31–40 of 48 posts
For people into music: Would you be interested in an app that lists music events in your area, where you can register yourself as going, and where people can apply to go with you? What do you think would work well? What do you think the pitfalls might be?
Honestly I have found it easy to make friends as an adult. Just need to go and do activities with other single adults and they are likely open to and have time to be friends beyond the meeting activity in my experience.
Such as?
It is really not that hard coming up with something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's advice to meet activity partners, not friends. Think of your closest friends. Did you set out to meet them by looking for people with their exact interests? Maybe you did and you and your friends are part of a scene, but I'd bet most people did not. On advice like yours, I started a niche club and ran it for 3 years. When people join your club, they're not there to meet you! They're joining to participate in t…
My closest friends came to be because I spent significant time around them. >The main catalyzer is something you do regularly with another person. The easiest thing to do that in an intentional way is to find regular activities and do them with other people. The activity is the excuse to be together for x amount of time every week, be it whatever. If you choose something you genuinely like, not only will your intent…
Any environment where you can meaningfully help each other: a group for new parents, a study group at school, joining a non-profit advisor board.
> Did you not make one single lasting connection (friendship) from that?
I made a lot of activity partners: people I could talk to about that topic, and maybe some adjacent topics, but who didn't have a lot of interest in making me a part of their life outside that general topic. They wouldn't join invitations for dinner, they wouldn't hang out outside the club's context, and they would eventually flake out.
I decided to put the goal of making friends on "Hard Mode." I quit drinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I created (well ... bought the domain) https://clubs.fyi to solve this problem for myself, after I moved to a new city and found myself with no friends for like the 4th time in my life[1]. And yes, the findings in TFA are true. The main catalyzer is something you do regularly with another person. That's it. It could be just sitting next to each other, but weekly. The best thing for this is joining a club, clubs happe…
That's advice to meet activity partners, not friends. Think of your closest friends. Did you set out to meet them by looking for people with their exact interests? Maybe you did and you and your friends are part of a scene, but I'd bet most people did not. On advice like yours, I started a niche club and ran it for 3 years. When people join your club, they're not there to meet you! They're joining to participate in t…
You start with setting specific relationships. Your gym buddies, your work buddies, that guy who's always at the bar you go to. For most people, their longest lived friendships started as school friends, or their parents' friends' kids. IMO, most people are able to figure this type of socializing out.
The next step up in familiarity involves building a relationship that is not fixed to a particular setting. You take a setting-specific friend, and invite them to something else. The easy way is the sort of thing where the place/timing is adjacent. You go, "Hey, gym-buddy, want to grab dinner after our workout? I've heard about this new Ethopian-Italian fusion place and I've been meaning to go". Once you reach that level of repoire, you start inviting them to things that are not immediately adjacent, like "yo, ACDC is going to be in town on the 20th, want to see 'em?". IMO, this is the step people fail at. They never make the step of inviting people to shit, and then end up with a bunch of work friends that they never see again after job hopping.
Then you make sure to see them in social settings at least every other month or so, and bam, friends. Then you start introducing your friends to each other, so that you end up nucleating a friend group. That makes it much easier to plan things, because you don't need to say "when is everyone free", you just make plans and some subset of people show up. Ideally you keep this up by establishing some sort of regular gathering, where inviting your other friends is encouraged. This lets you meet your friends' friends, which will expand your social life further. Sometimes multiple friend groups will merge, which again adds a bunch of people to your 1 degree and 2 degrees of removal set.
Beyond that basic process, the only key tips are 1) alcohol helps, there's a reason it's been the social lubricant of choice since the foundation of civilization. 2) It's okay that not everybody you ever interact with ends up a close friend. Knowing people helps you get to know more people. 3) Relationships are built on mutual utility. Most friendships exist because the people involved find spending time with the others more enjoyable than spending time alone. You can tip the scales in your favor on that by being enjoyable to spend time with. You tip the scales even further by being likely to say "yes" when invited to stuff. People don't like the feeling of being rejected, so someone who will routinely be down to hang when invited will get invited to hang a lot more than someone who is more picky. Don't agree to stuff where you'll be miserable, but if the options are a quiet night at home and a mediocre night of bowling with your friends, go with the bowling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's advice to meet activity partners, not friends. Think of your closest friends. Did you set out to meet them by looking for people with their exact interests? Maybe you did and you and your friends are part of a scene, but I'd bet most people did not. On advice like yours, I started a niche club and ran it for 3 years. When people join your club, they're not there to meet you! They're joining to participate in t…
A healthy social life consists of having people at various degrees of familiarity, who can move up and down closeness spectrum. You start with setting specific relationships. Your gym buddies, your work buddies, that guy who's always at the bar you go to. For most people, their longest lived friendships started as school friends, or their parents' friends' kids. IMO, most people are able to figure this type of social…
- Places you visit often might be fundamentally antisocial: e.g., a gym where everyone wears headphones.
- Tickets to popular events (AC/DC) are astronomically expensive and sell out long in advance.
- Inviting people who you don't know well to smaller, local, less spectacular events tends to bore people.
- If someone is your first local prospective friend, inviting them and only them out constantly can stress an already tenuous relationship.
- Introducing people to each other may reveal that they don't enjoy each other's company, so now they're both less interested in hanging out with your group.
- Your prospective friends might have no local friends of their own, so they depend on you disproportionately for all of their socializing.
- Your prospective friends might not drink alcohol or enjoy hanging out in bars, so hanging out at a bar no longer feels very inclusive.
- Some people have a tight budget and don't deal well with the perceived obligation to spend money when out with friends.
I think people should foster "regular things" in the tiny things in their life. Not huge group potlucks/etc. If you go to lunch with a friend, ask "would you like to do this regularly?" lunch/walk/hike/movie/dinner/gaming/sewing/driving/ weekly/every two weeks/every first saturday of the month don't worry about flakiness I've done this with a few people and my life has gotten better. at first it was a little awkward,…
Another is regular coffee + sports with a friend. We are slowly meeting and playing with the other regulars there and entering small tournaments.
Still, it does require worrying about flakiness. It’s hard to get something off the ground if you can’t get enough commitment to book a table or even put it in your calendar . At some point if people want to make friends they should act like they care.
It’s really frustrating that the person already making the effort to organise things should take on the emotional toll of making everyone else’s life as noncommittal as possible.
I'm 50, I have more real friends, every year of my life. Making new friends isn't hard, you just need to make it a priority, if you don't prioritize it then it won't happen. One of my old best friends from my 20's/30's only leaves the house to go to work, sits alone on social media circle jerk politics, never returns texts, the few times I've seen him he just complained about not having friends and it being everyone…
For people into music: Would you be interested in an app that lists music events in your area, where you can register yourself as going, and where people can apply to go with you? What do you think would work well? What do you think the pitfalls might be?
In my experience, it just takes initiative. Think of it this way, if most people want more friends, then the odds are in your favor. It just takes a little vulnerability to bridge the social gap and make connections.
It can be hard on you sometimes when you are trying your best.