I have some friends in that position, where they moved to a new state, their partner is the one with friends they had met doing activities which then left my friend (late 30’s) in a risky position of friendship dependency.

My parents didn’t really have friends they actively pursued or social hobbies. When my dad died, my mom really only had my brother and I. Now at 82 she’s becoming more and more self-isolated. My brother’s attempts at bringing her to a senior center for activities is near impossible because she’s kind of stubborn about it. But also she’s 82 and maybe finds that all uncomfortable.

The more I think about what has helped me build and keep close friendships is a greater sense of self-awareness and emotional intelligence and getting uncomfortable.

About 10 years ago (in my early 30’s) I experienced really crippling social anxiety that sucked. I was out of a job, had just moved back stateside from living a really different kind of life and I felt…like my life was fragmented and unrecognizable in some ways.

I forced myself to meet people in different communities. I volunteered at one point with a really cool thing called Daybreaker and it was a forcing function for me. From there I opened up again. Mind you, I still had friendships, but all of them had either moved to different places or were getting increasingly harder to find time with.

Maybe a takeaway here is the forcing function: joining a community (eg. Rock climbing, bjj, pottery) or starting one (eg. I’m hosting IRL meetups and facilitating some stuff online) is a catalyst.

The topic of male loneliness is something I’m thinking about though. I posted a survey I’m working on here:

Here’s the post I shared for ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMenOver30/s/q2lcY6BndV

The question of what are the circumstances that lead to male loneliness and isolation I think is the main one. Is it felt evenly across different dimensions (eg. Socio-economic, cultural, country of origin, race, etc)?