Ghosted by a new friend for being too keen: Author Dolly Jones on how to make, and keep, friends as an adult

Meeting one of my best friends, aged 11, is etched in my memory. My first day at boarding school, I entered the classroom and, spotting her, said: ‘You look normal, can I sit here?’ Almost 40 years later, she’s still the person I call for guaranteed social dopamine, despite living 200 miles away. But finding true friendship as an adult is an altogether different game.

I’ve found myself on both sides of post-parenthood friendship attempts gone wrong – I was ghosted by one mother, having extended a too-much-too-soon suggestion of a post-pickup run after only a couple of school gate crossovers, my enthusiasm for ‘next base’ apparently coming across as off-puttingly needy.

In contrast, five weeks after my son was born, a woman I barely knew turned up on my doorstep with a gift for me: a novel entitled Dolly: The Story Of A Ghost Baby. My name in the title was apparently her motivator to extend a hand of friendship, but the notion of a dead infant – literary or not – anywhere near my newborn gave me full-throttle heebie-jeebies, and I’m afraid I ghosted her mercilessly in return.

Thank goodness for the girl gang

Interviewing more than 200 women about how they’d made working life work post-parenthood for my book, Leaving The Ladder Down, I heard time and again the major role that female friendships had played in their success. The ideal is that we’re surrounded by a chorus of women cheering us on and available to step in as emergency childcare at a moment’s notice – but it’s not always the case.

Some had cultivated a cavalry of support from old school friends, others had formed a network of newly minted mum-friends who, decades later, populate the same group chat and plan 50^th birthday matching tattoos…

Many, however, also talked about the challenges of friendships – they worried about their ebb and flow as children appear (or don’t) and about the detrimental effect of conflicting approaches to parenting, mismatched finances, divergent career paths or even changing relationships to booze.

With loneliness increasingly prevalent and understood to cause significant mental and physical detriment at all life stages, not least in the early stages of parenthood (one UK report finding that one in four adults in the UK feel lonely ‘some or most of the time’) – it made me wonder what the rules are: how do we make, and keep, friends as adults?

Overcoming the obstacles

There are lots of hurdles to jump on the way to making friends as we get older. Often, there’s no time anyway – we’re forced to pick two out of three lanes (parent and profession, yes; social, no). You might feel that you have enough friends already, or be shyly out of practice, since making new adult friends can feel a bit like dating.

It’s something we all experience, no matter who we are. Model Jade Parfitt shares a story about how she ‘accosted a fellow pram-pusher in a carpark’, complimenting her on her coat in the hope of making a new friend. ‘I noticed her and thought, “She looks normal; I’m going to talk to her.” I felt like such a lunatic, but we ended up having a coffee and she was very sweet and funny and I was right to approach her.’ Broadcaster Emma Barnett, too, remembers asking a fellow new mother ‘on a date’ in a bid for all-important maternity leave connection. She writes in her book, Maternity Service: ‘I asked for the phone number of one startled woman I had met only once at a mother-and-baby class because she smiled at me. I followed up with a text but she has yet to reply…’

Side-stepping judgement – of ourselves and other people – must surely be the first rule of friendship-making, since differences provide perspective that both aid and enrich our own experience, no matter how long in the tooth we are or feel.

And yet one of the earliest post-parenthood hurdles to clear is the concept of ‘mother wars’, borne of perceived judgement by professionally employed women of those who are not, and visa versa.

It’s a nonsense, of course, since all parents are working whether they’re paid or not, and any woman at the school gate in gym kit has a story you’re bound to recognise. Empathy abounds as a white flag in any misappropriated ‘war’.

Motherhood, however you do it, is a 24/7, constantly evolving smorgasbord of strategic planning, research and preparation, problem-solving, communication, tenacity, patience, lability, creativity, vigour, resilience, endurance and humour – making for a pretty phenomenal CV, whether or not you earn a salary. We have far more in common with each other than culturally outdated stereotypes might suggest, and the fun of it is in discovering our common ground, rather than shrinking into fear of difference.

‘When I first went back to work after my first, the Nicaraguan lady running my local bagel shop recognised me and asked how my baby was. I told her how terrible I felt leaving him for the day and she said,‘Oh, my darling, I know how you feel. My two are back at home and I haven’t seen them for two years.’ It made me think that we’re all working mothers trying to do the best for our children,’ one barrister I interviewed for my book said.

Finding time

Whether you get lucky with new friends or old, during the rush hour of life that combines your professional and parenting careers, the benefits of time with friends can sometimes feel negated by the stress of arranging, sticking to, making a success of, and covering any related expense of plans together. Who hasn’t been stuck in a WhatsApp loop that goes on for weeks trying to find a date to meet up that everyone can do?

The second rule, then, must be to keep it simple. Bear in mind Alex Korb’s book, The Upward Spiral, which is resoundingly persuasive about the three biggest antidotes to stress: connection, exercise and nature. So a walk in the park with a friend is a triple win. And it’s free. Failing that, go for a walk alone and call people.

Making friendships that last

Once you’ve tentatively befriended someone you like the look of, the hard bit can be turning perfunctory friends into real ones. At what stage do you answer ‘How are you?’ with the truth? Can the different dances we perform at the school gate ever lead to genuine connection, or does competitive parenting, or awkwardness when our children invariably fall out, expunge the potential for friendship? I shied away from parent WhatsApp groups in the early days, until I realised they were full of people I had a lot in common with – as well as the only guaranteed clue to where most of my children’s belongings are.

Despite feeling pressured to automatically know what I was doing once I had children – certainly by the time they went to school – it turns out that being vulnerable, in fact, is sometimes the best way to break the ice. Some of my best newer friendships have launched via my requesting help or stepping in for someone else. Sir Stephen Fry spoke at a friend’s work strategy day recently (I know – I want a job there, too…) and described helping other people as ‘one of life’s great privileges’ – it’s a good way to make a friend, too.

I’ve also learned not to shy away from talking about work. It felt taboo in the early days, somehow ‘unmotherly’ or flashy, until I found myself quizzing a fellow mother about her career as a forensic psychiatrist and suddenly the school run was less mundane than it was fascinating (and she did come running with me).

It can be tempting to keep your head down and hide behind your ear pods ‘on a conference call’ to avoid the jangly social demands of school parenting – but it’s worth putting on your bravest face (whether that means a good outfit, a sweep of mascara or just a big smile) and avoiding the assumption that everybody else already knows each other, what day PE day is and what their child will wear for World Book Day. Because the truth is, they’re probably keen to get to know you, too.

7 golden rules for making new friends

*Comparison is the thief of joy. Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, quotes Marcus Aurelius’s advice to himself in the second century CE: ‘Don’t waste time worrying about other people unless it affects the common good. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying and what they’re thinking and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.’ Some people will have more time, or money or capacity for socialising than you do. Work out what works for you and stay in your lane.

*Manage expectations. The children or partner of your oldest friends may not have anything in common with your children or partner. Instead of dwelling on disappointment, reap the rewards of one-to-one get-togethers.

*Calls with old friends are often avoided because they’re likely to take hours, but women have a talent for putting the world to rights in 10 minutes by diving straight in. So schedule monthly 10-minute catch up calls with your most important friends and stick to them.

*Avoid gossip and set boundaries against toxic behaviour.

*Bad behaviour can hurt, no matter how grown up you are. Feel all the feels, comfort yourself with what’s good about your life and remember that ‘hurt people hurt people’. It’s not about you.

*Bear in mind the power of saying sorry; as good for the apologiser as for the apologisee.

*Beware imposter syndrome and discounting people – from past work acquaintances to friendly strangers who have nicer clothes/bigger cars/better hair, everybody is a potential friend.