There’s a question that crept up on me one ordinary evening and wouldn’t leave: when was the last time I made a new friend? Not a colleague I was friendly with. Not a friend of a friend I saw twice a year. An actual new friend, from scratch, as an adult.

I worked it out. It had been the better part of a decade.

I’m forty-one. I wasn’t lonely in an obvious, dramatic way. I had a partner, I had people I’d known for twenty years, I had a life. But the people I’d known for twenty years had drifted to other cities and other priorities, the way they do, and I had quietly stopped replacing them. I’d decided, without ever deciding it out loud, that the friend-making part of my life was simply over. That you get your allocation in your twenties and after that the door closes.

I believed that for years. I’d like to tell you what changed it. It was a box of little cardboard tiles.

The slow thinning

Nobody tells you that adult friendships can starve to death without any single dramatic event. There’s no falling-out. There’s just a slow thinning. A cancelled drink that never gets rescheduled. A group chat that goes quiet. A birthday that becomes a text instead of a night out.

And the cruel part is that the longer it’s been, the harder it feels to do anything about it. Making a new friend at forty felt faintly absurd, even embarrassing. Where would you even do it? You can’t exactly walk up to someone in your situation and say “you seem nice, do you want to be friends,” even though that is, underneath everything, exactly what I wanted to say to somebody.

So I said nothing, to anybody, for a long time.

Tuesday, tiles, terror

I found a board game night almost by accident, looking for something to do that wasn’t another evening on the sofa. It met weekly above a pub. Anyone could turn up. I went on my own, which at forty-one felt strangely brave, like the first day at a school where everyone already had their groups.

I almost turned around at the door. The voice in my head was relentless. You’re too old for this. They’ll all know each other. You’ve forgotten how to do this.

Then a bloke called Theo waved me over to a half-full table, asked if I knew the game, and started teaching me before I’d even sat down properly. No interview. No awkward “so what brings you here.” Just: here’s how the pieces move, you’re with us now.

We played. I lost badly and laughed about it. I came back the next week, and the week after, mostly to see if the easy feeling had been a fluke. It wasn’t. The same faces, the same table, in-jokes starting to form. And one Tuesday a few months in, Theo texted me about a completely unrelated thing, just because, and I realised with a small shock that it had happened. I had made a friend. A new one. At forty-one.

The door was never closed

That was the thing that undid my whole quiet theory. The door wasn’t closed. I’d just stopped walking up to it, because I’d convinced myself it was locked.

I have a proper little group now. We’ve been to each other’s places. One of them came to my dad’s funeral last spring, a man I’d known eighteen months, standing at the back in a dark suit because I’d mentioned the date once. People I met because someone needed an extra player.

If you’ve quietly decided you’re past the age of new friends, here’s what a Tuesday and a box of tiles taught me:

  • Adult friendship doesn’t happen by accident anymore. In your twenties it’s handed to you. After that you have to go and put yourself in the room, on purpose, repeatedly.
  • Regularity does the work. The magic isn’t one brilliant night. It’s the same people, the same time, every week, until familiar becomes friend. Board game nights are ideal because there’s always something to do with your hands and your nerves.
  • You are not too old, and it is not embarrassing. Half the people in that room were thinking exactly what you’re thinking.
  • Turning up alone is the brave bit. Do that, and the rest tends to follow.

I thought I’d used up my lifetime allowance of friends. It turns out you can always make more. You just have to be brave enough to be the new person again.

If you can’t remember your last new friend, this is your sign. Find a club near you or a welcoming board game night, and go on your own. The door was never locked. You just have to push it.