How do men make friends as adults?

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Personally I have more female friends, women in my experience are easier to talk to because they seem to be more open to shooting the shit about more varied topics. Often I’ve been at parties with my wife where the husbands have long lulls in conversation when we run out of sports highlights. This is more of a western thing however. The best advice I could give has already been said, seek friendship through hobbies or work. As long as you’re not completely insufferable you shouldn’t have a problem.
 
Why are people saying buy a dog? That's gay. Unless you're into some kind of enthusiast level breeding, you use dogs to meet women, not men.
 
Basically every irl friend I’ve made in the last decade has been through my oldest friend, who is a little more outgoing, but since we’re good friends and have similar hobbies, I tend to become friends with his friends as well. It sort of snowballs once you start I guess.
 
NOT Sword Fighter Super said:
These are all things you should also be doing to find a girlfriend, consequently.
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lmao I mean I wish. In my experience not really though.
Shit I do:
Aussie football - no girls
Muay Thai - some girls, but bad idea to hit on them in a "dont shit in your own backyard" kind of way. I like my gym.
Skydiving - no girls
beer league kickball - some girls, but they have usually signed up with their boyfriends.
work - I am in networking, which is one of the most male dominated sectors of IT which is already male dominated
chess - lol

By and large it seems women just stay at home, watch netflix, and swipe on the apps; maybe occasionally they will go out to dance bars or clubs. They sure as shit ain't signing up to do the shit I do. The only date I have went on in the last year was a friend of a friend.

Aside: a chick friend dragged me to a singles meet night thing at a craft brewery last fall. They had these two black chicks offering dating advice and a white girl offering her take on how to improve your dating app profile. I was still on bumble at the time. She looked at my profile and was all "I'm not hitting on you but you're way more attractive in person, you need to learn how to take better photos". That got me off the apps because I have no idea how to do good photos. The two black chicks were like "whens the last time you went on a date?". Me: Something around 3 months ago." Them:"Whhhaaaaaaatttttt???? You nee to be going on a couple dates a week!".

At that point I knew women and men just live in different worlds.
 
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GoysGoneWild said:
lmao I mean I wish. In my experience not really though.
Shit I do:
Aussie football - no girls
Muay Thai - some girls, but bad idea to hit on them in a "dont shit in your own backyard" kind of way. I like my gym.
Skydiving - no girls
beer league kickball - some girls, but they have usually signed up with their boyfriends.
work - I am in networking, which is one of the most male dominated sectors of IT which is already male dominated
chess - lol

By and large it seems women just stay at home, watch netflix, and swipe on the apps; maybe occasionally they will go out to dance bars or clubs. They sure as shit ain't signing up to do the shit I do. The only date I have went on in the last year was a friend of a friend.

Aside: a chick friend dragged me to a singles meet night thing at a craft brewery last fall. They had these two black chicks offering dating advice and a white girl offering her take on how to improve your dating app profile. I was still on bumble at the time. She looked at my profile and was all "I'm not hitting on you but you're way more attractive in person, you need to learn how to take better photos". That got me off the apps because I have no idea how to do good photos. The two black chicks were like "whens the last time you went on a date?". Me: Something around 3 months ago." Them:"Whhhaaaaaaatttttt???? You nee to be going on a couple dates a week!".

At that point I knew women and men just live in different worlds.
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By and large most people sit on their arse and swipe on phones all day. Women aren’t going to be in male dominated hobbies anymore than you’re going to be in a knitting class, though skydiving isn’t necessarily male dominated based on how many women I’ve known to do it. Most guys have a hard time understanding that genders have shared interests. For example: unless you’re in a gender specific class, book clubs and art classes have been incredibly co-ed in my experience. Both genders get equally geeky over film genres, when weirdos aren’t gatekeeping sci-fi and horror of course. Both genders enjoy cooking, hiking/outdoorsy stuff, travel, music, I mean there’s loads of shit. It would be entirely unreasonable for a woman to expect to find dudes into wreath weaving or sewing, likewise for men to expect to find a women into their most niche hobbies. Think broader. Besides, you’re not building a relationship around a specific thing, it’s more of a gateway into getting to know someone.

Also that sounds like the absolute worst way to meet women, that sort of pub/bar shit attracts the dregs for hookups, not actual relationships. Likewise for dating apps, only 7% of women actually use Tinder, and slightly less than half have ever signed up for any dating service.
 
Butterschmalz said:
Unfortunately modern life for men is loneliness. The only escape is traditional marriage. Which leads to another conclusion: Only a woman can be a true friend to a man (and only in the context of a marriage). This is the case with me too.
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I feel bad for the wives who have to shoulder every emotional and social need for their husbands. It sounds utterly exhausting. Women are not emotional support animals for lonely, sullen men.
Friends become indispensable when you're married. It's nice to have people to vent to about your spouse when they get on your nerves. Its nice to be able to ask for advice about relationships with people who aren't in your relationship. It's nice to have a night to yourself to work on your own projects when your spouse goes out with their friends.
Plus, men get along just fine without women or marriage. Those Trappist monks seem to be having a great time (I'm biased cause I like their beer).
 
Personally I am done trying to have normie friends IRL, as my brilliance remains unappreciated by my "fellow" man. I do not see why the relationships I have with my stuffed animals are less valid than IRL friendships, often in relationships we seek elements of our own consciousness sublimated and reflected back to us in novel ways, and for this it suffices. I am thinking of starting a book club with them soon, there is a book on the German colonial empire I am looking forward to discussing.
 
From my exp you make friends when you have common obstacles / enemies. All my bf-s are from rather turbulent school times when it was obligatory to have someone around you to watch your back because our school class was a tard battlefield. Now we are all adults but we are still bf-s who often travel, drink, and meet together. So, what other kiwis tell you is probably correct - join a group where you will work at some common problem - it could be mountain hiking where you learn to be supportive of each other, or command sport, or some classes., that's how you complete the phase one "find the correct people".

But there is a "phase two" which is to invest time and your resources into friendship and that is where it gets complicated. Even if you find the correct people you all should find time to spend together. In school / student time it is not a problem but for adults who never have time it is. Basically that's how the best kind of friendship dies into being " simple acquaintances".
 
Go to your local airsoft field, get one of those rentals and have fun, you'll have new friends by the end of that day if you're not a cheater or a gear whore.
 
From my own experience, I separate my hobbies into two categories, the normie stuff, and the strange stuff that I don’t often share with the normie group.

For the normie stuff I sometimes meet new people through golf, whiskey collecting and tasting, astronomy, programming, watch collecting, and other inoffensive interests. These people are all quality people, but I know better than to let them peer under the thin veneer of normality that I maintain in such circles, which leads me to…

The strange stuff: my fur affliction, my afflicted art, and Kiwi Farms even. The people I meet through these things, particularly KF, seem to forge stronger friendships as I don’t feel the need to completely filter my eccentric interests. Kiwis make good frens, but it’s prudent to be extremely judicious with which Kiwis you affiliate.
 
John Furrman said:
From my own experience, I separate my hobbies into two categories, the normie stuff, and the strange stuff that I don’t often share with the normie group.

For the normie stuff I sometimes meet new people through golf, whiskey collecting and tasting, astronomy, programming, watch collecting, and other inoffensive interests. These people are all quality people, but I know better than to let them peer under the thin veneer of normality that I maintain in such circles, which leads me to…

The strange stuff: my fur affliction, my afflicted art, and Kiwi Farms even. The people I meet through these things, particularly KF, seem to forge stronger friendships as I don’t feel the need to completely filter my eccentric interests. Kiwis make good frens, but it’s prudent to be extremely judicious with which Kiwis you affiliate.
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If you have to have two separate friend groups because you're too weird to function in irl society just by being your true self, then you don't deserve friends to begin with
 
PipTheAlchemist said:
If you have to have two separate friend groups because you're too weird to function in irl society just by being your true self, then you don't deserve friends to begin with
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There’s a time and place for everything, knowing that doesn’t make me dysfunctional. I wonder what things would be like if all weirdos were so accommodating of other people in meatspace just by showing some social intelligence.

Thad, father of 4 from his wife of 15 years on the golf course doesn’t need the unfiltered me. We’re just playing a game and keeping our conduct sportmanlike. I have enough hobbies to never need to mention the fur affliction to people I’m not close to.
 
I've always had a preference for solitude. I have friends from my childhood back in my home state that I talk to sometimes, but generally speaking I don't have friends. I guess I just don't get lonely.
 
Law said:
I feel bad for the wives who have to shoulder every emotional and social need for their husbands. It sounds utterly exhausting. Women are not emotional support animals for lonely, sullen men.
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Not even wives, recently I stopped associating with someone who I thought I was rather close with as it became incredibly apparent he was using me as his therapist. I noticed he was talking to me a lot less (went from chatting every day to radio silence) the *second* he became interested in a woman and I suppose she took my place.

It felt really nice not having to bear the emotional burden for him to be honest, it did get to a point where I dreaded seeing any text notification from him, but it really was a big wake up call to me how often I just let people use me as their punching bags, definitely started prioritizing my friendships with people who will speak to me about less "my life sucks lol" shit and more just random shooting the shit or even spending time together just chilling, no talking required.

I did struggle to find a solid group of friends for a long while, I moved interstate leaving all my childhood friends behind, eventually found a good group of people I loved, mid 20s we all went our separate ways (international and interstate moves) but I ended up finding a group of people I got along quite well with online funnily enough and they have become great real life friends who I frequently meet up with.

Like everyone has been saying, probably easier to join a casual sport group/involved hobbies, something where you HAVE to interact with others attending, makes the ice breaker much easier.
 
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Every friend I've made as an adult I made at work. You go out for drinks once in a while with coworkers and if there's something you like doing that you have in common it ends up being like "I'm going to be fishing/renovating/whatever this weekend if you want to join me" and then you have a new friend. I feel its easier for men because they tend to be straightforward with each other and make it obvious if they don't want to spend time with you.
 
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