Making friends as an adult is harder than anyone ever warned us about. Unlike childhood, where friendships formed effortlessly on the playground, or college, where connections were built into dorm life, adulthood throws us new challenges—busy schedules, shifting priorities, and the reality that making (and keeping) friendships takes effort.
This is a topic I love and have spent a lot of time thinking about. Years ago, I led a seminar on friendship and connection, and despite facing plenty of obstacles, I’ve been able to build an incredible, supportive group of friends. But it wasn’t by accident—it was by understanding what makes friendships work and taking intentional steps to cultivate them.
Recently, I came across Mel Robbins’ Three Pillars of Friendship—Proximity, Time/Phase of Life, and Energy—and I found myself nodding along because, yes, these are the things that make or break friendships. I also love her Let Them Philosophy, but what I’ve also embraced is the ‘Let Me’ Approach—the idea that Let me be the one to reach out, Let me be the one to host the party, Let me take responsibility for building the connections I want in my life.
In this episode, I’m diving into all of this—why making friends in adulthood is hard, how to navigate it, and how to take action to build real, meaningful relationships.
And stay tuned, because in upcoming episodes, I’ll be exploring the different types of friends based on personality—what strengths they bring to relationships, where imbalances may show up, and how to cultivate deeper connections by understanding temperament.
If you’ve been struggling to find or deepen friendships, or just want to be more intentional about the relationships in your life, this episode is for you.
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Wendy Gossett helps parents understand their children by using temperament psychology and neuroscience. She has over 10,000 hours of experience in education, both in the classroom and corporate sector. Even though she holds a Master’s degree in education, she struggled to understand her neurodivergent and oppositional kids. Inspired by her experience using Myers Briggs and the Enneagram with business teams, she spent over a decade researching temperament pattens to help family teams. She is a best-selling author and host of the Not So Normal Parenting podcast.
Her podcast is entitled Not So Normal Parenting because not only are she and her kids neurodivergent but some of her life experiences, such as driving off a cliff her wedding night and going viral for embarrassing her seventeen-year old son by dancing on a snowy and jammed interstate, fall into that category. In addition to being talked about by Hoda Kotb, the BackStreet Boys, and Princess Kate, even U2 singer Bono mentioned the incident in his autobiography.
Because Wendy herself has struggled as a helicopter parent, a cranky parent and an embarrassing parent, she wants to help other parents struggle……..a little bit less!
Feb 18 202523 min