Friendship: making new friends and keeping the old

Step by step

1. 1

   Step 1: Take it as seriously as exercise

   Loneliness is not simply sad, it affects health in the way that smoking and inactivity do, and longitudinal studies have linked it to something in the region of a thirty per cent higher risk of dementia. The association is consistent, though researchers are still working out how much of it is cause. Social connection supports motivation, self-worth, mood and the will to keep doing everything else on this list. If you would not skip your walk for a month, do not let a month go by without company either.

   Learn more: Meaning and belonging in healthy ageing
2. 2

   Step 2: Understand why it got harder

   It is not you. Work, school gates and neighbourhoods used to supply friends without anyone having to try. Retirement, moving, widowhood and children living elsewhere all remove those routes at once. Friendship after 60 has to be arranged on purpose, and knowing that stops it feeling like a personal failing.

   Learn more: Stress: what it is, and why not all of it is bad
3. 3

   Step 3: Go somewhere regular rather than somewhere new

   Friendship needs repetition more than it needs chemistry. The same group, the same day, the same faces, week after week, is what turns acquaintances into friends. One large event will not do it; a small thing you attend every week will. That is the whole design of a club.

   Learn more: Activities at Zealver Clubs
4. 4

   Step 4: Make the first small move

   Almost everybody in the room is waiting for somebody else to speak first. Ask a question and let them talk. Remember one thing and ask about it next week. Sit somewhere different. None of it is dramatic, and all of it works, because what people remember is being asked about, not being impressed.

   Learn more: Music and memory: why an old song does so much
5. 5

   Step 5: Tend the friendships you already have

   Old friends are easier to keep than new ones are to find, and they usually lapse through drift rather than falling out. A phone call rather than a message, on a day you decide in advance. Say the thing you were going to leave unsaid. Most people are delighted to hear from someone and were simply waiting too.

   Learn more: Ten essentials of healthy ageing

All topics in this guide

• Meaning and belonging in healthy ageing
• Activities at Zealver Clubs
• Stress: what it is, and why not all of it is bad
• Music and memory: why an old song does so much
• Ten essentials of healthy ageing

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