What are the benefits of friendships?
Friendships: Enrich your life and improve your health as good friends are good for your health. Friends can help you celebrate good times and support you during bad times. Friends help keep you from feeling alone. Friends also can:
- Raise your sense of connection, belonging and purpose.
- Boost your happiness and lower your stress.
- Improve your self-confidence and feelings of self-worth.
- Help you cope through hard times, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death of a loved one.
- Urge you to change or avoid habits that aren’t healthy. These might include drinking too much or not exercising.
Friends also play a big role in your overall health. Adults with strong social connections have a lower risk of many health problems. That includes depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy weight. In fact, studies have found that older adults who have close friends and healthy social supports are likely to live longer than do their peers who have fewer friends.
Why is it sometimes hard to make or keep friends?
Many adults find it hard to make new friends or keep the ones they have. Work or caring for children or aging parents might come before friends. You and your friends may have grown apart due to changes in your lives or interests. Or maybe you’ve moved to a new town and haven’t yet found a way to meet people.
Making and keeping good friends takes effort. The pleasure, comfort and health benefits you can get from friends make it worth the effort.
What’s a healthy number of friends?
How good your friendships are count more than how many friends you have. Having a broad network of friends and contacts might be good. But having close friends who mean a lot to you does more for your sense of self.
What are some ways to meet new friends?
You can make friends with people you meet in your social network. Think about people you’ve talked with, even just a little, who you liked and whose company you enjoyed.
You may make new friends and feed friendships you already have by doing the following:
- Stay in touch with people with whom you’ve worked or taken classes.
- Get back in touch with old friends.
- Reach out to people you’ve met and enjoyed at social events.
- Meet your neighbors.
- Make time to reconnect with family members.
If you think of someone you’d like to know better, reach out. That first step is often the hardest. But it might be easier to take than you think. Ask people who know both of you to put you in touch with a text, email, phone call or visit. Invite the person to coffee or lunch.
To meet new people who might become friends, go to places where people gather. Use more than one way to meet people. The more you try, the easier it gets. And the more you’re likely to succeed.
Keeping at it also matters. Reach out instead of waiting for others to come to you. Keep trying. You may need to suggest plans a few times before you can tell if a new friend wants to be with you