How to find friends (and lovers) when you’re over 50
Making friends in later life is tricky, for all sorts of reasons. From the playground to college, from the workplace to the school gate when we have children, we tend to accumulate pals along the way.
But even while we’re amassing friends, we lose them, too – they move away or abroad, we perhaps divorce and some of those we were friends with as a couple go over to “the other side” or they just aren’t good at having singles round their table.
And then, if you have always been single and/or without children, all those loved-up parents you used to go clubbing with are no longer available in the way they once were.
Maybe your partner dies and you suddenly realise that in your couple bubble you allowed certain friendships to drift. So by the time we get to 50 or over, some of us find ourselves feeling as though we’d like to broaden out our social circle.
The question is how? There’s something embarrassing, almost shameful, about owning up to wanting more friends. Or admitting to loneliness. You feel vulnerable, you worry people you approach might not like you, that you’ll get rejected. It all feels like a bit of a minefield. Or you may feel that if you don’t have enough friends by now, you must be somehow lacking – perhaps even unworthy.
But not only is it possible to make friends in later life, it’s important. Friendship is good for us. Having friends is a strong predictor of happiness and life satisfaction. A 2010 report in the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour said strong social ties can even boost your immune system and help you live longer. Areas identified as Blue Zones, from Okinawa in Japan to the island of Icaria in Greece, all have low rates of chronic disease and people there live unusually long lives. Common to all these zones – alongside good diets and plenty of physical activity – are strong friendships.
One treasured friendship I made was at university. Not from the time when I was a teenage college dropout, though, but 40 years later when I went back to uni to do a degree (and this time see it through) at the age of 57. It had been a tough couple of years. My husband and I had separated and my son had left the nest. I felt I needed a new challenge, out of my comfort zone, and to meet new people.
Although Birkbeck, where I went, is designed for mature students, I was easily the oldest student in my cohort: older than a lot of the lecturers, too. But just like in the school playground, where you’d look at someone and think, “I want to be her friend”, that’s what occurred to me when I looked at Sarah Muscat. She was bright and forthright and not afraid to speak out, though I soon realised that, like me, she wasn’t sure she was up to standard when it came to studying.
Tentatively at first, and despite a wide age gap, we found we had a kind of chemistry. In the early days we joined others in the student bar, but soon we discovered a glamorous cocktail bar in a nearby grand hotel, and that’s where we repaired to after classes for a G&T and fierce discussions about feminism, fashion, politics and literature. I was thrilled to have this new friend in my life, it was so easy for us to be emotionally open with one another. And when she invited me to her 50th, a women-only bash of her longest-standing pals, I was touched and delighted.
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