How to make friends

[Storm00]

So I am an adult now. I have always made friends rather easily at school and work. But I also lived in the same town my entire life. I moved to Asheville, NC for about a year made a few friends at work. But now I live in NYC. There are tons of people everywhere and they all seem to be having a good time with their pals

But how do you make friends? Other than spending 8+ hours a day with someone (work, school), how do you make friends to go and hang out with that is unrelated to your work?

I'm 26 years old, living in Manhattan. I have a husband and a cat. I did make one friend at my last job and we hang out on occasions. But I don't really know how to make friends with strangers. 

 

Any ideas or suggestions? 

[LordKronos87]

Following because I would also like to know.

[Machete]

^ Same. (For reference I'm in school, and we have one group work to be done this semester. It literally took me three weeks to nut-up and find myself a group.)

[Storm00]

I used to make friends pretty easily. Well I had a few friends growing up. But I've never had to "meet new people". Like you do as an adult. 

[Mekong]

Lifehacker has covered this subject a couple of times- here's a link to one of their articles http://lifehacker.com/why-its-so-hard-to-make-friends-after-college-and-wha-488975744- and here's what's worked for me (some reiterated in the article):

-Find things you're interested in and join groups.  I like Meetup a lot, but I've also taken classes lately and met a lot of people through those classes.  I took the classes because they were things I wanted to learn more about and because I was bored and wanted a little more structure towards advancing hobbies, but obviously there are other people in the classes and it's a perfect environment to build relationships.  You can pretty easily get through the awkward growing pains of starting conversations because you've already got a shared interest in the subject matter and slowly more socialness weaves it's way into the conversation and that makes it a lot easier to suggest a social thing with people you've already started to know.

-Find people that are also new in town.  They're going to be more amenable to making friends than people already established in their social groups because they've lived there for awhile.  Of course, length of residency isn't something I'd factor in to exclude potential friends or anything, but it might make sense to look at meetups for people new to the area also.

-Be extroverted. At least a tiny bit.  It's scary and vulnerable being outgoing and asking people if they want to do something, but most people aren't monsters and will be willing and kind.  When was the last time you met someone who asked if you'd ever wanted to go to a movie or something, and you screamed NO! in their face and ran away?  It feels weird to approach people to hang out or be open that you're new to the area and want to make friends, but I promise it'll almost always be kindly received and more fruitful than dropping a bunch of vague hints and hope the other person opens herself up to vulnerability and approaches you to hangout.

-Hang out with people even if you don't think you two will be BFFs.  I don't know about you, but a lot of my closest friends through life are people whom I've met through other friends.  You don't have to feel obligated to do everything always if you don't like it, but even okay relationships open you up to other opportunities you wouldn't otherwise get.  Maybe it turns out they're awesome at some specialized thing and your friend's company just so happens to need someone specializing in that thing, maybe they invite you to a pickleball game and you find out you're amazing at this game and start playing regularly, maybe you guys grab a movie a few times and don't really ever click and that's that.  You still got to see a movie.  A lot of people I've met in book club, sewing studio time, German class, at the dog park, etc, are what I call "contextual friends."  We talk  when we see each other and enjoy it, but the friendship never really develops past the confines of the dog park or whatever.  Still, I enjoy talking to them and enjoy the relationship for what it is.  It fulfills some of my social needs, the conversation still broadens my horizons occasionally, I sometimes meet other people through them, and sometimes down the road the contextual friendship finally clicks and you make that jump to real friend.

Hopefully that helps a little and it wasn't too rambling.  I'm actually going through this right now- after 5 years in a city I didn't love, I've finally really started getting involved in stuff and feeling like I belong.  And now I'm moving to a new town for my husband's job!  But this time I'm determined to do it right and hit the ground running.  I've already joined some meetup groups to get a feel for what's out there, started letting old high school and college friends I see on Facebook that now live in the area know that I'll be moving up, and anyone I talk to about moving, if they say, "Oh, my friend/niece/yogi just moved there" I tell them to pass along my information because I'd love to meet some people up there.  Most probably won't end up being my new bestie, but I find it's a wide enough net to get some good from it.  Good luck!