Are you having a hard time making new friends? You are not alone in this – but there are several reasons for this that you often do not even notice.
It already starts in kindergarten: While some people make more friends within a very short time than they can count, others find it more difficult to make friends. Everyone gets to feel the latter at the latest when they get older. Because in addition to job, household and possibly family, we simply lack the leisure to meet many new people.
Even so, it doesn't just seem our stress levels play a role when it comes to making new friends. After all, almost everyone knows this one person who immediately makes friends with the new neighbor and apparently meets new friends at the supermarket checkout. What does she do differently? Researchers from Greece have now addressed this question. The results of the study were published in the September issue of Personality and Individual Differences.
6 reasons why we don't make new friends
Extensive interviews and surveys brought to light a total of 39 things that keep people from making new friends. However, six of them stood out in the course of the investigations – because they not only appear to occur particularly frequently, but also to have the greatest influence. That would be:
- Little trust (37%)
- Lack of time (29%)
- Introversion (23%)
- too picky (16%)
- Fear of rejection (10%)
- Pragmatic reasons (2%)
We hardly need to explain the lack of time in view of today's packed schedules. It is interesting, however, that – contrary to what we would at least have suspected – this is not the first one. Instead, the lack of trust seems to keep us from making new friends.
If you think about it for a long time, however, this point also makes sense. In the course of our lives, our childlike good faith unfortunately shrinks – and we learn the hard way that not everyone can be trusted. At the same time, this quality is becoming more and more important for a good friendship. And you don't gain trust overnight, it takes time, which we also lack.
Incidentally, the study also revealed a clear gender difference: it was mainly the lack of time that prevented men from making new friends – women, on the other hand, were much more concerned with things like trust or fear of rejection.
So now we at least know why we sometimes have problems making new friends. But: We are not alone in this. And that's why we should maybe just throw our fears overboard and be happy to let new friends into our lives!
sources used: Psychology Today, Personality and Individual Differences