.
At my age, and given my own personality (friendly, but not given to real closeness very easily), I don't see making any more "real" friends in my lifetime as being very likely. A real friend, the way I am using it, is someone who is devoted, loyal, able to overlook minor irritations; in other words the friendship is very deep - you have each other's back at all times and it is something meaningful, something to be valued highly.
I hate to admit it - but in the 23 years here (we moved from LA) we have work friends and acquaintances but not close confidant friends.
We still retain close friendships from where we moved in California. It is one of the primary reasons we want to move back. There's a closer connection - and there is family there as well.
I have friendships that have evolved from my advocacy work - that began in an online forum..... we have met face to face. Some of those friendships are life long. I also belong to a forum that is political in nature - and have met many of the folks from there - those friendships also endure. I have rekindled friendships from highschool - through finding them on facebook and linkedin.
And my siblings will always be my best friends - along with my spouse.
You don't have to always be together - to have the friendships endure. I actually like the distance at times.... I don't need to be smothered with friends.
I don't have any close friends around here. My best friend is my daughter and her husband which is why I don't know if I can ever move somewhere else. My Mom was my best friend until she got to having some dementia and then I was her best friend, and sorta parent to her. When she passed a year ago, I realized the real friendship I had lost. I have high school girlfriends all over the country, but that's not the same. Had a husband for 28 years, but he was never my best friend, ever.
I admit I don't have a "best friend", and wish I did, but I have many other friends, just no close confidante. When I was working, sometimes this role was filled by men friends, truthfully. Guess I have trouble bonding with another woman, although I do have good friends of both genders, single and married, gay and straight.
We recently started snowbirding in Florida, and are finding it remarkably easy to make friends down there. Perhaps not really close friends, but some of those too. I think it helps that many in Florida are in the same shoes as we are--they come from somewhere else, and are looking for friendship.
I've heard it said that best friends come from being acquaintances first but I don't believe this. When I look back at the women who've been my best and closest friends, it started with a spark. It was an honest connection. It's like love, you know when you connect, only it's not love, it's mutual admiration. And I repeat, honesty is always at it's core.
I met my best friend 'S' standing at the gate waiting to pick up our kids from first day of preschool. All the kids were crying and running to their mommies, our kids were both hellbent on spending every minute socializing and didn't even know we were there to pick them up. 'S' turned to me and said, "You'd think we beat them." We both had a good laugh then fell into a Tues/Thurs english muffins & coffee routine that lasted for two years then weekly pour-your-heart-out lunches. Another friend, 'A', had just moved in to the neighborhood. I introduced myself and she launched right in, without knowing me, about her pain-in-the-butt son which pulled me into honest mode so I divulged, she divulged, me again, then her again, and we found ourselves by her mailbox for an hour-and-a-half. If we were talking about the weather it would have lasted a minute or two.
It's pretty much been that way. Shallow talk turns me off. I've learned that when I meet someone of interest, if I give a little bit of myself I might get a whole lot back. Sometimes not so I'm careful about the morsel I throw out.
But generally speaking, I'm finding women I'm meeting now talk too much about themselves and their problems. I appreciate that you don't get to be this age without acquiring a whole lot of baggage but don't take it to lunch. It's a rare woman who sees the opportunity to go out to lunch and set the baggage aside for an hour of give-and-take conversation. Maybe making new friends isn't in the stars. (shrug) Who knows...
We recently started snowbirding in Florida, and are finding it remarkably easy to make friends down there. Perhaps not really close friends, but some of those too. I think it helps that many in Florida are in the same shoes as we are--they come from somewhere else, and are looking for friendship.
We lived in FL for six years and found it to be the opposite. People readily smile and say hello but it wasn't easy making a real connection because we were all so transient, here for today but gone tomorrow. My best friend in FL was an old high school friend who lived the next town over who I hooked up with on line then lunch. It was good to have here there.
I now live in an age-restricted community where they close on 4 to 6 houses each month and new people my age are constantly moving in. You'd think it would be easy but it's not. Every day is like the first day of school only it's giddy seniors gushing over their lot locale and their 'extras' or the opposite, cursing the developer. They rush to attend every event hoping to fit in somewhere but there's no real connection being made because they've cast their net too wide. I'm a worm-on-a-hook kinda girl, I just need one good fish.
I find it near impossible to make new friends. It seems that if someone doesn't know me from the far past, I cannot make friends. It must be that my attitude and behavior puts them off because they don't know what it resulted from. My sister said I intimidate people - I don't mean to and am not domineering. A close friend says I am an enigma because superficially, nothing adds up and I don't divulge much of my past - that seems to bother people. I've been told I'm "holding out on us" - I didn't ask the people to explain what they meant. And like other people in this forum, I have nothing in common with the majority: I don't have a religion, kids, and am not a liberal/progressive. I guess one could fake it and just be a superficial sort, make tons of friends and go to happy hour and that sort of thing but like others have mentioned, I enjoy deep intelligent conversation about meaningful subjects, more typically one on one.
What about part time jobs?
Library (volunteers)
Red Cross Volunteers
School crossing guards
Cafeteria work
Consulting
The above is filler. I've no problems filling my day. Please don't mistake seeking a true friendship with filling one's day. Maybe that's the problem in a nutshell. People don't get 'friendship' anymore.
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