by Seraphina Seow
Los Angeles Times
A friend of mine has been hoping to make new friends as a 26-year-old. She’s made every effort to put herself out there: joined clubs, volunteered, initiated catch-ups.
But every time she establishes a new connection, it wanes after a few weeks. She suspects that it may be because she pokes fun at people too early in the friendship.
“They get quiet and awkward,” she tells me. “Can’t handle my jokes.”
Striking up meaningful friendships in adulthood is hard. A 2024 study found that 42 percent of American adults feel they are not as close to their friends as they would like to be. One in 3 adults feels lonely at least once a week, according to a 2025 American Psychiatric Association survey.
Part of the challenge of making friends in adulthood is that it requires more effort. You may have competing responsibilities and are more selective about who you want to spend time with.
In college, school or a first job, “there was a built-in cohort of people who were in the same spot in life as you,” said Linda Baggett, a clinical psychologist in Manhattan Beach. You tend to lose this as you grow older and need to be more intentional about hanging out with the same people over and over again, says Albert Bonfil, a psychologist based in Los Angeles.
You may also need to brush up on the social skills required to form and keep a connection in the first place, said Baggett, who adds that these skills get rusty when we don’t socialize frequently or feel anxious.
The Times asked psychologists to share tips for nurturing new friendships, with a focus on social skills. Here’s what they said:
1. Check your assumptions
To connect with a friend, you need to be able to be present and observant of what they are relaying to you, said Yasmine Saad, a clinical psychologist in New York City. But “what you feel internally will color the narrative you have” about the interaction.”
So, if you assume that people think you’re boring, then when someone doesn’t laugh at your joke, you’ll see that as reinforcing evidence for your internal view. But if you come into a conversation with an open mind, you might not take someone’s lack of laughter as personally.
“If you have a history of social anxiety, you may go into social interactions harboring some really strong assumptions about what’s going on,” Bonfil said.
These kinds of assumptions are distracting and can hinder the possibility for a friendship to form.
“They get in the way of your emotional expressiveness,” said Bonfil, “which is your ability to share your feelings or respond to other people’s feelings.”
The best way to counter this instinct, Bonfil said, is to go into social situations with the aim of collecting evidence that refutes these assumptions. In doing so, they become less compelling and less likely to taint your interpretations of future interactions.
“By developing interpretations that are grounded in the actual experience, you’re more likely to not let self-defeating thinking undermine your relationships,” he says. In other words, you won’t write people off so quickly.
You’re also more likely to remain emotionally regulated, Saad said, which “frees you to be more present and read people correctly.”
2. Switch up how you socialize
You are bound to meet people who socialize differently than you do. You may relish in sarcasm while others may tend to be more earnest, for example. But that doesn’t mean you can’t gel with them.
When you make a sarcastic joke to a new friend, observe their nonverbal cues, said Bonfil. Have they gone quiet, fidgety, awkward? Take note of what they say. Did they express distaste for the joke?
“What I’m trying to do is facilitate some kind of a conversation, to use their cues to modulate how much sarcasm I use,” Bonfil said.
If they appear uncomfortable, switch gears and offer them another part of your personality, Bonfil said. Perhaps you are also caring or curious about other people’s lives. Lead with these other parts of you when interacting with that friend.
Adjusting how you interact with someone who socializes differently doesn’t mean reigning in your personality, Saad said. “Look at it not as limiting oneself but expanding oneself.”
3. Listen, really listen
When speaking to a friend, are you often thinking of what to say next instead of paying attention? Chances are you aren’t actually listening.
“A lot of people are not as good at listening as they think they are,” Baggett said.
This is especially true if you’re overly preoccupied with how you’re coming off.
“If you’re anxious in social situations, you can miss cues or not listen to other people because you’re trying to think about what to say next,” Bonfil said.
Being genuinely curious about what the person has said makes it easier to carry on the conversation from wherever they leave off.
“If you’re really thinking about what they said, then you’re going to have all kinds of other things to say,” Bonfil said. “You might want to talk about your experience of the thing that they said earlier. Or you’re going to have some innate curiosity and ask them what they meant by X, Y and Z.”
Tomorrow: more tips on making friends.
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