41–50 of 86 posts
The second piece of advice is if you are anything like me, it's not necessarily a group of friends you are looking for - it's one or two deep friendships. Concentrate on a couple of key relationships and maybe more will come through that!
Here in france, we have a website called On Va Sortir (We Are Going Out: http://paris.onvasortir.com) that allows people (mostly newcomers from the rest of the country) to schedule meetups.
It's a bit like meetup.com, just more local and tuned to french people.
Maybe Canada needs its own Meetup?
Come to Japan and hang out with me? :-) It's super tough making friends in new cultures and I'm working remotely so I don't meet anyone at work either. I think the key is that deep friendships take a long time to build. Also, because your personality is already mostly formed, it is hard to meet people that you fit with. When you are very young, it's easy to change yourself to fit the group of people you are with. My…
- Meet people through work. You have to kinda treat this a bit like dating, and make real effort - when you meet someone you get on with, you'll need to invite them for coffee etc. Do this sooner rather than later. Go to social events that are loosely related to your work. - Activity groups. Meetup.com, Couchsurfing, Nightclasses. Charities and volunteering. - Become a regular at a bar or a cafe. Go there frequently,…
To the first point, I think this might be controversial... but try to avoid people you work with directly. It seems like it's better at first glance - b/c you interact with them more - but the reality is there are whole layers of professionalism and competing interests between you and them which actually kinda preclude you from building a system of mutual trust. Maybe "trust" isn't quite the right word, but I'm strug…
Were you successful making such friendships earlier in life?
You don't have to be someone's soul mate in order to enjoy time with them. Those things will come naturally (Or not - but at least you did go out and socialize.)
New people find each other every day. They usually form around a certain common ground or interest, be it religious, Buddhist (1) or even Freemasons if religion is not your thing (2). Good luck. (1) http://www.buddhisttemple.ca (2) http://www.grandlodge.on.ca (Edit: deleted 'this will probably get down-voted part of comment)
Just so you know you, are being downvoted because you said "this will be downvoted," which is frowned upon. This community is actually quite sympathetic to buddhist ideas.
I wouldn't have any friends if it wasn't for football (Soccer). I am painfully shy, but through this shared team activity I've gained many people I know. So the first advice is hobbies. The second piece of advice is if you are anything like me, it's not necessarily a group of friends you are looking for - it's one or two deep friendships. Concentrate on a couple of key relationships and maybe more will come through t…
You have called out a desire to have more meaningful relationships, so I am not going to focus on meeting people, though the more people you meet the more you will find people with things in common.
Instead think about what makes deep connections? Shared experiences. Fellow feeling. Giving and accepting affection.
I am Australian and I am lucky enough to have moved to New York for work. I met some friends through Australian connections but the deepest connections I have made are through a random conversation at a networking event that led to some drinks, and then to an introduction to a group of like minded poets, artists and technologists.
But even then I felt on the outside.
The thing that changed that has been going to them for help with things in my life (support as I struggled with relationship trouble, homesickness, stress from work) as well as spending time in their company individually and as a group in both casual and more intense settings (camping). Part of the help I asked for I guess was their acceptance and approval of some poetry I was writing, which I performed for them. I guess that my thesis is shallow experiences make for shallow friendships and deep experiences (which by their nature require you to have your guard down) make deep friendships.
"Breaking into a clique" is a bad paradigm I think, you don't want to break in, you want to be brought in.
The only other thing I would say is seek people who are also seeking. They will be the ones who have arrived from elsewhere, the ones who are perhaps on the edges of the society that you are in. They want what you want.