CKat Monthly Newsletter

#6: The reality of adult friendships...

Reader,

How do you make friends? I mean real, genuine, close friends whom you love.

Have you ever had to “Make” friends? How do friendships form outside of sport?

About 5 years ago I had this conversation with my sister, who was not an athlete. We were talking about making friends… and I had to stop. My honest answer to “How do you make friends?” was, “I really haven’t had to, so I’m not really sure.”

One aspect of sports EVERYONE misses is the locker room. Teammates. Friendship. Community. It will NEVER be repeated. College is nothing like high school. The pros are nothing like college. Each team is unique. The team one year to the next will never feel the exact same. This is a sacred element of sport.

So, when we’re put into a situation where we no longer have a team, what happens?

1. A lot of us treat work like the locker room… we end up making coworkers our friends. Nothing wrong with this, but naturally what you have in common is work, so work comes up often in conversation. This is the default, right? It’s often the easiest path because it’s what we’re used to.
2. We are intentional and seek out friends. There are many ways to do this. What’s worked well for you? How have you been intentional in creating lasting friendships after sports, or at the next level of sport?

I definitely made work my everything. It was my value (I can only be valuable through work), self-worth (my performance at work), identity (this is who I am now), confidence (salary, title, location, company), and community (these are my only friends in this new city now)...

Have you tried making work or your career your everything?

I quickly realized this was not the path. Not to say I didn’t make some great friends at work… but it absolutely cannot be your everything. It’s not meant to be. That’s a path that leads to disappointment, let down, frustration, unfulfilled, and dissatisfaction.

Adult friendship requires flexibility and intention. It doesn’t just happen on its own. Plans don’t just get created. Invite yourself, make the plan, send the invite, call your friend. If we wait, nothing happens. Flexibility is key, and so is being intentional.

I want to share 3 variables that must exist to create a net new, close adult friendship. This helped me accept reality, and do something about it.

1. Proximity - who are you physically near?
2. Timing - who is in a similar season of life?
3. Energy - who do you vibe with?

Proximity

• I love face timing my close friends from college. In fact, my friend Pat invented a genius technique for “catching up.” I’ve named this the Leitten method. You simply screen share your photo album and talk through what you’ve been up to, and as you do, you show the photos. Genius!
• This is a fantastic way to maintain friendships that were originally built in proximity... but it's very difficult to create close friendships from scratch virtually... proximity matters.

Timing

• I’ve always been an old soul, and built relationships with older people. We may be physically close to one another (in the same office, on the same team), and we may vibe a ton (love of sports, love of Jesus)... but if this person already has 4 kids, lives in the suburbs, and is about to retire… we are just simply in different timing of life. Different seasons. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, it just means becoming close friends is going to be more challenging.

Energy

• We all know this one… you’ve gotta click. Your energy attracts like energy. Who you hang with is who you start to become. If this is forced, you feel it immediately.

There is a recent study done at the University of Kansas that studies the amount of time it requires to make casual friends vs. close friends.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Jeffrey Hall found that it takes roughly:

• 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend
• 90 hours to go from that stage to simple “friend” status
• More than 200 hours before you can consider someone your close friend.

When you’re 16, you are in school all day, practice, games, travel, and hangout outside of school/sport. That’s easily more than 200 hours. But how about as an adult? I mean who has 200 hours in their super busy important schedule? It’s hard enough to get in a 15 minute face time call. “What’s your availability like?” —> “Why don’t we try for 57 days from now? I think I’ll have a 30-minute window for a quick call.” This is hard! And it definitely means we can’t be close friends with everyone we meet.

Jesus calls us to love our neighbor. The bible is often summarized as Love God, and Love Others. What I’m talking about here is CLOSE friendship. That bond you loved with some of your teammates. We are called to love others, serve others, interact with others. We can love everyone and also remember Jesus had 12 disciples, not 12,000.

There is a reality here to building CLOSE friends. Once we accept it, we can do something about it.