Ask Lemmy

once a month or three.

I have an active social life but mostly around shared interests, eg book clubs, sports, some activism, etc. Classic friendships not so much, having drifted from childhood friends. Feels like we live in different worlds. My partner has taken that place.

probably once every two or three weeks on average?

I play DnD with some of my close friends. We also try to get together at one of our houses every once in a while to do "arts and crafts" stuff. Paint figurines, carve pumpkins, gingerbread houses, painting shitty paintings with bob ross. Sometimes we have "scary movie night", or watch over the garden wall, or a new anime that came out something. Sometimes we'll go out to do things too, the Zoo, or museums, or a haunted house, or coen maze this time of year. We started doing this after COVID. It seems kinda silly, but having a good excuse to get, like, a half a dozen or so friends together and hang out IRL is honestly great. Sometimes i don't wanna get up on a Saturday to do it, but I'm always glad I did. It's hard to come up with excuses to do things in person that aren't prohibitively expensive, nor infrequent.

I know I have friends, but they're all technically my wife's friends and their husbands. We probably socialize once or twice a month, depending on schedules. I love them all, but I have no friends that I socialize with 1:1. It's always a group event. So in a way it feels like I have no friends.

The one friend that is truly and originally my friend, since middle school, I'll see maybe once a month if I'm lucky and it's usually a framily event with our wives and kids. And the time and distance apart feels wider than ever as we've gotten older.

Socializing at 40 is... different, and oddly lonely.

Becausebof various political shit happening around the world, my main friendship is gone

36, less than once per month

All my friendships basically dried up and fizzled away by 25. Old friends from school got married, went down different paths than I did, etc.

I'm 38 now and I still occasionally talk to a couple of friends every few months or so (one from middle school and one from high school), but it never goes beyond casual conversation. I haven't gone out with anyone besides the girlfriend in over a decade.

Virtually at least once a week.

In person, about once a month.

The big fall off is around 28-30 when most people are committing to families. After that you’re lucky to see them once and awhile.

Online pretty much all the time, in real life twice a week, at choir and at band practice. More when there are concerts.

Depends on the group.

I go climbing with same group at least once a week.

Then I have my big circle of vegan friends, where we try to see each order at least once a month but that can happen more often sometimes.

Then there's my classic circle of friends I've been friends with forever and the same for that, usually once a month.

So even if you disregard my weekly climbing I usually see at least one group of friends every other week but sometimes every week.

Edit: 31 by the way

Quite regularly, but only because I coincidentally moved into a house across the road from an acquaintance that became a good friend. We go over each other's house for tea, or board games, or casual multiplayer video games.

If it weren't for that proximity I'd say I'd very rarely spend time with friends. Life is busy. Work wants 40 or more hours a week, then you've got chores, shopping, study (if you're doing that, I was studying full time for a year and a bit recently), then you just need time for personal hobbies and relaxation. On top of that, other people can be flaky, or just busy with their own things.

You guys have friends?

i think everyone on this thread should say their approximate location, then DM anyone on your area to see if you're closer enough to be IRL friends.

I'm in South West Michigan area.

40's. Once every 2 to 4 weeks, sometimes less. As an extrovert, this is killing (figuratively) me.

Feels like less than once a month. I don't have a routine of hanging out with friends. I'm not even sure who considers me their friend. Everyone lives far away and I blame car culture for that.

Virtually nearly every night I see a friend or two, sometimes I'll go a week or so without doing this. On the weekends, I virtually see 2-5 of my friends probably 2 a month for the bigger group and 6 or so times for the smaller group (so 6 total gatherings, 2 of which a larger group shows up). Every other weekend I meet in person with a group of 4-5 nearly religiously, to play TTRPGs. Probably once a month I hangout on a Friday with friends from work at like a pub or a beer garden or a pizza place. Once a month (sometimes more) I'll meet with friends on the week days for dinner or a movie.

All things considered I feel pretty fortunate to have very virtual hobbies so I can meet with people about as much as I want nearly whenever I want to. Still working on getting more friends in my time zone that play the same games as me (I'm a recent immigrant to Germany, most of my gamer friends are still in the US, arc raiders is coming up feel free to PM me if you're in the EU timezones lol). I'm also fortunate to have made a lot of quick friends at local nerd/queer spaces and am an eternal GM when RPGs are in their golden era. It was/is not hard to find a table of people interested if you fish for a bit in my experience. Honestly I'd like to be doing more in person stuff but my flat isnt fully ready for hosting but when that happens I'll be adding a monthly board game night and a seasonal party to the mix!

Hope this helps, for what it's worth.

Are people over 40 allowed to reply? Or is that too large of an age gap?

I have no friends

I'd say 1 or 2 times a week. Sometimes a lot more, sometimes a little less.

That said.. My closest friends, the ones that I share the most common interests and hobbies with.. I barely see at all. I try to coordinate to see them monthly, but sometimes it's less. One has kids, the other has health problems.

The friends I hang out with the most, we have less in common, but we all get along well, and have some core interests and hobbies in common that I don't actually have in common with my closest friends.

The two groups of friends are cordial with each other, but neither of them are as close with each other as I am with them separately. It's interesting. I guess I have a diverse set of hobbies and friends.

I have other friends mixed in there too that I only see sporadically, that don't belong to either group. I struggle to make time for them every few months, usually at least a couple times a year, even though we live close by.

I'm glad I have friends, and it's good to be active and social. But I'm also a bit of an introvert, so some weeks I really just wanna stay home alone and veg. Many nights I do. But most times, if I get an invite to go do something/hang out, I take it. I'm really bad at planning things or inviting people over though, ironically. So I feel like I've lost friends over the years from not reaching out enough.

40, roughly weekly with high variation (sometimes not for over a month sometimes five in a week)

Amazing to see that some people think virtual counts as seeing your friends more than rounds-to-0%

What friends?

I used to spend at least one day a week with my friends, and when I was in a motorcycle club it was often far more.

Now I run my own business and have no free time really and when I do its recharge time and time spent with my wife.

I see my mates maybe once or twice a month now

Im broke, once a month or every two months, can't relate to my back home friends after moving back, my college friends are very spread out, we still meet up for raves, they meet more often, I can't make it as much

Frequency varies, sometimes monthly, sometimes not. All of my friends have dispersed across the country, got married, got divorced, bought houses, went crazy...the usual.

The one thing I need to say here is if that there is a real friend in your life that you value, you still have to invest in that friendship. Once you leave high school/college it's not just "hanging out". No one has that kind of free time anymore. If you really value a friendship, make sure you put in the effort. Don't hang on to one-sided friendships where you are the only one trying, but make sure you're putting in the effort in an actual good friendship. I know it doesn't seem like that and you have that vibe that makes you think you'll always be friends, but adult friendships take more than just a vibe.

30 here and all of my friends are people I met online. We chat every day, but only see each other for a weekend every few years at a convention. My friends are all younger than me with some finishing up college and others just having full time jobs. None have a wife and/or kids though (hell I'm the only one in the group with actual relationship experience with only 1 other having experience in just random 1 night hookups).

friends?

Scheduled friend time. I have a lesbian friend who has never seen Madoka Magica so we do weekly watch parties. My childhood bestie hosts a weekly Twin Peaks watch party and we theorize together. I have a couple friends who my wife and I do D&D with. I also have an autist friend who I churn butter with since that shit is boring af alone.

Im mid 40s now. For me it was:

25-35, drinking, concerts, bars. Some non-alcohol activities.

[after this time a majority of my friends have had kids and/or been priced out of my city]

35-45, Coffee catchups, work parties, activities like D&D. Traveling to see older friends. Slowly learning how to socialize without alcohol.

It does require more effort the older you get. I can get introverted, making it harder to invest the effort. Having an outgoing wife has really helped me in this regard.

I'm 56. I hang out with 5 to 6 friends 10 times a month on average. Mostly to play tabletop games. Sometimes I meet one or two for lunch.

You mean when I'm not depressed, isolated and withdrawn?

I don't remember...

57, almost never, it's mostly family and work. We do have parties about 2-3 times a year that include whoever wants to come, that gets some friends. But really almost never, family got so big that it's a big network of people and that's most of our entertaining.

I'm 48. I have a few buddies that I rarely see in my hometown. I travel once or twice a year on a city break to drink and eat with a few old pals.

But yeah, generally I don't not hang with anyone outside my own wife and kids and extended fam. This isn't through choice, it just seems to be the way things have gone.

33 at this point. I get a decent amount of socializing with my coworkers to where I don't feel a "need" to socialize. I'm a fairly chatty person, so that may be a result of who I am personally wise.

With that being said, these are strictly coworkers and not "friends". I would consider them more positive than a stranger by far, most experiences are warm and positive but not a "friend". Oddly enough despite my ability to socialize well, most of my friends drifted off to do their thing after highschool, so I barely see any of them.

I can see this as detrimental to some folks but I haven't really been affected... Yet. I can't rule out the potential problems in the future. I spend time with some of my remaining friends I'm in contact with, it's mostly just posting memes laughing and shit talking.

Pretty often since I've got a large friends group who are the "lets go to x gig/party" type

If you count discord, just about every night. We have a whole list of things we rotate between from movies, games, and brain rot videos.

In person, once every few months. We get together for some holidays, events, etc.