English writer Virginia Woolf once wrote, “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.” In fact, Ms. Woolf was ahead of her time in understanding the essential importance of friendships in your life. Even more than spouses and relatives, friends are the essential relationships for our physical and mental health. Psychotherapist Katharine Esty, herself an expert on aging, recently quoted the work of social psychologist William Chopik to confirm this fact: “Summaries of studies show that friendships predict day-to-day happiness more and ultimately how long we’ll live, more so than spousal or family relationships.” Dr. Sharone Malone, an expert on menopause and women’s health, also applauds the value of friends, especially for aging women, as she writes, “Sisterhood is medicine. Studies show that having a friends network is more valuable for your health than having a partner.” While there appears little doubt that friendships are essential for your well-being in your later years, the challenge is how to maintain old or current friendships, or build new ones, when the circumstances of life present roadblocks: friends move away or pass away, or loneliness leaves you reluctant to open yourself up to someone you don’t already know.

But there are different kinds of friends and they serve different purposes. Not every “friend” needs to be someone you’ll risk life and limb for (though having a friend like that serves an important purpose as well). Turning to Katharine Esty again, she suggests there are 4 different types of friends you can have in your life: The “helpers” who will give you a hand when you’re in need; the “buddies” who will go to a show or dinner with you; the “confidants” to whom you can really open yourself up and share your deepest concerns; and the “forever friends” whom we may not see often, but with whom we share great and golden memories. Not everyone you know or meet needs to fill all of these roles, but each of these types of friends can fill a meaningful place in your life. Author Jill Smolowe, who has written on grief and divorce, categorizes friends a bit differently. Describing with sadness the recent move of her close friend, she writes that there are 2 types of friends: Those she calls “situational,” who may be part of our daily activities, but whose friendship may not survive a change in the situation, and “real” friends, those special and impossible to replace relationships which endure and survive challenges that arise. For most of us, there may be those “real” friendships, but the bigger challenge is often finding a buddy or confidant to create social engagement and companionship on a regular basis.

Many of us have had a “real” friendship in our lives, but for whatever reason, have lost touch with that old friend. Have you thought about reconnecting? It turns out, that’s not an easy thing to do and we even have a scientific study to back up those feelings of reluctance. According to a recent study in Nature Communications Psychology, these “old friends” may feel no different than strangers at this point, so a feeling of rejection or awkwardness may make us too timid to try to reconnect. Those are feelings that may also inhibit us from forming new friendships, which require a level of bravery, resilience, and active effort on your part. But experts say it can be done successfully, even at a later stage in life: If you find a group with like-minded interests, make the overt effort to strike up a conversation, accept the fact that not everyone will like you or be your cup of tea, and invest the energy and effort in reaching out, asking questions and being open to new friends, you’ll likely achieve success. Admittedly, older men may have more of a challenge. As writer Steven Birenbaum recently described in a Next Avenue post, men are taught to shut down emotionally at an early age, so making yourself vulnerable and open for a “real” friendship may require hard work. But he describes his successful efforts and gives a strategy that anyone can follow. And for more advice about widening your friendship circle, take the recent NY Times quiz on finding out your friendship style and then follow that up with pursuing the Times’s 5-Day Friendship Challenge.