3 Ways to Make New Friends as an Adult
One of the hardest parts of being an adult is making and maintaining friendships. If you’ve also moved around a lot like I have, there’s the additional challenge of having to build new social circles. In the past 10 years, I have moved 10 times across 3 different states and 5 cities. While this hasn’t always been easy, I feel fortunate that now I have wonderful friends all over the place.
Our most recent move was a couple years ago to Las Vegas. I had the benefit of knowing at least a couple of people who I was able to connect with. Over the past couple of years, I have continued to build my social circle here and wanted to share some tips on making new friends as an adult!
Connecting with Alumni Groups
This is a great way to meet new people because you at least have one thing in common – you all went to the same school and/or program. In my case, I reached out to my university and Teach for America alumni clubs and attended a few social events/mixers. This was actually how I got my first job in Las Vegas as well – someone I met at a brunch called me a few weeks later about a job opportunity.
Meetup and Facebook Groups
Another way to meet like-minded individuals is to search for interest-based social groups on websites like Meetup and Facebook. I searched for groups for all my interests: Harry Potter, hiking, pets, magic, happy hours, etc. I was able to find a few groups in my city, introduced myself on the group page, and interacted with others’ posts. Over time, I would end up friending a few people and talking with them on Facebook, sometimes meeting up for lunch or drinks. I also went to a few organized events.
HeyVina
HeyVina is basically Tinder but for finding female friends. I have to admit, the thought of using an app to find friends seemed a little silly at first. It also took some work- sometimes people wouldn’t respond or the conversations would die off. An additional challenge was finding other women who were at the same life stage as me – over the night club and party scene but not settled down with kids. I’m glad I stuck with this app though because I ended up making some really great friends this way.
I have to admit, if you’re an introvert like me, it can be daunting to take that first step and actually go to an event in person. The payoff is that you can end up meeting a lot of cool people who share similar interests. Once you know a few people, they will introduce you to people they know and so on.
What about you? What are some of the ways you’ve been able to start over somewhere new?
