Guide: How to make friends in Boston whether you are 22, 25, 30, 35, 37, 40, 42, or a fossil.

We all know that it's really hard to make friends once you are out of college and living adult life with a job and various other responsibilities.

Unlike college life, adult life is inherently not conducive towards making friends. You are not clustered around a community full of activities and people to meet.

Instead, you are surrounded by faceless strangers going about their day, too busy to even acknowledge your existence, much less your humanity.

I'm 33. When I moved back to Boston at age 32 in late 2023, I basically had no friends. Besides a small cadre of old friends (many of whom didn't know one another), I had no friend group. So, I started going to meetups. There are many of them out there and figuring out fit is important. Meetup.com. Facebook, or /r/BostonSocialClub are good resources. If you don't mind paying money and being active too, Volo Sports offers various adult sports leagues.

However, once you find something you like, the key thing is consistency. Find a meetup/activity you really like and go to it regularly. Treat it like church. You can't go to it once and expect to meet your people straight away - it takes time to figure out if a person or people are really for you and visa versa. Also, it takes effort. It's like working out at the gym - there are no gains to be had if you only go intermittently. Same with developing, cultivating, and nurturing a friend group.

Once you have identified the people you really like and want to hang out with more outside the meetup/activity, ask them for their number and for them to hang out with you. In some cases, people may ask for your number first. Do it enough, and pretty soon you will be going on fun group trips and celebrating each other's birthdays like I did with the group of people I found.

Good luck.