Ask Lemmy

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.

Once a month, when I lived in a place where I resided for multiple years. Now that I relocated and I know literally one person in a non-work capacity, once a quarter probably.

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.

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'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.

Probably several times a year. My best mate lives in a different country, everyone has young kids so things always take ages to arrange.

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.

Nominally once a week at a scheduled meetup. I'm reality, about once or twice a month.

Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone.

Actually, a psychologist suggested it had more to do with my youth, but whatever. I don't drift much these days, there's too many snags, I just keep holding my head above water.

I try to see someone at least weekly.

Getting close to 40 and I spend time with friends probably on average 2-3 times a week. I'm a sociable person but do have a low social battery, so need a lot of time alone/just with my partner. Me and some close friends put on music events so we naturally spend a lot of time together which is nice.

Almost 38, I spend all my free time with my wife. Started off more balanced before we moved for my work, and the more I focused on time with her, the happier we were. I hang out with work friends occasionally.

My pre marriage friends became vile, Trump-worshipping, incel assholes, so I am very content with my decisions.

Edited for typo

friends?

I’ve got one friend who’s super social but doesn’t have many friends herself, so she tries to see me almost every day. Realistically I probably see her 2-3 times per month. Other than her, I only really have two friends I hang out with in person. Each one is probably once a month or so, maybe every other month. I’ve also got a friend I like to play games online with, that used to be a weekly thing one time but we haven’t played together in a few months. I’ve got a little bit of time off work right now so I should probably try to hop on with him before I go back.

Try to do online games with my best friend once a week, I do jams with people in public once or twice a week, will probably be dancing in some capacity once a week, and I’ve got a second date coming up soon. Then there’s weekly D&D, of course, and any of the unique plans that come up during the week.

Of course non of that stops me feeling sorry for myself when I have even one day where I lay around and do nothing but I try to just let the feeling pass instead of worrying about it too much.

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.

35 here. I have a couple friends I see weekly for board games, I rarely visit my other friends though, they're usually busy with their kids.

Not that often actually. But every time we meet, its very enjoyable. I guess i just feel pretty happy with just me and my girlfriend.

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%

Most weeks I go out and see a friend at least once. I prefer to go out twice a week though but I'm still establishing myself socially in a new city

I'm 31. The secret is hobbies and finding ways to make them social and actually making plans to hang out with friends. You can just invite another couple for dinner, or host a PowerPoint or board game party. Seriously ask yourself if you have friends who might be interested in a Halloween party if you don't have plans to attend one.

Depends what you count.

By the strict definition, very rarely. Like once ecery month or two.

But I chat online with my best friend, pretty regularly. I play games online with my cousin, who lives in another state, about once a week.

If you wanna go even broader, there's a handful of Twitch streamers I watch pretty regularly. I'll be the first to admin that's a far cry from a friendship, but they're relatively-small streamers, so they actually read and talk with folks in chat, and most of us in chat talk to each other and know each other by name. So, there's plenty of socialization (albeit low quality compared to real life) going around.

Parasocial relationships are weird.

I see friends every weekday when I walk my kids to school and whenwthe kids have playdates, and when I take my kids to the school playground on the weekend. And on bowling night once a week, and on band night once a week (but I don't go every week). Also I'm married to my best friend.

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

It varies wildly but averages somewhere between once and twice a week. We do potlucks together, meet up for MTG at each others houses and local card shops, we go to community events together, and we do Parents Nights Out to eat good food and chat. We also do kids play groups which is not explicitly for the adults but it totally is.

35+, many times a week if you count discord and gaming. Otherwise maybe once every six months, unless you count sports, then maybe once a week on average.

I left my home country, but I've been fortunate enough to get friends to visit a few times over the years. Would be nice to make some new friends but my kid honestly runs out my social battery all on his own.

Not often enough. Some friends have multiple kids and others with multiple jobs but we try to hang at least every few weeks.

All the time.

D&D every other week! Unless we have scheduling conflicts, which happens often!

At the moment almost every weekend in person, though on average it's more like every 2 weeks I think. It used to be way more but after finishing my study it became insanely hard to meet new people like myself. I also game with friends more than half of the days in the evenings tho, so that's nice.

The main loss since finishing my study is the regularity and spontaneity of meeting with friends. It requires careful alignment of agenda's and planning ahead for over a month to get something done. I hate planning, but the downside of making friends who are like me is that most of my friends also hate doing so. So sometimes I have to push a bit to get stuff planned. Previously we'd naturally run into eachother and just decide to grab a beer that evening or watch a movie or something.

I'd also live to make more queer friends where I'm at but every group seems to be for students or elderly or something.

What are these... "friends" you speak of?

Twice a year at most, if traveling coincides with the right locations.

40s. Have a group of friends that try to meet up twice a month to play Dungeons and Dragons. Then we have other friends we probably see every few months.

Quite a lot for online friends and gaming. For irl friends, it's more sporadic.