If you are like me (Gen Z, chronically online, constantly fatigued and heavily introverted, rounded off by a pinch of social anxiety and perhaps a splash of neurodiversity), you might have noticed how hard the whole making new friends part can get.
Even if you’ve been living in your town for a couple of months, maybe even years, that is in no way a guarantee that you’ve had the opportunity to build new, meaningful connections with peers of the same age.
And here’s the ridiculous part: you are probably very far from being the only one in your town with a very similar, possibly the exact same, experience. There might be hundreds of people, sometimes mere meters away from you, experiencing the same exact thing.
I for sure am one of them.
Why Is Making Friends So Weird Now?
Helping out as a volunteer at a summer camp for kids, I was reminded of how easy it used to be to make friends.
You ask your seat neighbor what their favorite color is, when their birthday is and what foods they like and bam! You’re friends now and can go to the park to play horses or Star Wars or mermaids.
Small talk used to be so easy and somehow… less boring?
I genuinely feel so drained when meeting someone new and spending the better part of an hour just telling them about my major, future plans and current living situation. Maybe, on a good day, my plans for vacation this year too.
There is just so much procedure to go through. It feels almost mechanical.
The aspect of play and imagination, not even passions and deep fascinations, rarely have a set place in our day-to-day interactions. They would be overwhelming, after all, and we are also deeply afraid of coming across as cringe or too much.
Thus, we resort to our learned rhythms and habits.
Which are… boring.
For everyone involved.
Often, these small-talk getting-to-know-you phases curb my excitement about getting to know somebody new so much that they completely drain my motivation to invest in and further pursue a relationship. This only adds to the problem of not really having a lot of deep, meaningful connections in my current everyday vicinity.
Lastly, adult life can get insanely hectic, and there tend to occur absurdly stressful periods in which upholding social contact, especially during the getting-to-know-each-other phase, is simply not possible to a greater extent.
How often have I let promising new friendships die out over a stressful exam period that stretched on for months?
You start reading their texts, meaning to respond just a bit later, and forget all about them within minutes. The moment you open the conversation again months later, you see that unanswered text and have an absolute oh shit moment.
Or you cancel on them for the third time in the same month, and your guilt builds up so much that you just don’t send another date to catch up anymore, thinking you ruined it and don’t want to bother them by setting another date you can’t uphold.
This is me.
Far more often than I’d like to admit.
It really messes with my own self-perception of being reliable and committed.
In an everyday life that is built around isolation and financial success, where your hard work is seemingly the only value you can provide, it often feels to me like the entire system is against me having an active social life, even if I deeply crave it.
So I Went Looking
In the darker hours of deep loneliness and isolation, a part of me still wants to try and forge new, beautiful friendships.
I deeply crave a large social circle, even multiple friend groups and communities.
Like with most things that bug me: I went out and started trying to fix it.
Here’s how my endeavors went.
First of all, let me tell you about my search methods, because I have tried mannyyy ways to make new friends. Some more successful, others less so.
University
One might think that going to uni for more than three years might yield at least a few new good friends, hopefully for life. After all, it gets much harder to connect to new people once you start out in corporate life, right?
Not quite.
To be honest, my friend experience at university has been meager at best.
I’ve tried many ways to connect, such as talking to classmates and being present before and after lectures to talk to people. I’ve always been open and good at starting a conversation. Unfortunately, sometimes groups have already formed, many stay to themselves or simply don’t have much drive to pursue new friendships.
Even with lots of similarities, it might be difficult to keep in touch, especially with constantly changing schedules, hectic and stressful exam periods where anyone can hardly find the time to stay in touch, and a really long summer break where it’s easy to lose track of each other.
A phone number only gets you so far as to a meeting, but if neither of you has time, things eventually tend to die down.
Another issue arises with actually meeting regularly through classes. It has become somewhat standard procedure to skip out on a class or two, and that, combined with sick leave and some holidays, leads to people in the same course maybe meeting each other around five times in one semester.
Not so much to forge a real connection.
Another factor around friend-finding in uni life might be a bit of an overwhelming schedule that might just get too much for post-pandemic students who are more used to hangouts at home rather than spontaneous outings and long days in a bustling city.
I do, however, still recommend being active in university, engaging in the free programs, going to parties and excursions. While you might not find a long-term friend, you could still get closer to people and have amazing times spent in social company.
Not every social gathering has to be solely with friends, and just soaking in other people’s presence can really help with feelings of loneliness and isolation.
4/10
“Just Go Out and Do Something!”
This advice also feels somewhat outdated, since it’s usually not as easy as that, and many courses, classes and gatherings don’t even feature people our age.
I’ve tried festivals and painting classes, a dance studio and even public hangout spots to get to know folks, but I’ve always struggled most in those areas.
It might happen that you run into one or two younger people and might even have some things in common. Mostly, though, these short meetups don’t really lead to anything for me, and people aren’t that great at staying in touch.
2/10
Concerts & Conventions
Now here is a really interesting idea that has surprised me the most.
Whenever people gather in really large groups around the same interest, a general openness and acceptance seems to spread across them. This is amplified if the event creates a bright, sometimes even euphoric mood, and suddenly everyone is hyped and on the same wavelength.
Personally, I always find things to talk about with random strangers at conventions or events in that area. People respond well, and most of the time we have a lot in common.
I’ve also been approached most in fandom spaces where it’s obvious we share very specific common interests.
Talking to one another, hanging out together and swapping numbers is as easy as cake when you’re both in a ridiculously expensive cosplay, wearing a bright wig and carrying a massive Love and Deepspace cutout under your arm.
The only caveat: people flock to cons from all over Germany, sometimes Europe. The chances of meeting someone from your exact hometown are slim at best, and staying in touch when all you can do is text or call most of the time can get especially hard.
A con is an amazing place to connect, but you should come prepared to part ways soon after.
6.5/10
Reconnecting With Old Friends
Here’s a controversial one: instead of making new friends, you just rekindle your old ones.
While this might sound like an amazing idea at first, it might not always be your safest bet, and that is for numerous reasons.
1. People Change
Life is dynamic. People move, enter different living and lifestyle situations and, of course, they also change.
Being close during your childhood days or even throughout youth and young adulthood doesn’t guarantee in the slightest that you are still compatible at the current point in life.
I found it exceedingly difficult to arrange and meet up with old school friends, especially if I wanted to see entire friend groups.
You should also be aware that you’re likely gonna be the one doing the heavy lifting in terms of organizing and planning. Otherwise, they would probably have reached out to you first.
If you’re okay with this, go ahead and give it a try.
Some of my friendships have always had phase-like dynamics in which we didn’t have much contact at all for several years and then reconnected later and went straight into a phase of being best friends for many months again.
2. There’s Often a Reason
Beware, however, of my second point: there’s often a reason contact slowed down for you at some point.
Keep in mind that while some things often change with time and age, it is still not a guarantee that they won’t persist and resurface once you start reconnecting.
For me, reviving some older contacts has been enjoyable to some degree, especially for getting a bigger picture of the other person’s life and what’s been going on with them lately, but it hasn’t been very helpful in adding to my active friendship network.
Mostly the issue of scheduling, but also geographical difficulties, have arisen, making it apparent that I’d be able to stay in loose contact with older friends at best.
I’d definitely recommend hitting up some old acquaintances, simply for the joy of catching up and perhaps a little bit of reminiscing, but don’t put all your hopes on that one either.
3/10
Online Dating — But for Friends
This one’s a bit tricky, because I have made a small amount of very nice and compatible friendships in my direct vicinity, but it has also been a very tedious, effort-heavy and often frustrating process.
Apps like Bumble BFF, for example (I’ve tried a few services like it) require a lot of energy for very little return.
First of all, I find it absolutely obnoxious that you can’t specifically filter every single person from your town. I really strongly recommend only searching in the smallest local area if you actually want to meet up and continue doing so for a bit longer.
This means you will have to do a whole lot of swiping and spend loads of time just browsing unrealistic candidates.
Next up is the very non-committal, loosey-goosey nature of this kind of social online platform. Very likely, most people will not answer your texts, even if you match, and even fewer will continue to do so after a few short back-and-forths.
Should you decide to give this method a shot, consider following my tried-and-true formula:
- Match in your immediate vicinity.
- Don’t be too picky about only looking for similarities, great friendships can happen with the most unexpected people.
- Always text a match.
- Introduce yourself in a nice opening text rather than a generic one-liner. I found it helpful to consider these online contacts like letters. Write fewer, thought-out messages.
- Don’t text for too long before following up with a call or meeting.
- Stay consistent and try to clock Jeffrey Hall’s 50 hours in the next four months to forge a lasting friendship.
With this method, I’ve actually found most of my newer friends who are from my new hometown, and I am super glad I did, although I usually hated the process.
While the apps may appear super convenient and even dopamine-producing, it’s just a tedious process that you have to work hard on for it to work out.
Still, I think it’s a good option for getting to know at least a handful of people, so if you’re out of options, you should definitely give it a try!
7.5/10
Bars & Clubs
Now hear me out.
I am truly by no means a party animal. Nowadays, even less so than a few years ago pre-pandemic, so finding me in any kind of club situation is gonna be very unusual.
I have, however, recently made some very unexpected experiences that I can only rate as surprisingly positive.
In order to find a potential match for a friend of mine, my little friend group decided to do the whole going to the nightlife thing to come into contact with possible matches.
For this, I picked out a queer space I had known from a few years ago and enjoyed at least a little back then.
I was fully prepared, however, to be a bit of an odd one out and just listen to some music and dance, as I like to do whenever I get the chance to.
However, even shortly after arriving, I was approached by a lot of the loveliest people, and we truly had a great jolly time just vibing, talking and hanging out in the smoking area outdoors.
(I don’t smoke myself, but it is an amazing place to socialize.)
Of course, having one or two drinks at the bar sure did loosen up some social inhibitions as well, so that might make it easier for some people to break the ice.
I was also lucky to have selected a very welcoming and open space that many like-minded folks frequented, so it was easy to find things in common to talk about.
If you want to give clubbing a chance, make sure to go to the right spot. It might take a while, too.
Now to the downside.
Even though numbers were exchanged and promises made, I technically cheated the challenge of finding hometown friends, as this spot was in the town over and featured people from all over the place.
Thus, my objective of finding friends in my vicinity was not met.
I still think this is definitely worth a try, though, and I’d actually give it an honorable:
9/10
Friend Multiplication
Now to the final and most… duh? piece of advice:
Friend multiplication.
Tbh, if you have any way to do this, I recommend it first and foremost.
Getting to know more of your friends’ friends is, to me, the most reliable, easy and effective method of expanding your friend circle.
And it won’t even be a challenge to introduce them to your other friends because, well…
They already know each other!
I do know that sometimes you just move so far away to a place where you know absolutely no one, that this may not be an option in the beginning.
But if you have the luck to know just one person, just attending their parties, meetups or birthdays is so tried and true for getting to know more folks from the area.
So make a point to attend all those possibilities and don’t shy away from meeting your existing friends with the people they know but you don’t (yet).
It’ll feel so natural and easy, and sometimes your friend can even help introduce you.
Please just don’t treat your friend as some kind of friend broker to get to know their friends. Just be nice, stay a good friend and be open to opportunities that offer themselves up.
Your social life is gonna profit from it.
Just this summer, I’ve actually had the honor of introducing an old childhood friend of a good friend of mine into my circle, and after some initial shyness, they fit right in.
And would you know?
We’re practically neighbors!
Since this is how I’ve met many friends, some of them my best friends even, I cannot recommend this enough.
10/10
So… Did It Work?
I hope I have put together a somewhat comprehensible list of methods, ideas, experiences and advice for you.
If so, I really, really wish for you to be able to make tons of good friends in no time at all!
Please don’t give up, try hard (’cause that’s just what you gotta do if you wanna make and keep friends) and be open to experiences.
I have a handful of lovely new friends in my hometown after trying and erroring my way through the various ideas I could come up with, and I couldn’t be more grateful!
I also somehow had a bunch of fun trying and ended up enjoying many of the experiences, even if it didn’t always lead to making new friends.
I wish you all the best on your journey, and don’t forget:
Unfortunately, step one will be getting off the internet!
With that, good luck <3