All I want for 2025 is to be part of one of a ‘group chat’

Yesterday I received a message from my lovely friend and social media coordinator at the British Guild of Beer Writers asking me to make a short video about my hopes and ambitions for 2025. Usually I would be first past the post to help her with anything, and as the 2024 Michael Jackson Beer Writer of the Year I felt an obligation to support the Guild. However, when I started to think about it, it was more than my innate horror of videos of myself that was preventing me from complying.

My goal and ambition for 2025, aside from there not being a civil war which feels like a pretty important hope at the moment, is very simply to make more friends. I find myself regularly wondering if there is something actively wrong with me that I’m unable to perceive or understand, or if I’m caught in an unfortunate cultural curve that has segued people like me out into the region of easily dismissible. Neither is a particularly attractive idea.

It’s very easy to blame myself. I am exacting and particular. I don’t suffer fools and I have high expectations when it comes to loyalty. This is why, perhaps, I can be inclined to keep people at a distance until they have proved themselves trustworthy. At my age, I have been burned enough times to be wary. But this doesn’t explain the simple lack of people in my demographic who are willing to socialize – who bother to follow up on offers to go out for a drink, who will happily friend me on Instagram and I’ll never hear from again. I’m a gregarious person, always chatting to folks at bars and mix easily at parties, but conversations never seem to go beyond a single meeting. My husband and I can spend hours chatting with a couple we’ve met at a brewery, exchange details, follow up and never hear from them again. I don’t have friends from childhood or college – for very good reasons. I grew up in a hellish racist Middle England pit, and went to an elite college where I was constantly looked down on for my humble origins. This means I have no circle to fall back on. I constantly read and hear about women’s WhatsApp friend chats (oddly I rarely see men’s WhatsApp chats mentioned, a subject for another day perhaps). I do not have a WhatsApp friend chat (or as they seem to be referred to on TV, ‘the group chat’), and my lack of one feels like a rehash of being the kid at school with the wrong trainers. Many days I’ll speak to no one except my husband, with thoughts flying round my brain that I’d love to share with a friend, a quick text, a laugh, a mutual recognition and understanding. Finishing a book or a TV show, sharing a magazine article, reminiscing about an event or planning one. These are all things I miss out on, and it’s very lonely.

I meet people through my work regularly, but the vast majority are careful to hold me at a distance. This is, up to a point, understandable, but at times it can feel hurtful and exclusionary, especially in an industry where many of them are friends with one another. People say adults are always too busy to make friends, but then where do these women find their WhatsApp group comrades? Yes, some will be old school and college friends, and some will be through parenting. This is the cultural curve I keep coming back to. I feel like my choice to be childfree means I lack access to that instant social whirl of parents whose children socialize presenting them with the opportunity to socialize with one another. Of course, having children is also a bonding experience. I’ve sat through enough conversations between parents to know that there exists between them a common understanding that in many cases precludes the need for small talk. They are in the trenches together. My choice not to be in said trenches is one I am completely happy with – except that there are no similar structures or bonds for childfree people. We get screwed on this twice: firstly when our existing friends move out of our circle to procreate, and again when there’s no means by which to replace them.

I grew up in a house where a premium was not put on friendship. My mother was insular and didn’t like people, and my father socialized outside the home. We were also not a close family, so I have no familial bonds to fall back on. I’ve basically been on my own in the world all my life, and feel that for all my trying to get on with people I have very little to show for it. Sometimes I wonder how much of this comes from people’s expectations of me based on my colour. I am not a timid, acquiescent South Asian woman. I have strong and unapologetic opinions. I wear clothing that might be seen as outlandish, and like to party. At 44, I still go to nightclubs and intend to do so until I am physically unable to. If I were a straight white man, would people still find these things about me so offputting? I will never know, but I do know how many friends step back from me because they want to live some outdated caricature of middle age that escaped from a 1980s British sit com. I remember hitting my mid 30s and many of my friends at the time telling me ‘oh thank goodness, I don’t have to pretend that I like going out anymore!’ I could not empathise and still do not. Are there really no other 40somethings who actually want to live a little?

I thought moving countries would be a fix. That this was a British problem, a cultural issue, and while life here has been a little easier, our social life somewhat fuller, I am still missing the kind of connections I see and read about other women of my age having. When I make friends, I usually discover they already have their close WhatsApp-group friends, so I am a casual acquaintance, an add-on to go for drinks once in a while and come to parties. I have by no means found my tribe in any sense. As we get older, we are, quite reasonably, less inclined to compromise, less inclined to put up with bullshit. We won’t take the same crap from a new friend that we would from an old friend whom we have complex ties and memories with. This is all normal, rational stuff, but can there really be no one out there in the universe with the same interests and values as me who wants to form a friendship that consists of some level of trust? I did post about this briefly on BlueSky and received many supportive messages, but meeting people in real life who feel the same feels increasingly out of reach.

I don’t think my tastes or interests are especially unusual. I like reading, listening to music, watching films and TV and food and drink. Nothing especially weird there. Maybe nothing weird enough. Certainly nothing subculture-worthy. Here in Austin, subcultures are definitely a thing, but I can’t really fake one. And I don’t feel I should have to. I look back at my in-laws’ photos of their time living in the US, and they are filled with social events, parties, group holidays and joy – all with friends they met in America. They were around our age at the time. Yes, they had kids, but is that the only thing keeping me from that kind of social whirl? Or are people just different now – if you missed the boat when you were young, you missed it for good – people just don’t have the time or inclination to make new friends anymore? Is this just another way our generation got screwed? Spending Christmas and New Year on our own was hard. It felt like we were being punished for choosing to be childfree, choosing to move countries, so basically choosing to be ourselves. Not to say we didn’t have fun, we are fortunately very good at amusing ourselves, but there’s always this nagging feeling that we’re alone because we’re disapproved of or not good enough in some way.

Anyone who says you shouldn’t need validation from other people definitely grew up with plenty of validation from other people. But validation isn’t the only reason I want friends. I genuinely enjoy company, conversation, closeness – the nice little buzz of finding things in common, shared values and opinions, and making memories. I worry because of the way so many people I’ve met have dismissed me and put me down for not sharing their values that I’ll never find people who share mine, but I’m not prepared to bend to social pressure and pretend to be someone I’m not just to fit in. Any friendship contingent on obedience isn’t worth having, and certainly won’t bring joy.

So there we are. My goal for 2025 is to find my tribe, be in a chatty WhatsApp group, not feel like a weirdo or a failure cos we’re spending our third weekend in a row on our own and maybe, just maybe, experience that joy of connection, of shared experiences, opinions and interests. I don’t think this is what Kimberley was after, but it has certainly made me think about my hopes for 2025, if not how to actually attain them.