Longevity and Relationships

A few years ago, I read an article that said one of the biggest indicators of happiness and longevity is having strong relationships as we get older. However, many of us tend to lose friends as we age. Perhaps we’ve moved. Maybe we’ve argued over politics. Or, perhaps, we’ve simply developed other interests, and stopped putting effort into the relationship.

We also find it much harder to find new friends as we age: most of our strongest friendships tend to be those we met in college or in our first jobs, before we got married, have kids, etc. The article went on to describe how men in particular struggle to maintain existing relationships and develop new ones. That’s because for so many men, our work is a big part of our identity.

I struggled to make friends when I moved to the Boston area, which is not surprising. Boston isn’t a particularly friendly city especially if you didn’t go to school here or aren’t white. I grew up in another country; I’m not interested in sports, science fiction, video games, super hero movies; plus I don’t drink!

Surprisingly I still made many friends in the years I’ve lived here, but I also lost several due to divorce, losing a job, and moving to a new town. Becoming a father and starting a new stressful job meant I had less time for relationships. Inevitably, I fell out of touch with a lot of my friends: so many of them had moved away and I hadn’t made a habit of chatting with them. I had very few people I spoke to on a daily or even weekly basis.

Health and longevity are both very important to me so I realized I had to change this situation. The question was, how?

Making friends is so much harder as an adult, and the fear of rejection makes it worse. Plus people are busy and it’s tough to find time between work and home responsibilities. It’s so much easier to pretend that things will somehow change even if we dont make any changes at all.

But the fear of dying a lonely death, and more importantly, having no one show up for my funeral motivated me to move through these fears and develop a strategy: I thought about everyone I knew that lived close to me, just to make it easier to meet. I also chose to initially focus on men to keep things simple. I texted the two most likely candidates something very casual, like “Hey, would you like to get together for a coffee or a walk?”

Within a couple of weeks I was able to go on my first such walk. It was great, and at the end of it both of us wanted to meet up again. Of course, being guys we kept it vague:“This was fun. We should do this again.” one of us said. “Yeah, we should,” replied the other. Classic guy stuff and you know how that goes: they never meet again. However, being newly motivated, I made sure to reach back out in a couple of weeks to schedule another “date.”

The second part of my plan involved meeting new people. Luckily I have a young child which means many kids birthdays and for some reason I get invited to a lot of events. This might be because I like trying new things and I like talking to people I don’t know. I had heard that when Americans meet someone new, the first question is often what do you do for work, whereas other cultures tend to not talk about work that much, so I started doing the same. It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone when you’re not complaining about that mean boss or annoying colleague.

Of course, some of these meetings didn't progress beyond the first walk; but enough of them did that within a few months I had a regular “roster” of friends to meet up with and some of them have blossomed into really cool friendships. Along the way, I realized I have a gift: no matter how little I have in common with someone I can find one or two things that they know a lot about that also is interesting to me.

Something new I’ve learned to do, is gently introduce a moderately heavy subject. With the right person, this can immediately take the conversation into a completely different level which is much more real and satisfying than talking about something superficial.

If you’re in the same boat as i was, I encourage you to reach out and make new friends. I don’t know if I’ll live longer, but I do know I’m happier now that I am connected to more people.