Stop waiting to be invited.

And I mean that.

And not because you should start chasing people down, and not because you suddenly need to become the social director of everybody's life, but because the woman waiting for someone to invite her might be sitting across town from another woman who's waiting for exactly the same thing.

You can have a phone full of contacts and still feel like you have nobody to call.

And that's a strange kind of loneliness, isn't it?

Because technically, you know people.

There are names in your phone, women you like, people you see at work or at the gym, the friend you exchange birthday texts with every year, the woman you run into at Target.

And both of you say, oh, my gosh, we need to get together.

And you mean it.

And she probably means it, too.

And then six months go by.

So here I am.

I'm Kylie Suarez, and this is the Joy Shift.

And today I want to talk about friendship in midlife.

Because I think that there are a lot of women walking around with very full lives who are quietly missing this not more people connection.

By the end of this episode, I want you to understand why friendship can suddenly feel harder at this stage of life, even when you're surrounded by people.

And before next Tuesday, I'm going to ask you to do one thing about it.

Follow the show Right now, the joy shift finds you every week.

So, okay, let's talk about this.

Here's something that I've been thinking about.

There was a time when friendship didn't require this much effort.

Think about it.

When you were younger, life kept putting the same people in front of you.

You went to school with them.

You, you had roommates.

Maybe you started your first job with people around the same age that were.

Everybody was in the same boat, figuring things out at the same time.

Then maybe you had children and suddenly there were other mothers who were at preschool or soccer or dance or school pickup.

You saw the same faces over and over again.

You didn't necessarily sit down and say, I'm going to build a friendship with this person.

Life did some of the work for you.

Proximity did the work.

Repetition did the work.

You just kept ending up in the same place.

I mean, how many of us know those of us who had children, how we all had such an active life, and then once they grow or they get out of high school, then all of a sudden it's a whole different thing.

Then somewhere in midlife, that starts changing.

The kids get older.

Maybe your work changes.

Maybe you've moved.

Maybe you're working from home now and you can Go an entire day without talking to another adult who isn't related to you.

And maybe the friendships you had for years are still there, and you still love those women, but your lives don't overlap in the same way that they used to anymore.

Nobody did anything wrong, and there was no dramatic fallout.

Your lives just changed.

And I don't think anybody tells us that.

One of the strange parts of midlife is that friendship stops being built into the architecture of your day.

Now you have to choose it.

And that's different, because choosing it means somebody has to go first.

And I think that that's where a lot of us get stuck.

We're waiting, waiting for someone to text, waiting to get invited, waiting for somebody to say, hey, I'm doing this Saturday.

Do you want to come?

And while we're waiting, we're telling ourselves a story.

Everybody else has their people.

She's probably busy.

I don't want to bother her.

She has a million friends.

It would be weird if I asked.

Or my personal favorite, we should get together sometime, which sounds like an invitation, but it's not.

It's a lovely little sentence that we say to each other while walking in opposite directions because sometime isn't on the calendar.

And this is the part that I want you to hear if you're feeling this.

I don't think it means that you are bad at friendship.

I think you may simply be out of practice at initiating the kind of connection you want.

And there's a difference.

There's another layer to this, too.

You can be deeply loved and still realize that not many people know the woman that you're becoming now.

And that's different from saying nobody loves you.

That's different from saying nobody knows you.

Of course people know you.

Your husband may know you deeply.

Your sisters know you.

Your oldest friends can probably tell what you're thinking by the look on your face.

But sometimes the people who have known us the longest know us through the life that we've already lived together.

They remember you at 25.

They knew you when your kids were little.

They know what happened in your marriage 12 years ago and what your mother said that one Christmas, and why you absolutely cannot sit next to a certain relative at Thanksgiving.

There's something beautiful about that kind of shared history.

And I don't want to diminish it, but there is also a version of you who exists right now.

Maybe she wants different things.

Maybe she's interested in things she didn't have time for before.

Maybe she wants to travel.

Or also, she's taking Better care of her body.

Now maybe she's asking questions about her work or her marriage or what the next 10 years are going to look like.

Maybe she's funnier than she used to be.

Maybe she's less interested in being impressive.

Maybe she wants to learn more mahjong.

Who knows her?

Not the woman.

You were.

Her.

That's one of the things that I think friendship can give us at this stage.

Someone gets to meet you now.

About a year ago, I started learning mahjong.

Every Tuesday, I sit down with my sisters and my mother, and we play at a community center.

And let me tell you something, mahjong is hard.

And I don't know why I thought I was going to sit down and immediately understand what was happening.

I thought it would come through my DNA because of my grandmother, but it did not.

And I did not.

My brain has to work in a way it hasn't had to work in years.

I'm looking at these tiles and trying to remember what I'm doing and what everybody else is doing.

And sometimes I'm completely lost.

But that's actually part of why I like it.

I'm learning something.

I'm not there because I'm good at it.

I'm there because I want to be there.

And somewhere along the way, Tuesday became more than mahjong.

It's my sisters, it's my mom.

It's community.

It's whatever happened that week coming out while we're sitting around a table.

Nobody had to send a text saying, we really need to catch up.

We catch up because Tuesday came.

And that's the beauty of it.

Tuesday comes whether we had an interesting week or not.

We don't have to manufacture connection.

There's already a place for it.

I didn't set out saying I need more meaningful connection in my life.

So I'm going to create a reoccurring relational ritual.

God, no.

That didn't even occur to me.

I learned a game.

That's it.

But because I kept showing up, something else also happened.

And that's what I've been noticing.

A lot of the connection that we're missing isn't going to come from one amazing dinner where everybody pours their hearts out.

Sometimes it comes from seeing the same people again and again until one day, you realize, this is part of my life now.

I see this in another part of my life, too.

I go to group exercise classes, I go to a gym, and I go to a Pilates studio.

And yes, technically, I'm there to exercise.

But if I'm Being truthful, there's another reason I'm going to I'm competitive.

If the woman next to me in Legree can keep going, suddenly I've decided I'm going to keep going too.

My body may have a completely different opinion about this by minute 20, but apparently that's irrelevant.

I'm staying.

And there's something about being in a room with other women, doing something hard at the same time.

I don't even need to know everybody's life story.

Sometimes connection is simply looking over annoying.

Okay, she thinks this is terrible, too.

And then you see her again next week, and eventually you learn her name.

Then one day you're just standing around after class talking about something completely unrelated.

And that's how a lot of friendship actually start.

Not with, would you like to enter into meaningful friendship with me?

God, no.

No.

Thank God.

It starts with, are you coming Tuesday?

This is what I mean when I talk about practical rebellion.

It isn't dramatic.

Nobody has to blow up her life.

You don't need to decide that you're going to become wildly extroverted at 53.

Please don't.

If you hate networking events, I'm not sending you to one.

This isn't about becoming someone else.

It's about noticing where you've handed over your agency and waiting to be invited is one of those places.

We do it so quietly that we don't even realize we're doing it.

We say we want more friendship, but underneath that, sometimes what we really mean is, I want somebody else to risk asking me first.

Because if she asks, I know she wants me there.

If I ask, I could get a no.

So there it is.

That's the uncomfortable part.

Because initiating connection means risking a tiny rejection.

And at this age, shouldn't we be over that?

No.

I don't think human beings age out of wanting to be wanted.

You send the text and then you look at your phone.

She hasn't answered.

Two hours go by.

Suddenly you've decided she hates you.

Meanwhile, she's at Costco.

This is what we do.

And sometimes she really will say no because she's busy.

She has family in town.

Saturday doesn't work.

Maybe she doesn't want to go.

And that can happen too.

But I don't want you to make somebody else's availability mean something about your worth.

Because the win isn't that every invitation gets a yes.

The shift is becoming a woman who makes the invitation.

That's different.

You're no longer sitting around hoping your life chooses you.

You're participating in it.

So here's what I want you to do before next Tuesday.

Think of one woman.

You probably already know who she is.

Maybe you've talked to her after class a few times.

Maybe she's somebody that you used to work with.

And every time you see her you think, I really like her.

Maybe she's a neighbor.

Maybe it's an old friend that you've lost touch with and there wasn't a fight or some big ending.

Life just got busy.

Think of her and invite her to something specific.

Not, we should get together.

No, give the invitation somewhere to land.

Like, I'm going to that new coffee place Saturday morning.

Want to come?

I'm walking Thursday after work.

Do you want to join me?

I've been wanting to try that class.

Would you do it with me?

That's it.

Don't write a paragraph explaining why you're asking.

Don't apologize.

Don't make it weird.

You're not proposing marriage.

You're getting coffee.

Send it and then put the phone down.

Her answer is information.

It is not a referendum on whether you're likable.

Then I want you to go look at your own life and ask a different question.

Where could connection become easier because I keep showing up?

For me, that's Tuesday.

Maybe yours isn't Tuesday.

Maybe it's Saturday morning.

Maybe it's the same yoga class.

Maybe you volunteer somewhere twice a month.

Maybe you finally join the book club that you've been thinking about instead of telling yourself that you don't have time.

Maybe you take a pottery class and discover that you are terrible.

A powdery and you don't even like it.

But great.

Be terrible.

The point isn't optimizing yourself.

You're allowed to do something simply because you like who you are when you're there.

And I want us to remember that because women our age are very good at justifying things.

If you're going to spend the money, there should be a benefit.

If you're leaving the house, it should accomplish something.

If you're taking a class, maybe we should become good at it.

Why?

What if the benefit is that Every Thursday at 6:30 people expect to see you?

What if you laugh?

What if you have something to talk about besides work and your children?

What if someone learns how you take your coffee?

That's not frivolous.

That's a life.

Now I can hear somebody saying, kylie, this sounds lovely.

I'm tired.

I know that's real.

Sometimes the reason we don't initiate is in fear.

We're tired.

Your calendar is full you have people needing things from you all day, and the thought of adding another commitment sounds like the opposite of joy.

I get it.

But I want you to look carefully at what is filling the calendar, because not everything that takes your time gives something back.

There are obligations that drain you.

There are things that require energy to get yourself there but somehow give you energy once you arrive.

And those are not the same.

I've had days when staying home sounded easier.

Of course it did.

The couch is very convincing.

But easy and nourishing aren't the same thing.

Sometimes joy requires getting in the car, or sometimes friendship requires sending the text when you would rather assume she'll ask you eventually.

Sometimes the life you say you want needs a place on the calendar before you feel completely ready for it.

And that's practical rebellion.

It's not doing more for the sake of doing more.

It's deciding that your own aliveness gets a place in the week, too.

And I want to say something else because I don't want to make this sound too tidy.

Not every woman you reach out to is going to become your person.

You might have coffee and realize there's not much there, and that's okay.

You might really like somebody who never quite reciprocates, and that can sting.

Or you might join the class and nobody talks to you in the first week.

Go back.

Not forever.

I'm not asking you to spend a year forcing yourself into a room where you feel miserable, but give connection enough time to become familiar.

Friendship at this age may grow when more slowly than it did when we were younger.

We aren't spending six hours together every day at school.

We have jobs and families and complicated calendars.

So don't mistake slow for wrong.

Let it take a minute.

I think this is the bigger thing underneath all of it.

At some point, you have to let your current life contain people who know your current self, not because your old relationships aren't enough.

This isn't about replacing anybody.

It's about allowing your life to keep expanding.

I love that word, expansion.

You are still becoming.

That's something I care about deeply on this show.

I don't believe the interesting part of your life ended because the kids grew up, or because you hit a certain birthday, or because you've already built the career.

I think that there are parts of you that haven't had much room yet, and sometimes another person helps call them forward.

There's the friend who gets you to take the trip.

The woman who texts, click class tomorrow.

I have one of those.

Someone who makes you laugh so hard you forget what you were worried about.

Someone who only knows you as you are now.

And there's something freeing about that.

There's no prejudgments, and you don't need a huge circle.

I don't think that's what most of us are actually looking for.

We want somewhere to belong, somebody to call a Tuesday, and that's enough.

So if you've been telling yourself you're too old to make new friends, I want you to stop saying that.

You're not too old.

You're just at an age where friendship may require more intention than it used to.

And intention isn't desperation.

Initiating isn't chasing.

It's choosing.

Before next Tuesday, make the invitation.

Don't worry yet about whether she's going to become one of your besties.

You don't have to know what it turns into.

Just stop requiring somebody else to go first.

Maybe six months from now, there's something on your calendar you wouldn't dream of missing.

Maybe you get your own Tuesday.

And maybe one while you're listening.

Today, you realize this isn't only about friendship.

Maybe you've been waiting to be invited into other parts of your life, too.

Waiting for somebody to tell you it's okay to want something different.

Waiting for the timing to make sense.

Waiting until everybody else is comfortable with the decision you're thinking about making.

You don't have to wait to be invited into your life.

And neither does she.

Send the text.

I'll see you next week.