How to Make Friends as an Adult Man (Without It Being Weird)

The short version of how to make friends as an adult man: stop looking for friends and start a recurring thing. A Saturday walk. A Tuesday run. A Sunday hike. Then invite guys into it, one at a time, and keep showing up.

It works because it removes the awkward part. You’re not asking another man to be your friend. You’re telling him where you’ll be at 8 on Saturday. He can come or not. If he comes a few times, the friendship takes care of itself. Here’s the data, the reasoning and the steps.

You are not the only one

Start with the numbers, because they take some of the sting out.

In May 2021, the Survey Center on American Life surveyed 2,019 US adults. Its write-up on men, Men’s Social Circles are Shrinking, reported that 15 percent of men had no close friendships at all, which it called a fivefold increase since 1990. It also found that 27 percent of men had six or more close friends, down from 55 percent in 1990.

15%of US men

One caution on that comparison, and it comes from the Center itself. The 1990 numbers are from a Gallup poll done by phone. The 2021 survey was done online. The Center’s methodology note says people talking to a live interviewer may have been less willing to admit to having no friends. So the size of the change is fuzzy. The 2021 figure on its own is not: about one man in seven.

It’s sharper for younger men. Gallup, combining its 2023 and 2024 data, found that 25% of US men aged 15 to 34 said they felt lonely a lot of the previous day. The national average was 18%. The loneliness guide has the rest of the numbers.

What that means in real life: in any office, gym or group chat, there are other men in exactly your position. Most of them are also not saying anything.

Why it gets harder for men after school

Richard Reeves, who runs the American Institute for Boys and Men, put it this way on PBS News Weekend in October 2025: men tend to socialize through an activity of one kind or another, and “men tend to need some sort of structure”. Then the important part. If those structures fall away, it gets harder.

That matches most men’s experience. You didn’t choose your friends at 19. You were put in a dorm, on a team, on a shift, and the friendships happened around the activity. Nobody scheduled anything.

Then the team ends. People move. Somebody has a kid. The structure goes, and nothing replaces it, because nobody ever had to build one before.

The same PBS segment cited a Pew Research Center finding that 54% of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support, compared with 38% of men. You can read that as men being bad at friendship. A more useful reading: a lot of men have fewer people to turn to, because the places they used to see those people are gone.

Men, side by side friendship, and why it works

You’ve probably heard the line that men do friendship shoulder to shoulder and women do it face to face. Here’s where that idea comes from and how far to trust it.

Reeves, in that PBS interview, said men “tend to socialize somewhat more shoulder to shoulder, is how the social scientists put it”, as opposed to face to face. He gave fishing, hiking and watching sports as examples. InsideHook’s Tanner Garrity, writing about side by side interaction, points to the sociologist Harry Brod, who argued that men actively “derive intimacy” from playing or watching things next to one another.

Two cautions.

First, it’s a tendency, not a law. Plenty of men like a long talk across a table. Plenty of women would rather walk. Reeves says “tend” for a reason.

Second, side by side is not a lesser version of friendship. It’s a way in. Garrity’s phrase is that men use it as a “lily pad” for serious conversations. That fits. The big stuff usually comes out at minute 40 of a drive or a hike, said to the windshield or the trail.

So use it. If sitting across from a guy you barely know and “catching up” sounds like a job interview, don’t do that. Do something next to him.

Good side by side activities:

• Walking. The simplest one. No gear, no skill, any fitness level.
• Running or cycling at a pace where you can still talk.
• Hiking. A built-in goal and a built-in end.
• Fishing, golf, a driving range, shooting hoops.
• Fixing or building something. A deck, a bike, a fence.
• Watching a game, live if you can.

Notice how many of those are outside. That’s not an accident. Outside gives you something to look at other than each other, and it costs nothing. For a longer list, see 28 things to do with friends that aren’t drinking.

How to make friends as an adult man: the plan

1. Start the thing alone

Pick one activity, one day, one time. Saturday, 8am, the reservoir loop. Do it by yourself for two weeks.

This matters more than it sounds. A plan you already do is easy to invite someone into. A plan that only exists if he says yes is a date.

2. Make a short list

You don’t need strangers yet. Write down three men you already half know and like:

• The coworker you actually talk to.
• A neighbor. Another dad from school or the team.
• A guy from the gym whose name you know.
• An old friend in the same city you haven’t seen in a year or two.

3. Invite one, with a plan in it

Keep it to one line.

I walk the reservoir loop Saturdays at 8. Come this week.

Going to shoot around at the park Sunday at 10. You in?

That’s it. No preamble. A specific plan reads as normal. “We should hang out sometime” reads as nothing.

If you’re worried he’ll think it’s odd, the research is on your side. A 2018 paper in Psychological Science found that after conversations, people systematically underestimated how much the other person liked them. The researchers called it the liking gap. He probably thinks better of you than you assume.

More wording, including what to send an old friend after a long silence, is in how to ask a friend to hang out.

4. Repeat until it’s boring

One hangout doesn’t make a friend. Hours do.

Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas estimated that it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, 90 to become a friend, and more than 200 to become close friends. His samples were 355 adults who had recently moved and 112 college freshmen, and the hours were self-reported, so call it a ballpark.

The useful detail: in his study, hours spent working together “just don’t count as much” as time spent hanging out. That’s why you can work next to a guy for five years and not really know him.

Do the math on a weekly walk. One hour, every Saturday, is 50 hours in a year. You won’t notice it happening. One day he’ll text you first.

5. Add a second guy

Two people is a plan. Three is a group, and a group survives one person having a bad month. Once the first guy is a regular, invite the next one on the list. Tell the first one to bring someone.

Without it being weird

The weird feeling is real, so here’s what actually causes it and how to avoid it.

Vague asks are weird. Specific ones aren’t. “Want to hang out?” makes him guess what you mean. “Hike Sunday at 9?” doesn’t.

One-on-one dinner is a high bar. For a first hangout with a guy you barely know, pick something with motion in it. A walk, a game, an errand.

Don’t announce the project. You don’t need to say you’re trying to make friends. Just make the plan. He’ll work it out, and he’ll likely be relieved.

A no is about Saturday. He’s busy, his kid is sick, he forgot to reply. Say “no worries, I’m there every week” and ask again in a couple of weeks. A standing plan means the invitation never runs out.

Skip the pressure to go deep. You don’t have to talk about anything heavy. Talk about the game, the job, the trail. If something real comes up, it comes up. Side by side, it usually does eventually.

Where GTFO fits

GTFO won’t find you friends. It gets you out the door, and that’s where you meet them.

The reason it’s relevant here: step 1 of the plan is “start the thing alone”, and that’s where most people quit. If the Saturday walk is a real, unbroken habit, the invite is easy and it’s always open. If it’s something you did twice in April, there’s nothing to invite anyone to.

For the wider method (where to find people, how to keep friendships going once they start), read the guide to how to make and keep friends as an adult.

This week

Pick the thing. Pick the time. Go once on your own.

Next week, send one text to one guy. Eleven words or fewer. Then go, whether he comes or not. That’s the whole method, and it’s a lot less weird than another year of “we should grab a beer sometime”.