It’s the time of year when my WhatsApp starts pinging with group notifications about pre-festive social fixtures. Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more than a night out with old friends. It’s just that it has recently dawned on me that while long-established social rituals are deeply comforting, particularly in uncertain times, if the characters in your life never change and the locations stay pretty much the same, socialising can sometimes feel like Groundhog Day, only with more wine.
I realised this as I set up a Doodle poll for my college flatmates to try to find a Saturday night when we might by some miracle all be available before December. It’s futile, because I know that this won’t be possible and that we will end up having dinner at 10pm on the Monday before Christmas in some godforsaken bar near a train station we can all get to. One of us will arrive an hour late and he will always have an excuse so dazzling that we won’t mind. Another can be relied upon to order an extra bottle seconds before last orders which we will all pretend to be cross about the next morning. We’ve been upholding this tradition since Margaret Thatcher was in power.
Then there are my other old friends with whom we share what Americans call a potluck dinner. I always bring mashed potatoes because mash is my superpower. Someone’s oven will blow a fuse the night before or the local butcher will be out of a niche but vital ingredient like merguez sausages, but the predictable order of events provides part of the enjoyment.
But it has occurred to me recently that it’s been a while since I actually made a new friend – and that bothers me. Falling into a social rut is not uncommon in mid-life – studies have shown that people’s social circles start to shrink in their 30s and there is seemingly no way back. Priorities change, schedules become more stressful and it becomes harder to create the circumstances which experts say are crucial to nurturing new friendships – proximity, repeated unplanned interactions and a setting that encourages people to confide in one another.
Psychologists have also shown that new experiences – like those you might have with new people – allow us to perceive time as passing more slowly and memorably.
So, determined to be a behavioural outlier, I dragged myself out of my comfort zone to attend a work-related social event. To my dismay, when I arrived, I didn’t recognise a single person apart from the host and he was busy dealing with all the other guests who didn’t recognise a single person there apart from the host. I milled around, I sipped a glass of wine, I smiled sheepishly at a few strangers.
I dared myself to take the plunge and approach a woman on her own, lobbing a killer ice-breaker. “Warm in here, isn’t it?” My victim – I mean, potential new friend – agreed.
Emboldened, I asked: “And how do you know the host?”
“Oh, I don’t, never met him in my life.”
Several similarly aimless conversations later, I decide to call it a night, forced to confront the fact that the reason I am in a social rut is because I am terrible at small talk.
All this reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s sketch about making friends after a certain age. “Whatever the group is that you’ve got now, that’s who you’re going with,” he said. “If I meet a guy in a club or a gym, I’m sure you’re a very nice person, you seem to have a lot of potential – we’re just not hiring right now.” It’s funny, but I’m not sure it has aged that well. He wrote it before social media, the pandemic and a global loneliness epidemic. I’m lucky enough to have groups of friends – maybe it’s time to welcome some new recruits. Does anyone fancy some mash?
• Anita Chaudhuri is a freelance journalist and photographer
