Categories
pubs

Pubs and loneliness

How do you make friends when you’re in your forties? Instinctively, I feel as if the pub must be the answer.

Recently, I found myself alone for the weekend and after a while, solitude got the better of me and I decided to go to the pub.

As I wrote years ago, I’m generally fairly introverted and happy with my own company

Two years of working from home has probably intensified that tendency, as has getting older and more set in my ways.

Sometimes, though, I need to be around people, even if I’m not joining in – and sitting in the pub with a book, part of it but separate, usually does the job. (Ross agrees.)

This time, though, pleasant as it was, I felt a sort of hollowness.

Separation tipping over into alienation, perhaps, as Saturday afternoon whirled around me.

I realised after a while that what I wanted, truthfully, was a pint with a mate.

When you’re young, arranging pints with mates is easy:

  • shout ‘Pint?’ across the hall to your flatmate
  • text ‘Pint?’ to whoever happens to work nearby before they get chance to begin the commute home
  • catch the eye of a workmate and make a wavy pint-drinking gesture while wiggling your eyebrows

But people have kids, move away, get busy with work and family, get weary…

Before you know it, a pint with your best pals is something you do once a year, if you’ve booked it well in advance.

What I miss is low-commitment, low-intensity, spontaneity.

Problem one is a shortage of friends in the city I moved to in 2017.

I’ve been working on it, and I’m getting there, but it’s not easy. Certainly not as easy as when I was six and I could just wander up to other kids on the estate and say “Can I play?”

People keep telling me to join clubs and societies and, yes, that’s one way.

My weekly writers’ group has become important to me, especially as it met via video all the way through the pandemic.

Otherwise, though, that’s not my thing.

Pints are my thing.

The pub isn’t a big deal. It doesn’t require a subscription, demand regular attendance, or have prescriptive rules.

And the conversation isn’t limited to a single topic. Quite the opposite. If a session in the pub doesn’t range from telly to telephone boxes to the problem with the world today, the pints aren’t doing their job.

I sometimes find getting into a sulk is a necessary step in making things better.

Since my low-key freakout the other week I’ve convinced a couple of my fellow writers to detour to the pub after a group meeting, seen an old friend for the first time in almost a year and arranged to meet someone from Twitter for a pint.

Let’s see if I can keep this up.

9 replies on “Pubs and loneliness”

“Vulnerable on main”! Like it. But also… hold my beer.

The number of times I’ve ever gone out with a mate for a pint is tiny. Admittedly I’m not counting every time I’ve drunk beer in company, but if you exclude going out with a partner, exclude going out in a gang from work, exclude workplace lunchtime sessions more generally (explainer for younger readers) and exclude going to the pub for something (for the quiz, or a gig, or to meet up and talk about commissions over a drink)… in short, if you define “going out with a mate for a pint” as going out in the evening, with a (non-romantically-defined) friend, for the purpose of having a drink or two in good company, then the number is really tiny. Not “fingers of one hand” tiny, but I suspect fingers and toes would do it.

When you’re young, arranging pints with mates is easy:
shout ‘Pint?’ across the hall to your flatmate

Never done that, not once. (Never really had a flatmate tho.)

text ‘Pint?’ to whoever happens to work nearby before they get chance to begin the commute home
Or that – although the last time I was in 9-to-5 employment was 1998, and I’m not sure I had a mobile phone.

catch the eye of a workmate and make a wavy pint-drinking gesture while wiggling your eyebrows
Nope.

Problem one is a shortage of friends in the city I moved to in 2017.
I’ve been working on it, and I’m getting there, but it’s not easy. Certainly not as easy as when I was six and I could just wander up to other kids on the estate and say “Can I play?”

I do agree that making friends as an adult isn’t easy – boy, do I agree. I don’t remember the first bit, though. When I was eight we moved to the other side of the country. Soon after arriving in the new place, I distinctly remember approaching a group of kids in the street and… having the first “do I just say hello? would that be weird? is it weird just standing here and not saying hello? wait, am I in the group now? how do I know?” experience of my life. (The first of many.) This was followed about half an hour later by the first “I’m not enjoying this, it isn’t really working, I should go… do I just walk away? would that be rude? do I have to say something? what should I say? maybe I can sort of drift off without people noticing” moment of my life. (The first of, well, several.)

Before you know it, a pint with your best pals is something you do once a year, if you’ve booked it well in advance.

A pint with multiple friends? You’re raising the stakes now. The number of times I’ve ever been for a drink with mates as mates – not counting the-gang-from-work and the-after-meeting-meeting and the-lunchtime-session and the-quiz-team… – is definitely in “fingers of one hand” territory. In fact, if you instructed me, in a Derren-Brown-does-life-coaching sort of way, to arrange “a pint with my mates” right now, I honestly don’t known who I’d ask.

But then, I don’t ask. Really, for as long as I can remember I’ve assumed, if I ever asked someone to spend some time with me (because that’s what it’s about, when you get down to it says inner voice – it’s not about the beer, is it, you’re saying “please take some time out of your life to keep me company”), that they’d either look embarrassed and make up an excuse or just look down their nose at me (Why would I do that?). So I stopped asking – or rather, I didn’t really start.

Since my low-key freakout the other week I’ve convinced a couple of my fellow writers to detour to the pub after a group meeting

Nice one – and I can think of at least one place I meet people which could be improved by a post-meeting drink. The problem there is that I’m very rarely deep in conversation with anyone when people start to drift off – I’m more likely to be one of the people drifting off.

arranged to meet someone from Twitter for a pint.

Ye Gods, are you mad? Social media! They could be literally anyone! Also, more seriously, I would never have the nerve – or rather the presumption.

This is rather long and very, um, honest; all in all it would probably work better as a blog post, and better still as a letter to my therapist (if I had one). So I may ask you to delete it. But let’s go with it for now. I do wish you luck – genuinely – in making progress out of the lower foothills of Mount Sociable back onto the higher slopes, but for me at least the foothills would be an improvement.

Thanks for sharing, Phil. When I wrote the post I was worried that people might say “What are you talking about? Making friends is easy!” so reassuring, in a way, to have my generalisations corrected in the opposite direction. Have you tried taking salsa classes? &c. &c…

Please don’t delete it Phil. I really related to it after a conversation with my partner revealed he feels pretty much exactly the same. I’m going to share this post and your response to it with him later (when I feel like he’s in a good place to take it in). I have some wonderful friends I can share a pint with, but he less so. Thank you for opening up so vulnerably but honestly.

There’s a difference between friendship and social contact, although both are important. You still see groups of older blokes chewing the fat in the pub (although not as often as you used to) but it’s doubtful to what extent that translates to friendship in the outside world – they just happen to come together in a particular pub at a particular time.

And pubs themselves have to encourage sociability. If they’re dominated by dining, or loud music, or TV football, it’s hard to converse. And it does help being actually open in the first place.

I find the pub experience modified by who I’m with. Definitely happy to go alone and chat to anyone and for me this is the purest experience. The larger the group you go with, the more you affect the premises.

As you said, sometimes sitting in solitude is good too.

This post struck a chord with me, as like you, I consider myself to be fairly introverted and enjoy my own company. Probably because I’ve never had a large group of close friends – school / university folks all drifted away a long time ago, and work colleagues were mostly up their own backsides!! Nowadays, I’m active in several groups including the local CAMRA Group and that has been good for me to socialise and meet new folks. BUT, I’m probably one of the youngest there and I’m in my mid 50’s. I”ll happily go to a pub on my own, sit in the corner and read stuff on my phone or socials, but there are times even that becomes boring and I really just want to chat to someone – so I might listen in to some conversations that the bar person is having and then eventually chip in something at a quiet moment. What doesn’t help is that for me to go for a quick pint involves a 45 minute walk or 10/15 minute bus journey to get to my nearest real ale pub…. And that, I think is the biggest problem for me at least – I can’t just ‘nip out for a quickie’ – it involves a lot of planning. Lockdown provided an excuse to enjoy my own company and drinking at home – it’s hard to leave that comfort zone.

Comments are closed.