How To Make Friends As An Adult — And Why It's Important

Anyone who’s ever made room for a big milestone of adult life-a job, a marriage, a move-has likely shoved a friendship to the side. After all, there is no contract locking us to the other person, as in marriage, and there are no blood bonds, as in family. Friendships are flexible. “We choose our friends, and our friends choose us,” says William K. Rawlins, Stocker Professor of Communication Studies at Ohio University. But modern life can become so busy that people forget to keep choosing each other. That’s when friendships fade, and there’s reason to believe it’s happening more than ever.

Loneliness is on the rise, and feeling lonely has been found to increase a person’s risk of dying early by 26%-and to be even worse for the body than obesity and air pollution. Loneliness wreaks health havoc in many ways, particularly because it removes the safety net of social support. The antidote is simple: friendship. It helps protect the brain and body from stress, anxiety and depression. “Being around trusted others, in essence, signals safety and security,” says Holt-Lunstad. A study last year found that friendships are especially beneficial later in life. Having supportive friends in old age was a stronger predictor of well-being than family ties-suggesting that the friends you pick may be at least as important as the family you’re born into. Easy as the fix may sound, it can be difficult to keep and make friends as an adult.

But research suggests that you only need between four and five close pals. If you’ve ever had a good one, you know what you’re looking for. “The expectations of friends, once you have a mature understanding of friendship, don’t really change across the life course,” Rawlins says. If you’re trying to replenish a dried-up friendship pool, start by looking inward. Think back to how you met some of your very favorite friends. Volunteering on a political campaign or in a favorite spin class, Playing in a band, “Friendships are always about something,” says Rawlins. Common passions help people bond at a personal level, and they bridge people of different ages and life experiences.

There are two basic types of icing that anyone who is interested in cake decorating should be familiar with. The second type of icing commonly used in cake decorating is fondant icing. Fondant icing is not as nice in taste, as most people feel that it is very sugary and chewy, where as butter-cream tends to have that melt-in-your-mouth quality. However, when trying to achieve a perfectly smooth and flawless look on a decorated cake, fondant icing is your best bet. Here are two of our favourite icing recipes, one for butter-cream and one for fondant. Try each recipe and see which one you like best!



In a mixer, mix your butter or shortening with the salt and vanilla and slowly begin to add the sugar in small amounts until you have almost reached the end of the sugar. Be sure to stop every few minutes and scrape the edges of the bowl and taste the frosting to make sure that it has the flavour you want. At the very end of the mixing process, add the cream and mix for about 20 seconds. Refrigerate as soon as possible. Melt the marshmallows in the microwave with the water until totally melted. Place on a workspace with 3/4 of the sugar and grease your hands with the vegetable shortening. Begin kneading the marshmallow mixture into the sugar to make a dough and make sure to keep your hands greased with the shortening.