When I first moved to New York in my mid-20s for a new job, I arrived as a lone wolf. I didn’t have any friends or family members living in the city, just a few phone numbers (my older sister’s friends) to contact in the case of an emergency. So I immediately started to work on addressing this.

I met up with some virtual pals who I knew lived in the city — people I talked to on X, and women from my journalism and reality-TV group chats. I made sure to hang out with my new colleagues outside of work. I even kept in touch with a potential roommate I didn’t end up living with.

Then came a terrifying realization after about a year and a half in. While I had fully mastered the art of putting myself out there, I hadn’t formed that many close bonds. I had no problem initiating hangouts and showing up to whatever gatherings I was invited to. But I realized a lot of these new friends didn’t know me that well — and vice versa. Many of our conversations stayed at a surface level (“How’s work going?” “Did you watch the latest Vanderpump Rules?”). People I hung out with regularly still didn’t know crucial parts of my lore. And I was shy about asking people more about their own history.

Subconsciously, I was making the same mistake that Jaimie Krems, an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA, says a lot of people make when forging new connections. “We have this error in our heads, this bias in the direction of ‘people don’t like us as much as we want them to,’” Krems tells Vox. “That’s just not true, and it keeps us from being close to people.”

Insecurities aren’t the only thing that can inhibit closeness. In adulthood, we naturally have less time to spend nurturing friendships due to our jobs, families, and other obligations. Relationship psychologist Marisa G. Franco tells Vox that adults are often less vulnerable when making friends compared to when we were children. Studies demonstrate that platonic intimacy is a common, if not growing, problem. A 2023 Pew Research survey found that 8 percent of Americans have no close friends, and 7 percent have only one close friend. For men, the numbers are a bit more concerning. In a 2021 American Perspectives Survey, 15 percent of male participants reported having no close friends, compared to 10 percent of women. That’s a lot of lonely people.

If you’re struggling to build closeness, there are several ways to elevate your current relationships and take yourself out of the casual-friend zone. Experts say it requires intentionality, a little creativity, and, ultimately, not stressing too much about how you’re perceived.

Franco points to the concept of “repotting,” a technique coined by Ryan Hubbard, a researcher and the founder of the Kitestring Project, which focuses on finding and keeping close friends. Repotting simply means varying the environments where you interact with your casual friends, similar to the way you might transfer overgrown houseplants to a larger vessel. The idea is that friendships can only grow so big in a small context.

“If you meet someone in one setting, like work, ask them to hang out outside of work — go to dinner or go to an event,” says Franco, who wrote the book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends. “That’s going to make the relationship more resilient for when, let’s say, you’re no longer in a shared work setting.”

Creating new memories outside of the same old environments can be “really powerful,” Franco adds. You could propose a more adventurous activity, like a ceramics class or an experiential restaurant, to create a more memorable experience. (Research has found that engaging in novel activities has a positive impact on couples.) But a simple coffee date or trip to the movies works too.

Franco encourages people to show up for their trivia buddies or friendly colleagues during what she calls “diagnostic moments,” which are “moments of high or low emotion.” These joyous or tough time periods — and the people who were present for them — tend to stick out in our memory, she says.

“How people show up when we’re going through the best and worst experience of our lives really disproportionately predicts how we view the relationship overall.” Franco says. “If you really want to get close to someone, when they’re going through a hard time, that’s your time to check in.”

This doesn’t require making grand gestures, either. For example, if your neighbor mentions they are going through a breakup, you could drop off cookies at their door. If your friend gets a promotion at work, take them out for a drink to celebrate. If they mention something they are excited or worried about, make a point to ask them how it went. These low-effort acts of kindness are a huge way to let others know we want to be a part of their lives.

On a similar note, letting your casual friends know when you need help can be impactful as well. So don’t be afraid to ask for the occasional favor.

Krems says that, across small-scale societies, “feelings of closeness that are characteristic of friendship get ratcheted up over time through giving gifts and favors.” This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the “Ben Franklin effect,” because the Founding Father claimed that asking his political rivals for help with small requests was an effective way to soften their feelings toward him. “The bottom line is that when we do a favor for somebody, we often end up liking them better,” Krems says.

So if you have a friend who you don’t feel cool enough with to ask for help, you may want to do it anyway. If you’re visiting a place they’re familiar with, ask them for restaurant recommendations. If you need someone to water your plants while you’re out of town, don’t be scared to ask if they’d swing by. Or, like Franklin famously did, you can just ask to borrow a specific book.

If you’re feeling anxious about asking for help, Krems suggests recalling how good it feels whenever you’re able to be a resource to a friend.

Sometimes we expect people to know exactly how we feel about them based on our mere presence. My new friend must know I enjoy our coffee dates if I’m setting aside time to hang out with her. If I come to a co-worker’s birthday party, he must know I appreciated the invite? Right? Not always.

Franco says that voicing how much you value and enjoy spending time with your friends can help take those connections to the next level. In fact, it’s one of the biggest predictors of depth in a relationship.

“There’s this study that tracked friendship pairs over time and saw which one of them deepened, which one of them maintained, and which one of them fell away,” she says. “And one of the biggest predictors was how much affection was shared between the two of them.”

She adds that showing affection is a powerful tool because of something called risk regulation theory. Essentially, human beings decide which relationships to invest in based, in part, on how likely we feel we are to get rejected. So finding casual ways to make it clear that you’re into the friendship goes a long way.

In practice, this might look like texting a friend ahead of your planned hangout to let them know you’re excited to see them. Or, if you vented to someone about a problem you’re having, let them know that you appreciated them listening to you.

And don’t be afraid that being emotionally honest is going to mean you come across as “cringe.” The fear of being perceived as too earnest, eager, or sentimental has apparently spawned a social epidemic of young people who are scared to put themselves out there online and in-person because they are afraid of being mocked or rejected. In a 2026 Yahoo/YouGov poll, 55 percent of Gen Z respondents said that the fear of looking cringe has prevented them from opening up emotionally compared to 37 percent of millennials.

Franco says this culture of nonchalance and inexpressiveness goes hand in hand with the struggle to build close friendships nowadays.

“I feel like people veered toward…not wanting to show any interest in anyone, but that’s really wrong if you want to connect with people,” Franco says. “Anything that you do to show someone you like and value them is going to bring you closer to them.”