#177: New friends

Drop your city in the comments

Apr 21, 2024

The most comments I’ve ever received on a newsletter was one published in January 2023, and I didn’t even write it. My friend (and editor) Mallory Rice did, and it was on the topic of adult friendship. At the time, there were media murmurs of a post-pandemic “friendship recession,” and having moved to Montana during those years, away from all of her friends in New York, Mallory wrote about what it was like to socially recalibrate in her mid-thirties. She recently mentioned that some of her views on this endeavor have shifted in the time that’s followed, so I asked if she wouldn’t mind writing an update, and she said not at all. I also wanted to start another find-a-friend comment section for people who are looking to make more local connections, because a few new subscribers have expressed regret that they missed the first one. So this is that, too.

Whenever I’m struck (like a gong) by the reminder that the world is big, and life is long, and that I may one day journey beyond my familiar loops, I think about Mallory’s move out West. Before she left, she was utterly New York to me, with her sharp literary eye and urban, idiosyncratic tastes. And yet once she moved, she was utterly Montana, too. She just looked so right out there, hiking around rivers with her dog Ted, interviewing elderly Wyoming churchgoers about Kanye West, planting vegetables seeds in her wide-open backyard. Watching her unfold out there felt like watching the world unfold. She reminds me of how expansive and surprising life can be. But I know moves like that come with their complications, so I’m glad she’s back to explore one.

I have a distinct memory from the day I moved to New York, August 2nd, 2007: After hulking my bags up to a 4th floor loft, I took my sweaty body to lunch at a mediocre sushi restaurant a few blocks away—my mediocre sushi restaurant, the only one I was aware of—where I knew, more or less, nobody. I have a bad memory generally, but this is one of the times in my life when I can recall with clarity, after glancing up from the menu, the feeling of being both exhilaratingly and excruciatingly alone. Right away, I became aware of the table next to me, where three girls were having a lunch that would normally be too commonplace for me to retain all these years later—chatty, warm, familiar. Immediately I had the thought: One day, I’m going to come back here with friends. A pretty modest goal.

My roommate at the loft ended up becoming one of my all-timer best friends—I’m en route to his bachelor party as you read this, if you are reading this shortly after it was published. I don’t think we ever went to that restaurant together, but we have now been to hundreds of other ones, many of which we were happy to proclaim mediocre.

That’s not where my scorched-earth rebuilding of daily-life friendships ends though, because 15-ish years later, I fell in love with the American West and, after I moved to Montana, reignited my search for worthwhile dinner companions. I have another, similar memory from shortly after I got here. I was half-heartedly casting a fly rod from the river bank at a busy fishing access when two women pulled up in a truck, dropped their drift boat in, then floated off downstream. They seemed excited but practiced. There was a lot of swishing blonde hair as they transferred things from truck to boat. Importantly, they seemed fun. I thought to myself: One day, I will be back here and I will have friends. I am not 100% sure it was them, but yesterday I floated the Yellowstone with two women I now know who are (checks notes) better at fishing than I am, fun, and swishily blonde-haired.

People will not stop telling you that trying to make friends as an adult is hard. It’s become one of those millennial refrains that’s so familiar it’s difficult not to go glassy-eyed when you hear it, even though it’s true. There have been afternoons in Montana when I have realized, suddenly, that I actually need to lie down on my sofa, back of hand to forehead, because I am so exhausted from being open to new friendships. I’m not joking.

The making of friendships captures our imagination and anxieties the same way the start of romantic relationships do. We’re fixated on the concept of potential, which is actually pretty sweet if you’re in a good mood when you think about it. But time has shown me that the growing of fledgling friendships requires as much action and intention as the initiation of them. During the past couple of years, I’ve felt steeped in this middle ground that doesn’t seem to get as much air time. Even the shape of my own memories leave it out: It’s easy to recall wanting friends, and the feeling of finally having them, but harder to recall the moments in between.

I’ve found that new friendships don’t usually pan out the way you think they will, and it all takes longer than you expect. I’ve been so wrong in my initial impressions of some potential new friends, but the wrong people have still led me to the right ones more than once. The process of letting that all play out takes time. Recently, I asked a friend to remind me about a proclamation she’d made about how long it takes to feel settled in a new place. It turns out she’d said three years, but I’d heard and remembered five, which seemed unbearably long to me then, but I now realize it’s not, and that in a way she’s right in reality and my memory.

She also explained something she’d read about how the first band of people you meet in a new place often do not end up being your long-term friends, that you’re actually more likely to be working your way into some kind of molten core of deeper compatibility with people you’ll meet once you’re more ingrained in your town. I can imagine there’s some truth to that, though I find it a little hard to accept, and bittersweet, as, three-ish years in, I currently find myself really treasuring and, frankly, fairly reliant, on the people I’ve met so far. I also feel unable to confidently identify precisely where I am in the process she described, which is unsettling and disorienting at times. I think that’s why I end up on the fainting couch occasionally, wondering whether I should be pouring everything I have into the tried-and-true friendships I already have or continuing to nurture new ones. The answer is of course both—it’s almost always both.

So, here’s my/our question for you: Who among us has in the recent past pursued and then muscled through the early stages (like, first months, years) of a new friendship and how has that felt? Who among us is still looking to kick things off with some new friends where they live? (That’s what this comment section is for.) And if you live in Montana, once again I must insist that you DM me, I have a nice long list of fun things to do this summer. -Mallory Rice

Please DM Mallory! My favorite article I read last week was “Total Eclipse,” by Annie Dillard on the eclipse of 1979. So funny, astonishing, devastating, sweet. What an experience to read. Last Friday’s 15 things also included a new perfume, my current paint fixation, a novel I was excited to read every night, and more. The rec of the week was how to make your house smell really good.

As Mal and I mentioned, comments are open this week. If you have renewed thoughts on friendship or are looking to make new friends, feel free to drop your location below. I know that some cities have already started WhatsApp groups and have occasional meetups, so maybe some of those can be reshared and/or revitalized!

Maybe Baby

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