Friendships

The Path to Adult Friendship, Demystified: From Acquaintance to Friend

What’s the difference between an acquaintance and a friend, and how can you bridge the gap between the two? Learn how to spot signs that someone wants to be your friend, and how to transform a casual connection into a friendship.

Caroline Maguire
By Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., ACCG, PCC, Verified Updated on February 3, 2025
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ADHD and Friendships: Key Takeaways

  • It takes time and repeated encounters to evolve from acquaintanceship to friendship.
  • Demonstrating mutual interest by initiating conversation or chatting longer than intended, for instance, are signs that an acquaintance wants to be your friend.
  • See your acquaintance outside of your usual context to begin to bridge the gap. Choose a small, low-risk activity that naturally branches off from the main activity.

 

Friendships don’t form overnight. Most friendships take shape thanks to proximity and shared experiences. Meeting the same people repeatedly and sharing mini experiences with them over and over sets the scene. Friendships start in this cycle of regularly coming together in a circle of participation, sparking, and coming apart.

For neurodivergent individuals who often want friendships to happen ASAP, this slow transformation from acquaintances into true friends is hard. So is understanding the difference between an acquaintance and a friend, and how to bridge the gap effectively.

Acquaintance vs. Friend: Signs Someone Wants to Be Your Friend

An acquaintance is someone with whom you are friendly, but with whom your interactions are typically limited to a single context, like the hobby or activity you share a few times a week. A slight step above acquaintance is an “emerging friend” or an “activity buddy.”

A friend is someone with whom you have a close connection. You have a reciprocal relationship based on trust. You bond with them — and you definitely interact outside of a single environment.

[Read: The Art of Forming Adult Friendships — 8 Tips for the Lonely]

Connecting more regularly with an acquaintance — through small talk and other light interactions — builds trust and brings you closer to emerging friendship, and, eventually, friendship territory. The following are all positive signs that a friendship is brewing.

  • You both initiate conversation (it’s not just you doing the talking).
  • They get excited about your interests and have branched out to ask you questions about your life.
  • They say things like, “I thought of you the other day when
”
  • You find you are both smiling while together.
  • They continually seek you out. For example, they often take a spot next to you in class.
  • They linger; you have longer-than-intended conversations in the parking lot after the end of class, for example.
  • You’d feel comfortable hanging out one-on-one with them.

A Friend in Me: Bridging the Gap

Meeting outside the main environment is key to potentially transforming an acquaintanceship into a friendship. Offer a small, low-risk, and easy-to-plan activity that naturally branches off from the main one. Take inspiration from the following ideas:

  • Just finished a workout? Grab a protein shake together.
  • Do you both love art? Visit a museum or an art gallery with a new exhibit.
  • Need new crafting supplies? Go shopping together.
  • Love dogs? Go to a dog park together.
  • Are cooking classes your shared activity? Meet at a farmers’ market to pick up fresh ingredients to prepare a shared dish.
  • Ask for help planting flowers in your garden.

[Read: How to Make Friends As an Adult With ADHD, According to Our Readers]

The hope is that more opportunities to “zing” and click in various contexts will broaden and deepen your existing relationship. Ideally, you’ll both reach out when you’re apart, and plan your next meetup immediately after your current one ends. With time and patience, you’ll find that you’ve made yourself a friend.

Acquaintances to Friend: Next Steps

The content for this article was derived from the ADDitude ADHD Experts webinar titled, “An Adult’s Guide to Fostering Friendships with ADHD” [Video Replay & Podcast #478] with Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., ACCG, PCC, which was broadcast on November 2, 2023.

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