Do you want to be my friend?

On making new friends in your 20s and holding on to the old ones.

Dear reader,

The Nike yoga pants that I’ve had for three years are starting to be worn out. When I go to Basic fit, I don’t really care about who sees my unfashionable workout clothes, but every time I attend a yoga or pilates studio that serves Yogi tea and burns incense, I tell myself the same thing: it’s time to shop for some new yoga pants and a new sports bra.

I always imagine I’ll ask the girl on the mat next to me where she got hers. I’d play dumb, because I know it’s Lululemon. But maybe, just maybe, it could be a crack toward conversation. Maybe even a new friend?

Because, well — sometimes I’m lonely.

I have wonderful friends. Some of them live nearby, others are abroad. And when we do see each other, it’s a joy. But people get busy. Some have jobs that stretch beyond nine-to-five or demand weekends. Some are in school. Others have entered the mysterious vortex known as coupledom. And suddenly, weekend plans aren’t as spontaneous anymore. They require scheduling.

I’m currently not in school. I’m unemployed. I’m introverted. I have no real nightlife. And I’m at the point in life where friendship doesn’t come baked into the structure of my day. No seminar groups, no shared flatmate besides my ( I must say, AMAZING) sister, no hanging out “just because.” The hanging out isn’t as regular as it once was.

Urban life is strange. It’s an ecosystem of people constantly moving around; coming, settling and then leaving again. What if you’re the one that stays? Sometimes you’re the one who leaves. But lately, I’ve been the one who stays. I’ve seen neighbours rotate, friends move away, people change jobs or cities or entire identities. And I wonder: what does it mean to try and build something rooted when the whole city is in flux?

Some of this definitely has to do with personality. I rarely crave the energy of chaotic group hangs and when I feel like going to a bar or club, it has to be exactly the type of music I like and with the people I like, otherwise I see it as a waste of my money and time. If I do go out, I’m not the type to strike up a conversation on the dance floor, or over the counter of a bar. I like morning routines, slow and sincere conversations with people who don’t forget what I’ve just told them one second ago. I want connection; deep, human, funny, surprising, without it having to feel as dreadful as dating. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I have had this conversation with some of my friends recently.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how, even though I have amazing friends, who do get along with each other, they’ve never really formed one cohesive group. I’ve always existed in these separate friendship galaxies, manoeuvring between individuals rather than being in one central social circle. And it never really bothered me. I didn’t feel like I was missing out, until recently.

Now that we’re all slowly entering similar (yet different) life stages — internships, relationships, relocations — I find myself envying the kinds of friend groups you see in Sex and the City. Their ritual. That dependable “we’ll meet no matter what” energy, even when everyone’s busy. I’ve always romanticised the idea of all your friends living in the same city; your own little social infrastructure just a few metro stops away.

Things come and go. Friends come and go. Nothing lasts forever, right? Sure, that’s always been true, and I do genuinely appreciate the different seasons we’re thrown into by life’s unpredictability. There’s this great quote by Virginia Woolf:

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”

Change is, I believe, humanity’s greatest source of inspiration — new people, new circumstances, new places. But nowadays, in this fast-paced world, the speed at which everything’s changing, sometimes feels INSANE. I often feel like life moves faster than I can keep up. You have to say goodbye before you even got to see what your (new) friends are like on holiday. They’ve already moved halfway across the world, gotten sucked into office life, gotten married, or converted to Buddhism, all before you’ve had the chance to see them drunk at a party.

Stay in touch?

Some people are just naturally gifted at keeping in touch. They have WhatsApp systems, scheduled FaceTime calls, group chats with daily memes and check-ins. I, tragically, am not one of those people. This strange hunter gatherer’s brain of mine has undoubtedly frustrated many people, including myself.

I’m reminded of that one season of Girls, where the entire friend group calls each other out for not “showing up enough lately.” Everyone’s too caught up in their own chaos, someone was absent during a breakup, another during an illness, a third during a quarter-life existential crisis. Are our 20s the most selfish decade of our lives? No one was fully there, and yet everyone felt abandoned.

The role of friends in re-navigating singlehood

Since the end of my three-year relationship with a truly wonderful man, the presence of loneliness has grown more acute. When a significant other vanishes from your daily life, it’s remarkable how much everyday communication simply evaporates. The “good morning” or “how was your day?” messages disappear, along with the comforting instinct to pick up the phone and call them without hesitation. That unthought-through, habitual companionship, shifts to the virtual when the other person isn’t physically there. Unlearning these rituals is strangely combative; it feels like an argument with your own brain. What had once become second nature now reveals itself as a complex web of neural patterns that must be consciously dismantled. Undoing them, telling yourself “No. Sit this one out alone.” rather mechanically whenever you feel the impulse, is really weird and..hard. People often say that after a breakup, one should throw themselves into the company of friends. But what if that option isn't readily available?

No pressure & patience

At the moment, I’m doing my best to maintain the beautiful friendships I already have. I write “reply to friend X” in my to-do lists — no joke. I also make time for coffees with new people I meet, and I try not to get too discouraged if a second meet-up doesn’t happen easily. I remind myself just to enjoy the conversation for what it is, without putting the weight of ‘potential friend’ on it. If it clicks, it clicks — and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. That’s okay of course. But even when it does click, it’s quite the challenge to keep investing in it; watering it like a seed, growing into a plant, then a tree. It takes time.

I suspect that, for some of us, the urgency to form new friendships quickly is fuelled by an internet-shaped illusion; that meaningful connection should be as immediate and frictionless as a swipe or a click. We grow impatient with the reality that real friendship, the kind that endures, requires a gradual unfolding. It begins with compliments on each other’s style, then meanders through shared film tastes, touches on the broader questions of how we’re coping with life at this particular juncture, and eventually arrives, if we’re lucky, at childhood memories and the complexities of our mothers and fathers. It’s a slow walk, side by side, and it demands time. So much time, in fact, that one day you find yourself weeping in front of them in your ugliest sweatpants, and not caring in the slightest. That kind of intimacy doesn’t happen after two or three coffees, or a casual afternoon at an art exhibition.

Even cool loners need friends

It’s important to say that I genuinely love my alone time. I love going to the park, leaning against a tree, and reading! I love getting a coffee on my own and listening to music! That Keanu Reeves lone-wolf energy is a part of myself and I actually really like it.

But every now and then, I get caught off guard by change, another shift, another wave that washes over the sense of familiarity or community I’d just started to settle into. And in those moments, I think: what can we actually do to mitigate that feeling?

I think it begins with being honest. With saying out loud that, yes — I do feel lonely sometimes.

I’m about to go on another friend-date now. Byeeeee

Love,

Naomi