Making Friends in Today's World

I just read this New York Times article about the difficulties of making friends after 30. I am a proud 31 as of my last birthday and this is a very familiar problem for me. Sometimes I wonder if its "just me". Making friends started becoming difficult by my late 20's. I'm already pretty shy when it comes to new people and situations. I'm also a person who values a lot of "alone" time, but there is a fine line between that and actual loneliness... I experienced a very small window of time in my early 20s where I found myself a person who had lots of friends. Some of that time was exhilarating and some utterly exhausting. Ultimately though,  I often miss the constant rush of creative energy you get when surrounded by like-minded people. I am now a person who has a very small circle of real true friends. I love those people very dearly and I wouldn't trade them for an army of casual friends, but I still wonder, why is it so difficult to expand that precious circle a bit?

I know it is true that as I've gotten older I no longer have the patience for trying to maintain friendships with people I feel I can never be close with. I used to be willing to put up with more drama, a touch more superficiality; but now I'm weary of it. I'm sure this is common for many, but I've experienced some pretty painful "break-up" with friends and betrayals of trust and love. It makes it harder and harder to start all over again. 

I also used to develop more friendships with co-workers, but this has also becomes more difficult for some reason as I got older. The article I linked to above sites competition and financial status as contributing to this, but I'm not sure that's really the case for me. I have realized that in the past several years I have developed a very distinctive boundary between work-life and real-life. The work-me and the me-me. I'm not sure that I like that this has even happened, but when the two start to bleed into each other I find it very uncomfortable for some reason. At this point I don't even know how to change this.

I also think that being in your early 30's these days is almost as much of a transitional period as the early 20's were. Many people are waiting longer to get married and have children so there is often a big difference between many of us at this time. I've been in a committed long-term relationship for many years, but we have chosen not to marry just  yet and the idea of babies is still several years off in the future. This can cause a HUGE divide with friends who have made different choices. If you aren't both able to adapt to the changes marriage and children bring to a friendship, its almost impossible for it to survive.

Today a huge part of our social interaction is on facebook, twitter, blogs, ect. Sometimes, if I'm sharing a story about someone I occasionally comment back and forth with on a blog, I will refer to that person as "sort of a blogging friend". How is it we even define "friend" anymore? Can we be good close friends with someone whom we have never seen face-to face, shaken hands with, or given a hug?

How have we become people with hundreds, if not thousands, of "followers" and social media "friends" but still have to join special organized meet-ups in order to find real human interaction? This is kind of crazy right? No matter what your age, I'm curious if you find it  difficult to make friends these days too?

{photo credits: The Edge of Love, Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables}