RELATIONSHIPS
Help! I’m 36 and I don’t have any friends
According to an anthropologist, you need 150 friends. I don’t even have one — the last woman I asked for a drink thought I wanted to go on a date. It’s hopeless, says Annabel Fenwick Elliott
Annabel Fenwick Elliott: “I find every aspect of socialising confounding and difficult”
GEOFF PUGH FOR THE TELEGRAPH
The Times
Be honest with yourself: do you have enough friends? Not by societal standards (we’ll get on to what that number is, according to science, later), but for your own general satisfaction. Because I don’t, on either count. Not as far as most sociologists are concerned, and not enough to keep me from feeling lonely. This is far from unusual in today’s world. According to a recent YouGov survey, one in five Britons say they’ve become “distanced” from close friends since the pandemic. I’m surprised it’s not more, given it was for several years literally illegal to fraternise, but personally I can’t blame my matelessness on a virus.
I have always found it tricky to make friends and even harder to keep them. I was never
