Puppies with Stiff Necks
Making Friends in Your Thirties and Beyond
Nobody told me that when I got older, my two major obstacles would be trying to make friends, and figuring out what the hell I did to my neck. (Strange days, indeed.) This begins for a lot of people in their mid-thirties. I’m way beyond my thirties, but I have been seeing a lot of Reddit posts by thirty-five-year-olds crying out for friendship. And I get it.
I recently met someone new, who made the mistake of talking about mixed martial arts in front of me. At which point, I turned into a giddy pit bull puppy. My eyes probably sparkled. He’s my wife’s co-worker’s boyfriend, and we met at an airy brewpub for Neapolitan brick oven pizzas and Revolutionary War-themed beers. He’s friends with a pro MMA fighter who’s fought in Bellator. I barely follow fights anymore, because it’s no fun watching them alone. And he lives only about an hour away! Calloo, callay!1
I did probably freak him out, because after we split the checks and were heading out into the rain to face reality, I asked if he rolled. For those who have never taken a liver kick and felt proud that they didn’t vomit all over the mats, that means “do you train.” Sadly, he does not anymore. But that’s okay. He watches fights, even if it’s only the ones his friend is in, and that’s something. Something to connect with! Hold onto that thread, and see where it goes!2
If I sound slightly over-excited, it’s because the pandemic has really narrowed the options for meeting new friends. And I really feel for anyone trying to date right now. That’s got to be even worse. But let’s say you’re a fifty-year-old who likes training in grappling and MMA, sports where the fanbase tend to listen to anti-vax dumbass Joe Rogan? Well, then you are more fucked than a male praying mantis who broke his leg during vigorous mating.3
And that’s the bind I’m in.
I didn’t have this problem in my thirties, when I started training in martial arts—where you meet a lot of new people and try to choke them. You get up close and personal very quickly, so there’s no ice-breaking required. And there’s plenty of time to shoot the shit while you’re recovering from the last grappling or sparring match. And Joe Rogan was that guy from News Radio who drank his own urine, and “podcast” may have had something to do with fishing.
When I should have been experiencing a friend drought, I began dating Sarah—who is now my wife—a 26-year-old Louisianan living in New York, and we merged our circles.4 Craft beer was a shared interest, and not as ubiquitous then, so we met a lot of people of all ages and backgrounds. In my forties, I started writing, and met other writers and readers at events.
And we all benefited from keeping in touch on social media, which hadn’t yet become a rabid hellhole of ads, hate, and conspiracy. I left Facebook sometime after 2017. My MMA teacher moved to Las Vegas to train fighters for the UFC, and my training partners scattered to the winds (Phil Dunlap is now in Virginia, running the White Rhino fight team). I goofed around at various gyms until I found Rock Solid Krav Maga, but didn’t make many friends, because of the political divisions. Krav is a little right-leaning, probably due to its military origins. And every time I tried to chat up the guys, they were talking about what Joe Rogan said on his podcast.
I didn’t keep my mouth shut and eat shit while they repeated his ignorant bullshit, but I knew I wasn’t going to make more friends there. Then, after a year of The ‘Rona, we moved to a new area. Our neighbors are friendly but a lot older, and the friends we know in the area have kids, and so between proper quarantine protocols and the usual manic parenting schedule, we didn’t see them a lot. That’s slowly starting to change. After a year of playing Dungeons & Dragons on Zoom, I’m burnt out on rolling dice. I got my bivalent booster jab yesterday, and I’ve been very lucky with my boosters protecting me when I went on flights, to a horror convention, and to a work convention (both events required proof of vaccination). So, I’m venturing out more.
I’ve posted about cleaning up trash in the woods with the MTN Roo Tri-State group of Subaru enthusiasts; they organize on Facebook, and I cheat using Sarah’s account. Last Sunday, I joined a couple of them to go driving on back roads in the Pine Barrens:
We stay in touch on Instagram. They’re friendly enough, but they all live in different counties in Pennsylvania, so if we decide to hang out, it will be on the weekends. But it’s a good start. I won’t say you'll never see a Trump sticker on a Subaru, but it’s somewhat less likely than on some bro at the dojo. Which is unfortunate, because I really miss rolling, and I will be checking out grappling gyms. I also miss boxing, but I have a thick skull and short arms, which means I usually eat a punch to get in close and attack the body, and that is not good for people who want to avoid Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.5
I also joined Meetup dot com. I had to, to go to a South Jersey Writer’s Group zoom meeting where Joe Lansdale was speaking. After hearing members on that call, I joined the group. I haven’t gone to any in-person events yet—write-ins are not really my thing—but I’m trying to be more active with them. Talking about writing isn’t what I want to do at the moment. The business side has only gotten worse since I started in 2011, and writing here has been a soothing balm for my aching bones.6
I also bought a fat tire trail bike, which is well-suited to the sugar sand trails down here in the Pine Barrens. There are some outdoor biking and hiking groups, but I go out in the woods to be alone. I am friendly on the Pine Barrens forums, and I hope to meet a few of my fellow explorers.
And I don’t want to behave like I have no friends. I have friends I’ve known for twenty and going on forty years; we just live nearly two hours away, and the 9-to-5 life makes weekends precious. And now that Dolly’s song is in my head, let me put it in yours:
Once Sarah gets her bivalent booster, I’ll be more insistent when dragging her out to Oktoberfests and other such events. The New Jersey Oyster Fest is in October down by the Bayshore, one of the lesser-populated and beautiful areas, home to Yock Wock Road and the town of Bivalve. I’ll be there, and I’ll tell you all about it. My friend Hannah, the WanderFinder, goes on birding and nature photography outings, and that might be a good way to meet people, too.
Are you in the years of friend drought? What do you do, if anything, to meet new people? Share in the comments.
Inbetween frabjous days should be a Cure cover by the Jabberwocks.
There’s probably already a restraining order.
I could also join an entomology group. Though my friend Suzanne still makes fun of me for going to a mycology meetup when looking for companionship. What can I say, I’m a fun guy.
Not a euphemism. Okay, yes it is.
You down with CTE? Yeah, you know me.
Thank all y’all. You are the balm.
Brendan DuBois had a line in one of his novels, "Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies." I find after 40 it's hard to find the first & impossible to find the latter. The last new friend I made who might've helped move a body would have done it more out of interest than friendship--just the kind of guy he was--but after moving from Oregon to NH in 2009, there's nobody within a 200 mile radius who'd show up at a moment's notice without asking why you asked.
I think a lot of it has to do with social media. I don't knock it because nearly all the people I've made connections with the last decade started via social media, but I do think social media has killed public spontaneity. I was telling my kids about meeting people at bars, coffee shops, or even striking up conversations with strangers in airports, none of which happens when everyone around you is nose-deep in a laptop or cell phone (or the ubiquitous tv is blaring). I had a similar experience at the gun club that you did at MMA rolls--everything got political & the skeet range turned into an outdoor clubhouse for the sort who think "Let's Go Brandon" is a clever retort. There was a presumption that if you were there to shoot clays then surely you must support unfettered access to full auto rifles & believe anyone asking for a modicum of gun control is a godless socialist (I mean, okay, I am a godless socialist, but that's beside the point). Been doing volunteer work with a local land trust, but even there, people seem to have their crowd. Rambling here, I guess, so I'll just end by saying I agree with you.
I have piles of friendly acquaintances that are a result of the writing and writing adjacent work I do but they are all almost exclusively text-and-email relationships that I keep at arm's length for a multitude of reasons. I've tried to connect more meaningfully with the folks in the Freeflow circle but have largely failed except for the last minute swirlings around an event or something. I have two people I spend regular in-person time with (one of whom I'm married to and we live hardly more a life than you might have with a good roommate given the different directions of our lives and interests) and then my bandmates, who are friends only in the context of our rehearsals and rare live shows. If not for that, I don't know how much I'd ever see them ... and one of those guys is someone I've had as a friend longer than anyone else in my life. So it's pretty bleak, frankly, and I don't know that I'll ever climb out of the hole. I'm not much of a joiner, and so much of my social energy is burned up making a living that whatever time is left I need to engage with in solitude, it seems, and struggle mightily to even make that happen.