How to Make Friends as an Adult in Denver
…When It Feels Awkward, Anxious, or Just Plain Hard
Making friends as an adult is hard. There’s no way around that. It’s even harder when you're living in a city like Denver—big enough that you’re constantly surrounded by people, but small enough that it sometimes feels like everyone’s already found their crew. And if you’re navigating anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or old wounds around trust and rejection? Yeah, that makes it even more complex.
Making friends as an adult isn’t as easy as it was in college, where you were doing life with people the same age, with similar goals, and similar hobbies and interests. You didn’t have to work hard to find them around work schedules and kid’s schedules - you lived down the hall from them, were in the same fraternity, or met at a party or an intramural sports league. But those aren’t the circumstances anymore. It isn’t just about “putting yourself out there” and “joining a kickball league.” If that still worked, you’d have done it already. Add in factors like being childfree in a city where many social circles revolve around school pickups, sports and playdates, or being a transplant trying to break into tight-knit local friend groups, and it can feel impossible. Making adult friendships…real ones, the kind with emotional depth and mutual support - requires more than showing up. It demands self-awareness, emotional risk, and intentionality.
I’m a therapist in Denver who works with high-achieving adults—people who look like they’ve got it all together, but who feel lonely, disconnected, or socially stuck behind the scenes. A lot of my clients are navigating anxiety, burnout, attachment wounds, and unmet friendship needs at the same time. And one thing I hear over and over again? “I didn’t think it would be this hard to find my people in Denver.”
If that’s you, keep reading. This isn’t a sugar-coated list of social hacks; this is a deeper look at what makes adult friendships hard, why your nervous system might be resisting connection even if you crave it, and what’s actually worth focusing on when you want to build meaningful relationships in a city like Denver.
Why It’s So Damn Hard
First, let’s normalize the reality that we live in a culture that isn’t set up for adult friendship; especially not the kind that goes beyond surface-level small talk or transactional networking.
Denver is an interesting mix. It’s a transitory city in some ways; people move here for jobs, for the outdoors, for a lifestyle shift. That creates a level playing field where people are often open to meeting others. But it also means people come with full plates: demanding careers, families, relationships in flux, struggle with burnout, or managing their mental health while trying to “enjoy the mountain life.”
The pandemic definitely didn’t help. It fractured existing communities and made it harder to organically meet new people. Now, many people in their 30s, 40s, and beyond are looking up and realizing their friendship circle is either too small, too one-dimensional, or non-existent altogether. It’s not uncommon to feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to have a big group of friends, but trust me - you’re not the only one.
Anxiety and the Nervous System Side of Socializing
Let’s talk about what social anxiety actually looks like in adulthood, because it’s not just sweaty palms or avoiding parties. It’s the dread you feel before a casual coffee meetup. The overthinking spiral after a group hangout: Why did I say that? What will they think? Did they actually like me or were they pretending to be nice? Did they feel pressured to say yes to hiking?! And on and on. Sometimes anxiety looks like the urge to cancel plans at the last minute because you suddenly don’t want to go, or it feels really risky, scary, or too much work to put yourself out there.
In therapy, we talk about the nervous system’s role in all of this. If your system is stuck in fight, flight, or freeze (which is common for perfectionists, high achievers, and anyone with unresolved trauma), social situations aren’t just draining - they feel threatening. Your brain might be scanning for signs of rejection, awkwardness, or abandonment, and when it doesn’t find any, it still says: “Stay guarded. Don’t get too close.” When we talk about how to make friends as an adult in Denver, we have to talk about this internal landscape first. If you’re constantly in self-protection mode, no number of social meetups or new hobbies will create real connection. You have to feel safe enough in yourself before you can feel safe with others.
This is one of the reasons therapy can be such a powerful part of this process. Not because your therapist becomes your friend (we don’t), but because a good therapist helps you understand and change your relational patterns. You start to understand what makes you pull away, what types of people you’re drawn to (and why), and how to slowly rebuild trust in the idea that closeness won’t always end in pain.
Childfree vs Parents
Denver has a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to adulthood. On the one hand, it’s a playground for adventure, startups, and beer gardens. On the other, it’s a city where many social lives revolve around children - school communities, soccer games, birthday parties at Wash Park. If you’re childfree (by choice or circumstance), it can feel like you’re living parallel lives with people your age.
Many childfree adults talk about feeling like outsiders in their peer group. Not because there’s animosity, but because there’s simply no overlap in lifestyle or schedule. It becomes harder to find shared rhythms because their lives are on different schedules. Meanwhile, parents often feel isolated too - so busy and exhausted that nurturing friendships falls off the priority list. Even if you want to connect, logistics and not having much energy can feel like a barrier.
The key here isn’t to force friendships that don’t fit, but to get clear on what kind of friendships you actually want and need at this stage in your life. Maybe you need friends who value long conversations over hikes, or who are free on weeknights because their weekends are booked with family time. Denver offers opportunities for both, you just need to be intentional and be honest about your bandwidth and boundaries.
What Might Be Making It Harder
A lot of adults struggle with friendship not because they don’t want connection, but because connection feels risky. If you grew up with inconsistent caregivers, emotionally unavailable parents, learned how to be hyperindependent at a young age and never rely on anyone else, or had friendships that ended in betrayal or abandonment, your nervous system may have wired itself for survival, not vulnerability.
In everyday terms, that looks like avoiding follow-up texts, feeling shut down, irritated or rejected if someone takes too long to respond. It can look like struggling to trust that new people will actually like you once they “really know” you, or unconsciously sabotaging potential connections because deep down, you believe you’re better off alone than hurt.
Denver has no shortage of meetups, common hobbies and interest groups, but if you’re walking into those spaces with unhealed attachment patterns (aka, believing you will be let down or that no one will accept you), it’s going to be hard to actually build friendships. The answer isn’t more events so much as it’s better self-understanding. It’s learning how to tolerate intimacy and emotional risk without bracing for the other shoe to drop. It’s giving yourself permission to want connection and to do the emotional work that allows you to sustain it.
Another Thing You Don’t Want To Hear, But Need To: Building Friendships Is a Skill
Let’s debunk the myth that friendships are supposed to “just happen.” In childhood they did. You sat next to someone in school, liked the same color or both had a golden retriever and boom - you were best friends. But as adults, we have to be way more intentional. We have to build friendship like a skill, not just expect them to spontaneously develop like they did when we were kids.
Living in Denver gives you a lot of ways to practice building new friendships, just not always the ones that are obvious. Sure, there are networking events, book clubs at Tattered Cover, volleyball groups in Wash Park, community garden groups in City Park, climbing gyms that run beginner-friendly nights, and local artist circles that welcome new voices. Even dog parks can become a space to connect, if you’re willing to go beyond “What breed is that?”.
But again, showing up isn’t enough if you’re showing up with an anxious or shut-down nervous system and unclear boundaries. That’s where therapy can help, especially if you're working with a therapist in Denver who understands the unique rhythms of the city and the nuanced challenges of forming adult connections here.
A good therapist doesn’t just help you “work on yourself.” They help you figure out what kind of friendships nourish you. They help you name the red flags you’ve ignored in the past. They teach you how to feel more comfortable taking appropriate emotional risks and what to look for in healthy friends, so socializing doesn’t feel like so much of a guessing game. And they support you as you practice building real, mutual, and sustainable connection.
What Actually Helps (and What Doesn’t)
Here’s the blunt truth: you don’t need to change your personality to make friends. You don’t need to become “more outgoing,” or pretend you love brewery trivia nights if you don’t. You don’t need to join every outdoor group on Meetup. What you do need is clarity about who you are, what you need from connection, and to deal with any barriers that keep you from taking the risk to meet new people and build friendships.
It might look like prioritizing one-on-one coffee dates instead of big group hangs. It might mean reaching out to an acquaintance and seeing if you can slowly build something more. It might mean being brave enough to let people know you’re looking for deeper connection, even if that feels vulnerable.
And yes, it might mean doing some deeper emotional work first, so you’re not just repeating the same painful patterns in new friendships.
Therapy as a Tool for Building Meaningful Adult Friendships
If you’re in Denver and struggling to form or sustain meaningful friendships, working with a Denver anxiety therapist can be a game-changer. Not because therapy gives you a “social life strategy,” but because it helps you access the version of yourself that’s actually capable of authentic connection.
In therapy, we can explore:
Early relationship patterns that shape how you relate to others now as an adult
The perfectionistic or people-pleasing tendencies that keep your guard up
The anxiety triggers that make socializing feel intimidating
The grief of past friendship losses that still linger under the surface
The actual practical steps of initiating, nurturing, and maintaining adult friendships in a sustainable way
You don’t need to settle for isolation. You also don’t need to settle for surface-level friendships that leave you feeling more drained than connected. What you need is space to understand your relational wiring, heal where needed, and build a foundation for connection that honors who you are - not who you think you’re supposed to be.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been feeling lonely in Denver, even if your calendar is full or your Instagram looks like you’re more social than you feel, please know that it’s not a personal failure. It’s a sign that your system is craving real, reciprocal connection. And that’s not only valid, it’s worth prioritizing.
Whether you’re childfree and searching for like-minded community, newly navigating life after a friendship breakup, trying to figure out how to balance parenthood with adult relationships, or someone who’s always felt like “too much” or “not enough” in social spaces, you deserve support. You deserve real connection. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.
If you’re ready to do the inner work that helps you build outer connection, I’d love to support you. As a Denver anxiety therapist who specializes in working with high-achievers and motivated (and anxious) adults, I help people like you move from isolated to connected, without betraying who they are in the process.
Therapy isn’t about fixing you. It’s about helping you find your people, starting with yourself. Book a free phone consultation with me here.
DISCLAIMER: This blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only; it is not therapy and is not a replacement for therapy. Reading this website does not constitute a provider-client relationship. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call 911 or 988. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. See website disclaimer for more information.
