Vivien Arguelles, 82, knows it's not easy to make friends later in life. But she has a simple solution: talking to people who share her passions.
Vivien Arguelles
Vivien Arguelles grew up in Cuba, and she said family was everything there.
She saw her grandmothers and great-grandmothers every weekend and went to frequent family parties. Whether she liked it or not, she said it was the norm — and it kept everyone close.
That all changed when Arguelles, now 82, moved to the US with her children. After raising them in Chicago for 18 years — during which she separated from her then-husband — her kids spread out across the country, and Arguelles decided to move to Florida by herself in 1988.
"It was difficult finding friends, and I didn't know how to make friends," Arguelles told Business Insider. "You make friends through work, through a church, but I had no job, I had no work, and I just knew my neighbor. That was it. So I really had no one here."
Before coming to Florida, Arguelles worked in real estate in Chicago, and she found a job in the same field in Florida — but she didn't enjoy it, so she quit. As a self-described adventurer, Arguelles said she took on many employment opportunities shortly after moving to Florida, including sailing to Spain and Portugal, working as an interpreter, a desk manager, and at a yachting company. She said she made friends working in yachting, but it was "a very transitional company," and she couldn't maintain those friendships.
"Here I was again with no friends, so I said, 'I gotta do something,'" she said.
While there were women's groups Arguelles could have joined, she said she didn't enjoy the frequent cocktail parties and luncheons that came with it. But when she saw a flyer for a running group that was raising money to fight leukemia, she decided to join — and ended up running her first marathon at the age of 60.
"I started making friends in that running group, and those friends became a very tight community," Arguelles said. "I feel that you have to find a passion and join where your passion is with other people, so they have the same passion."
Vivien Arguelles.
Since then, Arguelles has used that one idea to find and maintain connections with others: meet people through activities with shared passions. Along with her running group, Arguelles has made friends through a spinning group at the gym, and those are the people she often sees socially for dinners and happy hours. She's also interested in going to Italy, so she started taking an Italian course and has made friends there, as well.
BI has previously spoken to other older adults who have struggled with loneliness but are finding ways to make new connections later in life. Some of them have said it's been "lifesaving" for them. It really can be — US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic last year, and he said that the impacts of minimal social interaction could be especially detrimental for older adults, increasing the risk of heart disease and dementia, among other things.
Arguelles said she's aware of the health impacts loneliness can bring, and that's why she keeps pushing herself to try new things and meet people with common interests.
"It's so important for older people to have a social life," Arguelles said. "It's what keeps you going. And there's so many ways of meeting people, but at the same time, you have to make an effort, and if I didn't, I'd probably sit at home all day on my computer."
Arguelles knows what she loves to do, and while she experimented with a range of professions and hobbies earlier in her life, she now only wants to dedicate her time to things she enjoys: travel and fitness.
That also means she doesn't think it's necessary to meet people through activities she's not passionate about.
"I'm not going to make friends through shopping because I hate shopping," Arguelles said. "Life is too short to waste time with things like that. But if somebody says, 'I love to travel' or 'I love to hike,' I'll say, 'Really? When are you leaving? Can I go with you?'"
Of course, it's not always that easy. Some older adults might have physical constraints that prevent them from engaging in more active activities. Dianne Stone, the associate director of the National Council on Aging's National Institute of Senior Centers, previously told BI that ensuring older adults have access to their local senior centers can be key to facilitating connections.
"Prioritizing things like transportation infrastructure, making sure that it's all truly accessible so that people can get places," Stone said. "Supporting those community-based organizations is incredibly important. Along with senior centers, we're also talking about libraries. We're talking about parks and recreation. These are all community-funded and government-funded initiatives, so prioritizing them, I think, is incredibly important."
For now, Arguelles has no plans to slow down — she loves living in Florida by the ocean, and she wants to stay as active for as long as she can because she knows of the risks that isolating herself can bring.
"Socializing is very important for your brain, and it's recommended to prevent diseases like dementia that are very common in older people," Arguelles said. "That's one of the reasons I do it."
Have you found ways to combat loneliness? Share your story with this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.
