7 Reasons Why it Takes Effort to Have Friends

Maintaining friendships as an adult can be difficult for many people. The first step is to understand the new “rules of the game” regarding friendships that were forged during childhood and adolescence. The next step is to understand what factors can make it difficult to make new friends.

You have to work to maintain your friendships over time. Meeting people can be a complicated matter for some people as they get older, but having acquaintances is very different from having friends.

It’s much harder to make friends as an adult than as a teenager. Also, many of those friendships start to show their true colors, and we discover that they weren’t true friendships. Many people arrive at adulthood and realize that they barely have any friends, although many of them want to.

Things that complicate friendships

People who feel like they don’t have many friends should note the possible reasons why this happens. First of all, the rules of the game change with age. People change, build their lives around their work and their family, and go through different experiences. All of this has an influence on their relationships with other people.

Also, when we were young, we followed patterns of behavior that were dictated by our environment, doing what we thought we should be doing. But over time, we began to understand things in a different way, and many situations that we accepted as valid before ceased to be so.

In this regard, there are certain factors and attitudes that make it very difficult to make friends and maintain relationships. Ask yourself the following questions to discover why it can be difficult to have friends.

Do you complain a lot?

Are you one of those people who’s constantly complaining about your job, lack of money, or how unfair your life is? People don’t like to waste their time with negative, pessimistic people. Try to develop a more positive attitude and find more interesting topics to discuss instead of always talking about your problems and how bad the world is.

Are you selfish?

Friendship involves giving and receiving. Sometimes you have to give more than you receive. This involves listening, and sharing both material and spiritual things. But if you’re only prepared to receive, that throws off the balance. Recognize that being selfish is an attitude and that nobody will want to be your friend if you only think about yourself.

Do you care about others?

If you don’t care what happens to the people around you, it will be very hard for you to build and maintain friendships. If you want to make friends, you should start by showing genuine interest in them.

Do you cause drama or problems?

If you cause and overreact to problems, you’ll find that nobody will show interest in what’s happening to you. In fact, they’ll probably just want to disappear. If you like to do things that irritate others, tell people’s secrets, criticize people, or blame others, it will be very hard for people to be interested in building any kind of relationship with you.

Do you keep tabs on the damage that others cause you?

A friendship is a relationship that involves forgiveness. If you’re the kind of person who keeps tabs on the injuries and damage that other people cause, you’re showing them that you feel like you’re the center of the universe and that everything revolves around you. You can’t initiate or maintain any kind of relationship this way, much less a friendship.

Do you gossip?

Gossiping about others makes you look bad. It might be fun at first, but when you hear someone talking bad about someone else, telling their personal stories, or laughing and their flaws and problems, you can’t help but think, do they talk about me like this, too?

Are you bossy?

Being bossy also won’t help you make friends. It’s one thing to have initiative and want to help, and another thing to organize the entire situation or tell everyone what to do.

To make friends, listen and don’t go overboard. Don’t be pretentious, break the limits of respect, or act like everyone must do what you say if you want to forge healthy relationships.