Sign up for my monthly newsletter
Some unusual facts about making new friends.
As we get older, our opportunities to connect dwindle, and so does the desire to. But our need for intimacy doesn't, which is why many of us start to feel a little isolated once we hit our thirties.
Before the long list of practical tips in my follow-up article on making new friends, here are some facts about how adult friendships actually form, and how to create the conditions for them.
Fact 1: we need others to mirror our 'selves'
We depend on others for survival, and social skills have always given us an edge: they let us build trust and trade favours. But we want more than the practical benefits. We crave belonging and affection. Friendships also shape our identity: by comparing ourselves with others, we work out what we like and what we value, and by choosing which groups to belong to, we come to know ourselves better.
Fact 2: proximity is the strongest predictor
The single biggest predictor of whether two people become friends is functional distance, how often your paths actually cross, rather than how physically close you live. Keep bumping into the same person at the same cafe and you're far more likely to strike up a conversation than if you only meet once a year. The familiarity principle does the rest: we tend to warm to people we're exposed to repeatedly, as long as we sense there's something in it for us. Worth noting that while proximity is essential for making friends, it stops being a requirement for keeping them.
Fact 3: attraction matters, even platonically
This may surprise you, but appearance plays a part in whether we initiate a friendship. We tend to associate attractiveness with other desirable traits. Beauty here is firmly in the eye of the beholder, though: studies suggest we're most drawn to people who resemble ourselves. Importantly, attraction predicts whether we start a friendship, but plays much less of a role once we've decided to pursue it.
Fact 4: birds of a feather
Once both people decide to develop the friendship, similarity takes over. We like those who are like us, because when someone thinks, talks and acts as we do, it validates our own sense of self. The effect runs deep: one study found friends share strikingly similar neural responses to the same video clips, and other research suggests we even tend to befriend people who are genetically more similar to us than average.
Fact 5: show them yours, they'll show you theirs
Intimacy and proximity are a powerful mix, which is why intense shared experiences, group projects, hikes, retreats, accelerate friendships. They require vulnerability and self-disclosure, and without those there can be no real friendship. Disclosure can be factual ("I don't drink coffee") or emotional ("coffee makes me anxious"). Research shows friendship responds better to disclosure around more intimate topics, though you probably wouldn't want to lead with them. As a friendship matures, that openness should naturally deepen. Just remember intimacy isn't the same as unrestricted venting: nobody warms to a constant downer, and like attracts like, so positive, open energy is genuinely attractive.
Fact 6: a little flattery goes a long way
Psychologists call it social identity support: anything that affirms our sense of belonging to a group, whether that's a nationality, a profession, a team, or a club. We prefer spending time with people who validate us as members of the categories we care about. It matters, but keep it real: friendship still requires honesty alongside the affirmation.
Fact 7: we can bond with almost anything
Our need to belong is so strong that, in theory, people can form attachments to objects and even robots, on one condition: that the thing seems to reciprocate with regular, meaningful interaction. Some people anthropomorphise easily, others feel silly doing it. But if you experience something as having a personality and a capacity to interact, you can, in a loose sense, befriend it. Which says less about the object than about how deeply wired we are to connect.
← All articles