At some point in your mid-thirties, you look around and realize your social circle has somehow dwindled. People got married, moved away, had kids, got weird about politics. The friendships you made effortlessly at 14 in a school cafeteria now feel like a distant, nostalgic memory. Back then, proximity was enough. You sat next to someone, complained about the same teacher, and that was it. Easy peasy. 

Adulthood doesn’t work like that anymore, and the stats are pretty grim, honestly. According to the American Perspectives Survey, the percentage of U.S. adults with zero close friends has quadrupled to 12 percent since 1990, while those reporting 10 or more close friends have fallen by nearly three times. All of this while we’ve never had more ways to reach each other.

The fix, according to Psychology Today contributor Nir Bashan, requires actual effort and a little creativity. Here’s where to start.

Stop Being So Picky

As kids, we played with whoever showed up. Nobody cared about career trajectory or political affiliation. If the hang was fun, you were friends. Somewhere along the way, adults decided friendship needed to meet a very specific set of criteria first.

Politics, appearances, where someone lives, what car they drive—all of it can derail a potentially great connection before it ever gets off the ground. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of its kind, found that positive social relationships rank as the primary driver of lifelong health and well-being. That’s not a small thing to gamble away because someone drives the wrong brand of SUV.

The fix is easy, even if the execution isn’t: drop the checklist. The person you’d overlook on paper might be exactly the friend you need.

Find Your Repeat Spots

Work friendships are a trap. The complications they introduce to your professional life rarely justify the upside, and most people figure this out the hard way. Skip it.

What actually works, according to Bashan, is finding places where the same group of people shows up on a regular basis outside of work—a dog park on Tuesday mornings, a kid’s weekly baseball game, a church or synagogue. Repeat contact is the engine of real friendship. You need enough low-stakes interactions to build actual familiarity before anything meaningful develops. One-off events don’t cut it. Regularity does.

Be the One Who Reaches Out

Every new friendship has an awkward middle phase, that stretch where you like someone well enough but haven’t crossed into real comfort yet. This is where most adults bail. They tell themselves they’re too busy, that the other person should reach out, that it’ll happen organically. It won’t.

The move is to initiate, and to do it with something concrete. “Let’s grab coffee sometime” is meaningless. “I’m going to the farmers market Saturday, come along if you want” is an actual invite. Small, low-pressure, specific. Research suggests it takes upward of 200 hours of time invested, on average, to build a close friendship, which sounds like a lot until you consider how much time you’ve already spent on things that matter far less.

Nobody said adult friendship was easy. But the people who do it well aren’t particularly special. They just stopped waiting for it to happen on its own.