I don't know a person over 40 who can't recite by heart Jerry Seinfeld's famous riff about not making new friends in your 30s.
"Whoever you have in your life by then, that's who you're going with: you're not interviewing, you're not looking at new applications. 'Sorry — I'm not hiring'."
OK – I probably know quite a few who don't know it – but it's not like I see them anymore…
At a certain point in your life — and yes, it's the same point at which you seem to suddenly develop a passion for birdwatching — you realise you're done with making friends, you're full-up and you're just not hiring anymore.
And that, unlike the really gorgeous birdbath that you buy, may well be the biggest mistake you ever make.
The ABC's Megan Macdonald took a look at this, following alarming research earlier this year that showed one in three Australian adults are dealing with heartbreaking loneliness. How do you make new friends when you're no longer a kid in the park with a ball, which of course was the only pre-condition we ever needed to make that new connection?
The answer, according to some women she met who no longer wanted to feel so alone, is get practical: how about one friendship date a week for an entire year? Fifty-two of them?
The only form of life is change
I was that Seinfeld person once: fully hired, tribal, locked into a clutch of overlapping friendship groups that were just enough for me. In fact, I think I may have been that person who was actively hostile to the idea of anyone "new" joining the group. I wanted things to stay just as they were.
Until I realised that the world was full of fascinating people; and that life was speeding by while I was trying to keep everything comfortably the same.
I had to realise that the only form of life is change. That stasis – the true representation of stasis – is death. And it was way too soon for that.
Most discussions for women around friendships later in life centre on ending "toxic" friendships: the ones that have been slowly boiling you alive without you realising it. It's a frog-kisses-off-the-princess story, with an unusually happy ending. For men, the conversations focus on how commonly men can neglect their friendships, relying on partners to keep the social diary and keep social connections alive.
But we rarely discuss the joy that can come from crossing the room of your life to ask that stranger on the other side if they'd like to dance. It's one the of the scariest things you'll ever do as a grown up: open yourself up to the vulnerability of asking someone to be your friend.
But if you do, and it works, its exhilarating. And feels like life in some way has restarted for you, anew.
The grenade of motherhood
Late motherhood threw a grenade into my carefully tilled field of friendships. While everyone I knew was thrilled for me, once my son was born a couple of them melted away — not unkindly, and maybe even sorrowfully, but they did so decidedly, and I suspect also with a sense that the childless person they knew and relied on had been changed utterly and they could no longer find their place among it all.
Perhaps I had become less reliable, less focused on them with this life change. It's something I can understand well, and I never challenged any of my old friends on what they did.
We do what we can to manage in this world. They had to do what worked for them.
I got some poor advice in those early months: to steer clear of mothers' groups and the like because, as a relatively well-known and older mum, I wouldn't be likely to find kindred spirits, but would instead draw the sort of curiosity that I wouldn't enjoy.
After those first couple of weeks at home, starting to sink under the waves with a newborn, I tossed that advice and marched into my local maternal child health centre. There I found Beth, with her beautiful daughter Audrey, born just the day before Addison, and even though she now lives in another town and we rarely see each other, we feel each other's presence as if at the end of a tow-rope: firmly anchoring us to each other, and our every text, our every conversation picks up just where we were and is as full of love and care as it was with our newborns.
There is something very powerful about the connections you make in those sleep-deprived, struggling first days. I know that months could go by, but if I called Beth at 3am and told her I was in trouble, she'd ask only if I wanted her to stop and pick up coffee on her way to me.
With these friends, I age backwards
When my son started school I had an awful sinking feeling. I could not imagine finding a tribe given my friends were well out of the school-gate years by the time I was finally able to fall pregnant. There's no serum slick enough to make you feel less old as you cluster with the bona fide yummy mummies at 3:30pm bell, their morning lycra still attached to admirably firm thighs.
I don't know what I did to enjoy the good fortune, but instead I met and made friends with a group of incredibly kind, smart, funny women who, like me, are the ones on the school chat desperately asking at 9pm just what the kids are supposed to go dressed as tomorrow.
These later in life friends feel like a gift. Time speeds by when we are together, and yet I age backwards when I am with them.
I think that's the inverse lesson of the Seinfeld credo: each new friend that you're lucky enough, brave enough to make takes you back to the joy of your younger friendships and creates a time machine in your life.
This weekend, as well as reading about how you can make your next great friends, you can hang out with your other besties: Delta, Sam and Dolly. They'll be delighted to see you.
Have a safe and happy weekend, and next week I might have something to say on the fascinatingly divided commentary about Madonna's new Celebration tour, a retrospective of her almost five decades at the very top of the music business.
She's not an easy one to love these days, but you cannot deny her success or pop brilliance: so why the snark? I'll get to that.
In the meantime, if she's finally prepared to embrace her past, so can we.
I had this T-shirt once. Go well.