The Essential Guide To Making New Friends In Retirement: Navigating The Fairways Of Retirement

As we transition into the landscape of retirement, the importance of nurturing a diverse and enriching circle of friends becomes as crucial as a well-selected golf club on a challenging fairway.  In this pivotal chapter of life, the contours of our social network play a significant role in enhancing our well-being, happiness, and sense of community.  Making new friends is something that comes naturally to most children, you see them in a playground or through team sports, "want to play?". It seems to get a lot harder as we age.  In primary school, children can have 20, 30 or 40 people they call friends. In high school, the numbers take a turn downwards but can become more meaningful.  Through university or work we make different friends, work colleagues, casual friends, and water cooler friends. Our friendships tend to become more set as we get older and it is like we forget how to make new friends, life is busy and we only have so much time and attention.   

When you are brave and invite new people into your life it enhances it and provides an opportunity to learn and grow but it takes courage, time, and deliberate action to do it.  In retirement, the friendship dynamic changes again.  What do you want your friendship circle to look like? Have you taken time to think about it? Where can you make new friends? How do you do it?  At the end of the day, it is up to you.  A good exercise can be to list out friends and see what category they are in and where you need to spend some time and energy.  I suggest concentrating on prospective friends as new people bring new energy, new ideas and this can turn into an invigorating and exciting time.

LIFE FRIENDS: Your Caddies in Retirement

Life friends are akin to the caddies on our golfing journey.  Just as a caddie knows your game intimately, offering advice and support, life friends understand your deepest fears, joys and dreams.  They are the confidants with whom you share a mutual bond of respect and confidentiality.  In retirement, these friendships can deepen, providing a stable foundation on which to rely.  To nurture these friendships, make consistent efforts to engage in meaningful conversations, share life experiences, and offer support during life’s ups and downs.

CASUAL FRIENDS: The Golfing Buddies

Casual friends are those with whom we share a pleasant but not deeply personal connection and that is fine.  These are the golfing buddies we enjoy spending time with on the course, sharing laughs and celebrating great shots.  In retirement, these friends add a light-hearted and social aspect to our lives, offering companionship without the depth of emotional investment.  To maintain and expand this circle, try participating in group activities that align with your interests, such as golfing, lawn bowls, gardening, book club, wherever you can connect with others on a casual basis.  I have heard so many times that someone wanted to play golf every day in retirement only to injure themselves and not be able to play.  The “casual friend” is a replacement for the water cooler chats we used to have at work, great light hearted chats, bit of a laugh and not a lot of pressure for anything else. A lot of retirees report feeling invisible, I think that these casual friends have a massive impact on the issue of invisibility. Casual friends provide us the little things, the nod down the hallway, the quick coffee, the how are you mate, good you?

LONG-LOST FRIENDS: Rediscovering Old Partnerships

Long-lost friends are those with whom we’ve lost touch over the years, much like a favorite golf club we haven’t used in a while.  Retirement provides an excellent opportunity to rekindle these old friendships, brushing off the rust and rediscovering what made these relationships so special.  Reach out to former colleagues, childhood friends or past acquaintances to reignite these connections.  Social media and reunion events can be great tools in reconnecting with long-lost friends. I have just done this with an old friend I haven’t seen in 20 years.  It has been an interesting experience and one that I needed to do to be able to talk to it but also, it just felt like the right time to try to reconnect.  Initially I found that I was resistant to the idea.  I was walking every morning and this thought kept popping into my head but it took me weeks to pull the trigger and send the first message.  It was received really well and we have caught up for coffee and made plans to do it again.  The relationship does not have to be like it was because we are not what we were, we have changed and grown but we still have so much to talk about and celebrate.  If you have long lost friends you have been thinking about contacting, my advice is to be brave and do it, nothing to lose, everything to gain.

ROUGH FRIENDS: Glass ½ empty

These are the friends that may not have the most positive impact on us, the glass-half-empty people.  Mindset is such an important aspect of who we are and our friends are a reflection of that.  It you have friends that won’t help you find your ball in the rough, use a foot wedge or just drag your energy down consider the impact on your own mindset.  It can be a sign of growth to outgrow friends and sometimes you need to create space so that someone that resonates with your energy can come in. Evidence suggests that the impact of negative people can be profound on your wellbeing, be careful who you spend your time with.

PROSPECTIVE FRIENDS: Making New Friends In Retirement

 

Prospective friends are the new relationships that begin to take shape in our retirement, adding fresh perspectives and experiences to our lives. Just as welcoming new members to a golf club enriches the community, embracing new friendships in retirement can lead to unexpected joys and shared interests.  To cultivate these relationships, be open to meeting new people, whether it’s neighbours, volunteers, or fellow participants in a class or workshop.  Showing genuine interest in others and being open to sharing about yourself can lay  the foundation for lasting friendships.  But how do you make new friends?  It can be scary for some people.  We learn when we are young how to do it, it can be as simple as “hi my name is __ want to play?” But how do we do this as adults? How will we be received? Will they be open to it? Will they like me? These fears are real however as we age, our friends shift and change, it is just a fact.  Some move on, some pass away, some change and we need to top up our reserves of friends.  All the happiest people I encounter have a large and diverse network of friends and this is something that the “blue zones” have in common.  Blue zones are the areas around the world where people tend to live longer, happier and healthier lives, think Sicily, Greece, Okinawa. If you retire at 67, you have the opportunity to create friendships that may last the next 20 or 30 years of your life, that sounds like a good investment to me.

10 tips to Make New Friends: Strategies For A Rich Social Life

Making new friends in retirement requires a proactive approach, much like hitting the range to improve your golf game.  Here are some strategies to help you expand your social network:

1. Be brave, throw yourself out there, it is worth it.

2. Engage in Community Activities: Participate in local events, clubs or classes that align with your interests.  These settings provide natural opportunities to meet like-minded individuals.

3. Volunteer: Offering your time and skills to causes you care about can connect you with others who share your values.  Evidence suggests that people who experience altruism regularly can lead happier and more fulfilling lives.  Giving back is a huge aspect of a happy retirement.

4. Stay active: Join a sports club, gym, walking or riding group to meet others while staying fit.

5. Leverage technology: Use social media platforms and forums to connect with others who share your hobbies and interests.

6. Be open and Approachable: Show interest in others’ lives, listen actively and share your own experiences.  Friendships often bloom from mutual curiosity and understanding.

7. Active listening is actually listening and showing people without using words, head nods, hmmm, not waiting for your time to talk, there's a big difference.

8. Make eye contact, we all like to be seen.

9. Small compliments go a long way, "I like your driver'...."Those are beautiful earrings".

10. Open questions get the ball rolling. Open questions cannot be answered with a yes or no; "Tell me about yourself"... "I haven't seen you before, what's your story?"

Like the diverse clubs in a golfers bag, a variety of friends – from lifelong to prospective ones – enrich our journey, providing support, laughter and companionship.  Like in our work lives, we had to concentrate, focus and aim at something.  If you want to enhance your network, treat it like a job, be disciplined, don’t give up, be brave and give it a go.  By actively engaging in community, pursuing interests and opening ourselves to new connections, we can ensure that our retirement years not just a time of rest but a vibrant new chapter of life filled with meaningful relationships.