I didn’t go to pickleball to make a friend.
Kate and I had just gotten back from Dallas. Five hours in the car, traffic the whole way. I was pent up, tired, restless. I needed to move. So I signed up for open play from 6–9 p.m. on a Sunday night.
This is one of the underrated benefits of this stage of life. No kids at home. No homework to help them with. None of their games to attend. No bedtime routines. You can just… go.
So I went.
I’ve been going to this place for a few weeks now. Twenty-three indoor courts. You throw your paddle down, rotate in, play with different partners every game. It’s a great setup.
And for weeks Kate’s been asking me “did you meet anyone?”
Nope. No real conversations. No connections. Just playing.
Which is fine. I wasn’t there to “network.” I was there to move, sweat, get better, and sleep well.
Then last night, it happened.
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Third game of the night, I get paired up with a guy named Derek. Same age. Good shape. Better player than me. Easy to talk to. Over the next couple of games, we start chatting.
He’s got three kids. One who just graduated college in the northeast, another who’s in college here in Texas and another senior in High School. I’m from the northeast so we chatted about that. We have some shared suffering with the cost of out-of-state tuition, so we laughed about that. We’re both in positions where we can just leave for three hours on a Sunday and make some time for ourselves. He’s an attorney. We had a few acquaintances in common.
We kept playing together. Won some, lost some. Having fun. Talking more between points, then between games. Natural.
Two hours later, as we’re wrapping up, he says, “Hey, we should exchange numbers. Let’s play again sometime.”
Simple.
That’s how it happens. You just keep showing up.
You don’t need a strategy for friendship, you need a routine.
Now, Derek might just be a pickleball friend. Maybe we play again, maybe we don’t. Maybe it turns into more, maybe it doesn’t.
That’s not the point.
The point is this…
In my experience, you don’t make friends at networking events. You don’t make friends at conferences, sitting there listening to some speaker talk at you. You don’t make friends consuming podcasts, reading self-help books about loneliness, or sitting at home thinking about it.
You make friends by doing.
And you make real friends by doing the things you actually enjoy doing… alongside other people who enjoy doing those same things.
If you want to make connections in midlife, there’s a great quote from Walt Disney “The way to get started is to quit talking, and begin doing.”
Pickleball. Lifting. Hiking. A group class. A run club. A boxing gym. Whatever it is for you.
Put yourself in places where the odds are in your favor because friendship in midlife isn’t built through intention. Rather, it’s built through participation.
If I didn’t meet Derek last night, I still would’ve played for three hours. I still would’ve gotten better. I still would’ve moved my body and slept well.
That’s how this works.
Do the thing. Find your people.
You don’t go out to “make friends.”
You go out to live your life.
And if you keep showing up in the right places, doing the right things…
Eventually, you look up, and realize you’re not doing it alone anymore.
In Health,
Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.
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