Making friends as an adult

I recently had an interesting conversation in an unexpected context. I was at a work happy hour of sorts, attempting to mingle and chat in the best way that a slightly introverted person can manage. I found myself in a conversation with one of the higher-ups in my department. Nice guy, easy to talk to. Not someone I interact with every day, or even every week, but we had clearly built up some kind of a rapport nevertheless. He shared a problem that he was having: making new friends as an adult. Indeed, this certainly can be a tricky one. I felt empathy for his experience, and verbally sympathized. This was clearly a "vent and listen" conversation. He wasn't really looking for advice. Driving home, I kept thinking: "Is this something I struggle with? I don't think so, and I wonder why that is." You only get what you give When I take inventory of the IRL friendships I've made and kept, I notice something interesting: the vast majority of my recent (say, in the past 10 years) close…