It's really hard to make new friends as an adult. Everyone is usually pretty established in their friend group by the time their late twenties roll around. I think the military provides some amount of support since you move so much, people are aware that you need a support system everywhere you go. I have had some luck with making a few great friends, but then I've moved again and had to leave them behind. We dream of a day when fate will bring us together again, but in all likelihood, it won't happen.
Finding friends in the communities you live in is a nice alternative to other's in the military, because at least one of you will have permanence to some extent. Should we be here 2 years or 4, we will have this one connection for the entire time... and no matter where we go, they will always be here in the same place, forever connecting our world with memories. Forever giving us a reason to maybe one day return.
As luck would have it, my husband and I recently got sucked into a long-standing, well-established group of church people through our family advocate. It's difficult to feel at home in such a group, even though everyone is kind, inviting, and friendly, since the past has them so intertwined, they can speak easily of almost anyone and all know who they are. They can flip from subject to subject and no one is lost or confused. Except us two newbies, smiling through the slight boredom of not knowing what they're talking about. Its worth the awkward phase of being the odd ones out, though. I can imagine a day when walking through the door without knocking is totally natural. But as cruel as fate is, the core of the group, the house family, is moving soon to another state. All of them, the grandparents, the kids, the grandkids. The whole of the core.
It's hard to make friends as adults. Because as adults, people begin to realize how important family is. So they move closer to family, or are focused on creating a family, or surround themselves with friends that are family.
If I lived in Cali again with my family, I don't think I would feel the slightest need to make friends. To have my besty again, my sisters so close, my mother at hand... It would dispel the loneliness quite a bit. But living a military life style, I'm forced to try to find kindred spirits in strange new places, and it's hard. Anne of Green Gables found as she grew up that there are far more kindred spirits in the world than she ever realized, and I think that is true. There is a basis of need and wants in all people that is recognizable and if you can fulfill those for other people, they can fulfill it for you.
I hope that we can remain good friends with this group, even though we are the odd ones out, the newbies in a time of change for a well-established group of intimates, and maybe the group can withstand the loss of the core. I certainly hope so. It would be so nice to always have someone to call on a lonely weekend, or a place to eat for another family-less holiday.
I pray that God holds them together through the change. For all of their sake and not just for my husband and I.
