How healing changes our friendships, why loneliness is more common than you think, and how to find women who truly feel like home.
It's a question that almost always comes with a sigh.
Sometimes it's asked quietly in my therapy room, almost as though admitting it feels like a failure. Other times it comes up over coffee or drinks with friends who are navigating the same season of life.
Underneath is the question that feels much harder to say out loud:
"Is there something wrong with me?"
The answer is almost always no.
It's an understandable conclusion to reach when it seems as though everyone else has effortlessly found "their people." Social media is filled with photos of girls' weekends away, birthday celebrations, coffee catch-ups, and friendship groups that appear inseparable. It's easy to compare those snapshots to our own lives and wonder why we feel disconnected, particularly if our friendships have changed over the years or we've found ourselves feeling increasingly alone.
The truth is, making friends as an adult really is more difficult than it was when we were younger. Not because we've become less interesting or less likeable, but because the way friendships are formed changes dramatically as our lives change.
Friendship Used to Be Built into Everyday Life
When we were children, friendship was woven into the rhythm of everyday life. We saw the same classmates every day, played with the same children in the neighborhood, joined sports teams, attended university classes, or worked part-time jobs alongside people in a similar stage of life. We didn't have to schedule connection—it happened naturally because we shared the same spaces over and over again.
Psychologists describe this as the power of repeated proximity. Simply spending regular time with the same people allows familiarity, trust, and eventually friendship to develop.
Adulthood rarely offers us those same opportunities.
Many of us are balancing careers, raising children, caring for ageing parents, managing households, or working from home. Even when we meet someone we'd genuinely like to know better, building a friendship requires time, energy, and intentional effort—three things that often feel in short supply.
So, if making friends feels harder now than it did at sixteen, it isn't because you've forgotten how. It's because the environment that once made friendship almost effortless no longer exists.
When Your Growth Changes Your Relationships
For many women, however, there's another layer to this story.
The women I work with are often in a season of change. They're recovering from difficult relationships, navigating divorce, healing from childhood experiences, learning to set boundaries, or slowly rediscovering who they are after years of putting everyone else's needs before their own.
Healing has a quiet way of changing us.
Not all at once.
Often so gradually that we don't notice it happening until one day we realize the life that once felt familiar no longer fits in quite the same way.
We begin noticing:
- The conversations that leave us feeling lighter.
- The relationships that ask us to shrink ourselves.
- The people who make us feel safe enough to exhale.
We also begin noticing the difference between relationships that feel familiar and relationships that feel safe.
In the process, we naturally become clearer about what we need from the relationships in our lives. We may find ourselves saying no without apologizing, recognizing unhealthy dynamics sooner, or no longer feeling responsible for managing everyone else's emotions.
While these changes are healthy, they can also be unsettling.
Sometimes the friendships that once felt comfortable begin to feel exhausting. Conversations that used to flow easily may leave us feeling drained. It's not necessarily because anyone has done anything wrong. More often, it's because the relationship was built around a version of ourselves that no longer exists.
That can be incredibly confusing because we still love the person. We just no longer feel like ourselves within the relationship.
This is one of the loneliest parts of healing, and it's rarely talked about.
I often remind my clients that healing doesn't just change how we see ourselves. It changes what feels safe, what feels familiar, and ultimately what we look for in the people we invite into our lives.
I Didn't Expect Healing to Feel So Lonely
This is something I've experienced in my own life, too.
There was a season in my own life where I realized that as I was growing and healing, my relationships were changing along with me. It wasn't because anyone had done anything wrong, and it certainly wasn't because I loved the people in my life any less. I was becoming more honest with myself about what I needed to feel emotionally safe, supported, and understood.
What surprised me most wasn't the change itself. It was the loneliness that came with it.
For a while, it felt as though I was standing between two versions of my life. I'd outgrown some of the relationships that had once felt like home, but I hadn't yet found the women who felt aligned with the person I was becoming.
As a therapist, I now hear this same story from so many women.
So many women sit across from me believing they're the only one who feels this way.
They're not.
One of the things I've learned after years of sitting with women in therapy is that loneliness isn't always about not having enough people in your life. More often, it's about not feeling deeply known by the people who are already there.
They're very different experiences.
It's just one of the quieter parts of healing that we don't talk about enough.
Grieving Friendships That Haven't Really Ended
Not every friendship ends with an argument. Sometimes it fades quietly. You still care about the person, and you appreciate what they meant to you during a particular season of your life. But somewhere along the way, you've grown in different directions.
There can be a surprising amount of grief in acknowledging that.
Many people feel guilty for outgrowing friendships, as though appreciating their own growth somehow means they no longer value the relationship. But those two things can exist together. We can be grateful for what someone brought into our lives while also recognizing that the relationship no longer supports who we are becoming.
Growth doesn't erase love. It simply changes what we need.
Why Female Friendships Matter More Than We Often Realize
We often think of friendship as something that's nice to have.
Something we'll make time for:
- Once work settles down.
- Once the kids are older.
- Once life feels less busy.
But research tells a different story.
Friendship isn't simply a luxury. It's one of the things that helps us stay well.
Studies consistently show that women with strong, supportive relationships tend to experience better mental health, lower stress, and even greater longevity.
Perhaps even more importantly, these benefits don't come from having dozens of friends.
They come from having relationships where:
- We feel emotionally safe.
- We don't have to perform.
- We don't have to shrink ourselves.
- We don't have to constantly earn our place.
As women, we're often the ones carrying everyone else. We remember birthdays, organize family gatherings, support our children, care for ageing parents, check in on friends, and hold the invisible emotional weight that keeps so much of life running smoothly.
We all need people who help carry us sometimes.
The friend:
- Who listens without trying to solve the problem.
- Who celebrates your growth instead of feeling threatened by it.
- Who reminds you who you are on the days you've forgotten.
- Who you can call when life falls apart—and who still answers when life is going beautifully.
Those friendships don't just make life more enjoyable. They help us feel more resilient, more grounded, and less alone.
Finding Your People Looks Different in Adulthood
One of the biggest shifts I encourage people to make is to stop asking, "Where do I make friends?" and instead ask, "Where are women with similar values already spending their time?"
I remember thinking that by my thirties, friendships should just happen naturally. Walking into a room where I didn't know anyone felt strangely vulnerable, almost like the awkwardness of starting a new school all over again. But I've come to realize that most meaningful adult friendships begin in exactly that way. They hardly ever begin with one life-changing conversation. They begin with repeatedly showing up, recognizing familiar faces, and allowing trust to grow over time.
Friendship is rarely built through one perfect conversation.
It's built through repeated moments of shared experience.
Maybe it's:
- A book club you've been meaning to join.
- A walking group in your local area.
- A Pilates class where you begin recognizing the same faces every Tuesday morning.
- A pottery workshop.
- A community course.
The goal isn't to walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with a best friend.
The goal is simply to become a familiar face.
Over time:
- Familiarity becomes conversation.
- Conversation becomes trust.
- Trust becomes friendship.
It's slower than it was when we were teenagers, but slower doesn't mean impossible.
A Found Moment…
If you're reading this because you've been feeling lonely lately, I hope you leave knowing that your experience is so much more common than you realize.
Healing has a way of making us question so much about ourselves, including whether we'll ever find people who really understand us.
From what I've seen in my own life and in the therapy room, that season doesn't last forever.
The friendships you build once you've learned to know yourself often feel different.
They're:
- Quieter.
- More intentional.
- Less about fitting in.
- More about feeling safe enough to be yourself.
If you're in the middle of that in-between season, keep showing up.
Keep being open.
Keep trusting that the right people are looking for someone just like you.
They may not have found you yet. But that doesn't mean they won't.
Perhaps making friends isn't harder because you're older.
Perhaps it's harder because you're no longer looking for relationships built on convenience.
You're looking for relationships built on:
- Honesty.
- Emotional safety.
- Mutual effort.
- Being able to show up exactly as you are.
Those friendships often take longer to find. But when they do, they don't just change your social life. They change the way you experience the world.