If you don’t already, live in a place where there are lots of people like you. No, I don’t know how you’re supposed to get a job or housing there. I’m not here to solve everything for you.
Spending lots of time with the same people will strengthen your relationships with them, so if you keep running into that one coworker you hate, sorry, she’s your best friend now!
Be yourself, but more outgoing and less argumentative.
Get out of the house and participate in activities where you’ll meet like-minded people. For most people that means going to a rock-climbing class or signing up for a wine tasting. You don’t like those things? Well, do them anyway. All potential friends are into rock climbing.
For the love of god don’t tell anyone who you’re voting for.
The hardest thing about making friends as an adult is getting the confidence to start making plans. Ease into it by hacking into your potential friend’s Google calendar, so she’ll think you’ve just always had plans to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 on Thursday.
Nobody builds relationships with small talk. Don’t engage in it. Get personal. If they ask about the weather, respond with a story about how you were bullied in high school. If they ask where you grew up, go into intricate details about your dental work.
Straight up, say “I’ve decided you are my new best friend, and you get no say in the matter.” People respond to directness!
See if you do the same drugs. Do them together.
Work in the same industry, and remain forever anxious about whether you’re actually friends or whether this is just networking.
Some people have stretched their social bandwidth too far to make new friends. Take this very personally.
Up front, talk a lot about how you far prefer reading at home alone to socializing. This will make them feel special.
Tape about 20 balloons together into a human form. Cover with papier-mâché and wait until it dries. Paint with any flesh colored paint you desire, and apply makeup. Voilà, a new friend.
See if you do the same drugs. Do them together.
I think you’ve confused adulthood with college
So have most college students.
Thumbs upping this so hard
/works with college students
“Live in a place where there are lots of people like you.”
*moves into a cave full of stray cats* Done.
And you look so BEAUTIFUL in the cave!
I want to but I worry about Wi-Fi reception in the cave. Do you have any issues binge watching Kimmy Schmidt for the five hundredth time? (my benchmark for Wi-Fi success may differ from yours)
“Spending lots of time with the same people will strengthen your relationships with them, so if you keep running into that one coworker you hate, sorry, she’s your best friend now!”
Uuuuugh, I knew Courtney from Construction would figure out a way to invite me to her wedding.
“See if you do the same drugs. Do them together.”
Is this… not how you’re supposed to do it?
It… worked for me, and now we do less/no drugs but are still friends. But now we all have kids so that’s a common denominator?
OK, here’s my tried-tested-and-true guide to making friends:
1) go away to university in a big city. no one in your small town will ever really like you
2) can’t make friends, too insecure
3) discover ecstasy, do it on weekends. make friends who somehow still like you when you get together just to drink on Wednesdays.
4) do less and less ecstasy because ow, your feet are flat and hurting, jesus you’re still exhausted three days later – sitting around smoking weed is still fun.
5) maybe just drinks, something happened and if I get stoned I can’t get dressed.
6) hey guess what, we’re having a baby
7) you’re pregnant too, amazing!
8) hey you, welcome to the club – they’ll each be like a year apart, that’s great, they can be a little gang!
9) oh man, yet more friends with babies – I mean I guess I expect it from the straights but did we give the queers the idea?
10) THE BOWL SET WAY BACK FROM THE COUNTER IS THE ADULT PUNCH, I REPEAT IT IS ADULT PUNCH, AKA SANGRIA, DO NOT GIVE IT TO THE CHILDREN. There’s apple juice in the fridge.
the only downside that I know of is when you are suddenly forced to interact with That Friend sober.
As my username might betray, my drug of choice is mushrooms, so this does not present a problem for me! Trip reports are always fun
I could imagine doing mushrooms sometime again, especially if by then they’ve found a cure for the gut rot. (I also get gut rot if I drink more than two cups of coffee though.)
Take a light dose, make it into tea and have something like soup to eat afterwards. Still might get nausea from the hallucinations though, sometimes I get all spinny and have to puke anyways.
I honestly would have thought that trip reports are like dream reports – interesting to you, and boring AF to anyone else. Good to know this is not the case!
Some people have stretched their social bandwidth too far to make new friends. Take this very personally.
Complain to mutual acquaintances about this person’s lack of bandwidth. They will find this endearing.
Be yourself, but more outgoing and less argumentative.
That’s the entire opposite of my personality, though!
My plan is usually:
Join in on group events. Realize 20 minutes into said event that you don’t want to be there. Ignore all conversation as you try to think of a way to escape. Make half-assed excuse and leave. Three weeks later try to get invited to another group event. Rinse, wash, repeat.
This is the actual advice I received from my thesis advisor before my very first job interview
I’ve learned that the solution is not “be less argumentative” but “smile more when arguing.” People then (mistakenly) think I am being witty instead of difficult. I can’t do it for more than about 5 minutes a day, though, so it has to be carefully rationed.
IT ME
Yes, this works for me too
Talk less, smile more
I am a terrible person and I have discovered within myself a talent for insulting people to their faces and making it look like a joke, because it’s something so awful no one would ever SAY that. Dear god. It took a lot of work to finesse and perfect it, though — and that’s how I learned the art of making a sincere apology and then Never Doing That Again To Or In Front Of The Apologized-To Person.
*hangs head in moderate shame*
This is amazing advice. If this works on me, you may have just changed my life right here.
I am going to start doing this at work so people stop sending me passive aggressive positivity meditations.
My plan re: social events is to bully myself into going, then panic, start drinking to calm myself down, realise too late that my anxiety is larger than my tolerance for alcohol, and just hope I don’t end up twining plastic animal figurines into random mens’ beards, hiding in long grass from the rest of the party, or lying in any mud puddles.
Come to my house please – we have the beards, the plastic animals and deeply nerdy discussions that last until 9:00pm when we all run out of social spoons simultaneously and go home. It lovely.
I’M IN!
Or at least in in spirit, unless by wild chance you live in the north of England?
See, Jewish young professionals events in my town of choice (because how else will I find a husband? Except all of these ones are no good).
“Talk less, smile more.”
“Work in the same industry, and remain forever anxious about whether you’re actually friends or whether this is just networking.”
Hello, my greatest fear. How unpleasant to see you.
THIS
i either have a LOT of friends or just one friend plus a substantial network
See also: making friends in grad school.
Be assured that that one time your comment got over 400 upvotes meant that all those people would absolutely be your friends if they ever met you IRL or knew your actual name.
I moved across the country and was like “hallo Toast friends, do you want to hang” and now I have IRL friends, so yes, it is absolutely true. A bunch of them still call me Robot though.
Your username alone creates confidence in me that I would totally be your IRL friend.
I mean, I say “my one friend said” instead of “somebody on the Toast said” in real-life conversations to avoid looking like I have no friends, so it sort of works? But yes, upvotes are a sign of true and lasting friendship.
I totally just own that the thing I am talking about came from the-Toast commentariat because this is clearly the most excellent collection of humans ever in existence. But I don’t care if the hosers i am talking to think I don’t have friends. I am not friends with THEM for a reason.
Yes, but sometimes I’m talking to Grownups at Church, and then I have to sidebar to explain what the Toast is, and then how internet comment sections work, and by then whatever amazing thing my Toast-friend has said just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.
Having just spent the weekend with my grandmother (who, having a facebook page, is remarkably Internet savvy) and my father’s siblings, I hear you. The struggle is real. *nods*
“So what’s it about?”
“Well, people post articles on lots of topics-“
“Like what?”
“Well, there’s stuff about feminism, and there was a hilarious series about Martin Luther, and there’s Children’s Stories Made Horrifying…”
“…my granddaughter’s always on Facebook.”
The Western Art series is a great way to lure unsuspecting people in.
“Oh it’s dogs I’d like to pet in Western art!”
Before you know it BAM – you’re balls deep in a feminist deconstruction of the ambivalence of Renaissance models to heterosexual mores…in Western art.
I had to explain the Western Art series this morning to my 17 year old just so I could reference the morning’s good jokes (“my lips only go this far” and “too witches”). I might have created a new reader.
A+ parenting.
I love it when people use the word “hoser.”
^_^ I thought about editing for that word, actually, wondering if ppl would know what hosers even are. But then I remembered that this is a website full of the best types of people who would do their research if they didn’t recognize it, and left it (read: was too lazy to make changes and now it is too late)
we know so much about americans, they can learn some stuff about us.
Best sentence of 2015: “It’s really hard to find someone who makes a good hoser touque these days”.
LOL
Raised in Northern California by parents so SCTV-focused I used to take out personal ads in the high school paper from Lola Heatherton to Bobby Bittman just to make them laugh. But I will own that beyond that, Geddy Lee and poutine I am pretty lost.
TOTALLY LEGITIMATE FRIEND STRATEGY
But if you are an introvert, don’t be surprised if you end up showing up for events with a bunch of other introverts, and then no one makes any new friends. I’m looking at you, Friends of the Symphony and various scholarly lecture series.
I know, I know, people told me I should join the kickball team instead. Squirm.
Wait, people join kickball teams? I thought you just had to stand around awkwardly until somebody grudgingly picked you.
“If we have to pick askelade, can she just stand there to the side and never take a turn?”
Nooooo I never heard THAT before
I liked kickball because I was marginally better at it than other sports, so sometimes I got picked not-last.
Uuuuuugh; I actually joined the softball team once, and it turns out you don’t make that many friends on your team after the other teams figure out that if they can hit to right field, you will NEVER catch the ball EVER, and after you chase it down, you cannot throw far enough to get it back to the infield.
Do not recommend joining The Sportsball for people who are not Sportsballers.
IT ME.
oh noooo can’t I join a sport where I can suck at it and people will still like me
Badminton. Just stay away from the people who bring their own racquets and play with the folks who use the rec league’s loaners.
I’ve tried dodgeball. The plus side is no one can tell if you’re any good because they are all too busy getting hit with balls to see what you are doing. The minus side is that you will get hit with balls too (sometimes very hard).
“Straight up, say “I’ve decided you are my new best friend, and you get no say in the matter.” People respond to directness!” This is how I have made all of my friends, and it mostly works quite well.
this is literally how I made my first friend at college. 6 years later and still friends!
My first college boyfriend essentially did this to woo me. Worked, though not for as long as he’d hoped.
I did this as an 11-year-old in a chatroom and she’s still my best friend.
(Also, I know she reads Toast comments. HI NS!)
Is this not how we’re supposed to make friends?? Because it’s worked pretty well for me too.
My bestie did this. I… thought she was crazy and weird and invited her to a movie anyway because, i thought, if she was crazy i could determine this early and avoid her.
She was right.
I maintain that you need a good radar to be able to do this. It is important to have trained in the trenches of social groups filled with people with whom you do NOT wish to be friends so that, within half an hour/two classes you can pick out exactly who you want to be friends with AND THEN GO FORTH AND MAKE THAT HAPPEN BECAUSE YOU MAY NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE AND EVERYONE ELSE IS AWFUL. The fact that they think you are crazy makes being right all the sweeter.
I’ve done this many times and it always seems to work well
It works on me – I’ve been told I’m someone’s new best friend repeatedly & I’m always, “okay!” – but I can’t imagine doing it myself. It impresses me how many people here are capable of this play.
I have to say, I have only gone down the “best friend” route once (we are, admittedly, now very close). Mostly I just say “You seem great! We have many similar interests! Let’s be friends!” in the sort of cheery voice that hides my deep interior insecurity and terror.
Me too! Like, one of my dear friends and my sister have both described doing this before. And I just cannot imagine it! How does that work, even? How do you not immediately get turned down and then explode into a firey (sp?) ball of embarrassment?
Somebody knows something I don’t, I think, about this.
I did this once and the person turned out to be a sociopath and now she is one of very few people in this world that I actively wish for bad things to happen to, so. Be careful!
When I tried it, it went well… Until my friend’s wife freaked out at her for cheating on her w/ Internet people, and some other things made it clear that we had very different ethics. It was almost a relief when she stopped talking to me, since then I didn’t have to be the ghoster.
However I hope that this was purely a fluke and not a common result, because using my words is the only way we of the flat affect can show social interest.
I wish someone would do this to me!
I’ve done this three times over the years, ending up with one best friend, one husband, and one friend I still stay in touch with after twenty years.
I’ve been known to say “I’m not always good at the stuff that happens between small talk and being friends, but can we be friends?” IT WORKS. Every time!
This is how I have made all my friends in the past, except that they were the direct ones and I the passive friendship recipient. Finding the tables turned and being in charge of choosing my own friends is daunting, indeed.
The reason I am friends with one of my best friends is that my other best friend did this to her in kindergarten A+ 23 year friendships.
People genuinely like feeling chosen and wanted. This would totally work on me.
“Be yourself, but more outgoing and less argumentative.”
okay but aren’t they the same thing, my brain seems to think they’re the same thing
They’re the same thing only in the presence of wrong people. I’ve found that I can be incredibly outgoing, but not very argumentative at all, in carefully-screened groups of people who avoid saying stupid or incorrect things.
Where do you find such groups????
More important: where can **I** find such groups???
Well, I’m very fortunate in that I find them at church, and the groups are self-policing enough that we can reliably take turns calling out new people on being wrong about stuff (“ok, so you’ve explained why you wouldn’t vote for Marco Rubio, but how does that make voting for Donald Trump a reasonable life choice, foreigner who can’t vote in America anyway?”). I have no suggestions for how to find them without going to my church, though. :/
~I~ prefer my balloon women without all that ~unnatural~ makeup.
i mean just enough so they don’t look too tired
ahahahahahahaha. Too Real.
And why do balloon women dress so slooty these days…
Helium harlots!
this is hilarious (but it also reminds me that there are people in the world who legitimately have balloon fetishes, and there’s a divide in that community between the poppers and the non-poppers and it’s ok, everyone has their thing, they can do them.)
This was not a thing that I knew before! And for some reason I find your wording incredibly hilarious.
Wow. I honestly didn’t think that this was a thing I would learn today. ty.
Work in the same industry, and remain forever anxious about whether you’re actually friends or whether this is just networking. oh god this
I make snide comments. “we’re not really friends. We don’t, like, hangout. We just go for coffee at work”.
Maybe there is a reason i do badly making friends at work.
“I don’t hang out with work people,” I recently said to someone who happens to be both my boss (for the last ten years) and one of my bestest friends ever (for the last eight). Then I had to explain that obviously, she’s not “work people.”
A. This is hilarious and I love it with all of my heartmeat.
B. I have never before heard of “social bandwidth” but holy crap the instant that phrase passed through my brain it snapped perfectly into place. “It’s not that I’m TIRED of my friends, it’s that I have used a lot of data in a short period of time and now my provider is throttling my download speeds.”
I love the word “heartmeat” and will be using it at the earliest and every opportunity.
WHY IS THIS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE HEARD THIS WORD.
“I’ve been torrenting witty small talk for the last hour, and have no bandwidth to spare for this amusing cat video, I’m sorry.”
Got your priorities mixed up, there.
Way harsh, Jaya. *lies down on floor and sighs*
“If you don’t already, live in a place where there are lots of people like you. No, I don’t know how you’re supposed to get a job or housing there. I’m not here to solve everything for you.”
This is the truest of truths, but also: “Just go out and make friends. You need to hang out with young people your own age. Just go do it!”
can I lie down near you? better than sobbing into my pillow!
*scoots over* Welcome aboard! I cannot guarantee my pillows are tear-free, either.
I’ll bring the fuzzy blankie if I can lie down with you.
Cuppa tea?
Pretty sure this is how my brother & everyone else who moved to Oregon as an adult get along.
Speaking as a Portlander…..um. A lot of people have done that. Nearly all of my friends are recent (as in the last ten years) transplants.
Other than a brief period when I was able to attend anime cons and kept getting kidnapped by rich college kids, this is my entire life.
Hate the same things.
95% guarantee of friendship.
True. My most enduring friendships were formed over our intense hatred of all other people.
Exception that proves the rule: I have a work friend who told me she’d like to be an outside-of-work-friend. We bonded over how much our jobs suck and the incompetence of all our coworkers, but now that I’m auditioning her for doing “friend” things IRL, literally all she wants to do is complain about work and it’s exhausting. I don’t think she wants a friend; she wants someone to complain to who will agree with her and nod empathetically.
“Up front, talk a lot about how you far prefer reading at home alone to socializing. This will make them feel special.” This is ever self-congratulatory queer woman and alterna-dude on a first date hehe.
Like and comment on one another’s witty Facebook statuses until one day you muster the courage to send a direct message asking if they want to get coffee sometime, die forever when they don’t respond. Extra points if your message includes the phrase “We should be friends!”
Just maybe don’t tell them that you have a crush on them. Wait until after a few years of liking witty Facebook statuses and several awkward attempts at coffee plans.
Then, when you have finally have plans to meet (on Valentine’s day), then you tell them.
There are like a couple people on Twitter I would love to meet IRL but afraid I would come across as the most stalker weirdo if I asked.
There should be an opt-in system, like a pink flag if you’re amenable to getting coffee with random Toast strangers.
Yes please thank you I am amenable to getting coffee with random Toast strangers.
Me too!
I am trying to write this direct message literally right now and it is killing me. WHAT IF SHE SAYS NO. WHAT IF SHE SAYS NOTHING.
YUP, IT ME.
This definitely also applies 100% to dating. I’m convinced everyone’s lying about all the things they do.
At least, that’s what I tell myself when I start to worry that people will start dating me only to realize I’m a lazy loser who doesn’t do anything.
I….. how do you get dates??? I’m 25 I’ve been on a grand total of two ever and one of those was to see Transformers
Well, I’m on OKCupid but to be honest I don’t go on many dates either. I just read people’s profiles and don’t message anyone.
So really my worry was more of a “worry in theory.”
It just seems like a weird concept, like an interview but for the mating process
Everyone on every online dating platform has gone climbing exactly once, had a picture taken doing it, and is coasting on that. This is what I believe.
Which means that you can list anything you have ever done as a hobby. This will not solve the problem of reading people’s profiles and not messaging them; that is also all I do.
Did . . . did you just diagnose my basic problem with online dating? I’m not wiling to lie enough?
Maybe. But full disclosure I also have not yet lied enough on OKC so I can’t confirm if doing so would actually get me dates. But it sounds legit in theory…
Plunge deftly into new associations thinking naively that none of these fellow adults could possibly care about being “cool” and will relate to your open awkwardness because we’re all awkward inside and who has time for cool?
This failed me every time until I starting meeting Toast persons irl. Love you guyyyys.
It meeeee
I so wrongly, stupidly thought that everyone else was awkward and okay with admitting their awkwardness too.
Me: “everyone prefers granny panties and pajamas with dogs on them just like i do, social anxiety amirite guys”
Other people: “…” “…” “…no…”
OMG my favorite pair of pajama pants have dogs all over them.
Also panties should be comfortable!
Go team ::waves banner::
SOCIAL ANXIETY AMIRITE GUYS?
I’m dying.
yes.
this is all my adult friendship attempts. I didn’t know it didn’t work until I started getting weird looks when I would say, “you know how it is,” and they’d lean back and be like “…..no?”
and then I started going to a church where counselors and honest cool people were, and I said, “yeah I took a test and got diagnosed with social anxiety” and she did a little shriek and went “me too!!” and called another girl over and we had a social anxiety party and it was the best.
My pajamas have bicycles.
The rest are mostly old-lady nighties. COMFY.
My friend has th BEST pajama pants, they are covered in uncomfortably close up photos of a staring Persian cat, all tinted pink except for the hellish black depths of its eyes
Her dad thought they were cute
Toast persons exist irl?
How intriguing.
I’m very glad you warned me that this doesn’t always work before I tried it with a new group of people, because I have had excellent success with this in the past.
This has worked for me with most queers irl! We’re all strange awkward people, except for the Shane lesbians
If a thing you like to do is bowling, do not attempt to make friends by joining a bowling league. You will only meet middle-aged men and a couple in a volatile relationship that will invite you to a threesome.
O_o
Bowling is really fun, tho.
Oh totally! I don’t regret the bowling leagues I was in. But it did not result in any outside-of-bowling friendships 🙂
Is it exactly like The Big Lebowski? Because that would be both my secret hope and worst fear.
Sadly, no. More like a bunch of small-town Republicans :/
I find it easy to make friends as an adult cause I read studies about what happens to men as they age and they basically become friendless isolated weridos who die alone cause they where never expected to do any emotional labor so NOW IM A HUMAN PUPPY DOG LETS BE FRIENDS EVERYONE I DONT WANT TO DIE
To be fair, there are advantages to being a human puppy dog. Training your loved ones to accept random growling and barking sounds comes in handy when you’re having a meltdown and you’re too busy flapping your hands to words.
Or, um, they get in the habit of saying “use your words” while petting your hair, like my partner has.
Ahahahahahaha, GenltemanX just last night had to remind me to use my words. It is nice to not be alone.
Every partner I’ve had has at some point shouted ‘I’m not a horse!’ At me.
Like it’s my fault that non verbal communication is quicker and easier for me. It’s not my fault they can’t read body language. If you’re in my way in the kitchen I’m gonna hip check you and if you don’t move you’re getting an elbow poke and a cluck.
Yeah this is 100% accurate.
Being isolated and alone makes you weird, and people don’t want to be friends with a weirdo, so I’m using the last of my life energy to pretend to be a normal human.
Ok it’s gone
Well, not everyone wants to be friends with the weirdos. But I’m all over here giving the side-eye to the normies, so, you know.
Girl who consistently scares away men with her weird personality here. I don’t have the energy to fake normalcy on dates.
I met a guy once who was very much a human puppy dog. We waited tables at a fancy restaurant together and after a shift he apologized for potentially being very aloof and said it was because he struggled with reading social cues. And when I asked if he didn’t like being around people he said it was actually the opposite. Basically this kid goes through life just wanting to hug people all the time but knows that it’s not really socially acceptable, so tries to just modify his behavior into aloofness. So I told him that he could hug me and it was a very nice hug. I do not know where Human Puppy is now, but I wish him very well!
“this kid goes through life just wanting to hug people all the time but knows that it’s not really socially acceptable, so tries to just modify his behavior into aloofness”
it me. 🙁
I actually just today had an extended moment like this with my bestie, because all I wanted was to sit down on a park bench and rest my head on her shoulder for a while and my lizard brain said, No, You Can’t; That Would Be Really Weird. Instead I went aloof and no eye contact. *sigh*
Thewhelk! Nice to see you away from the metafilters.
Make friends online. Make them all over the country. Tell them your deepest secrets. You’ve never actually touched them, but they know your preferred tampon. Realize it’s been eight years of talking to these people daily. Decide they’re actually friends not just “internet friends”. Eventually pass through each other’s cities. Meet in person, gossip about fellow internet friends and weird Tumblr drama. Send each other pizza and baby clothes as needed. Repeat.
It me
(except powerlifting gossip instead of tumblr.)
This is actually an excellent way to make some damn fine friends. Just be prepared with some money in a travel savings account, man.
This is how I’ve made all my friends!
I literally spent all last weekend drinking and talking and dancing and shrieking with my Nerd Friends from the Internet–I was at a fan-run Sherlock con called 221b con for the third year in a row. BEST.
I’m going to Emerald City Comic Con this weekend and meeting up with multiple internet friends! One of which I’ve yes, known for eight years.
There was one shining moment when I saw this on facebook and hoped it might be actual advice.
*sobs*
“Be yourself, but more outgoing and less argumentative.” is honestly actual advice if you’re me. Unfortunately, I can be either leas argumentatice OR more outgoing but not both at once.
‘Find more of your friends on Facebook’
*hugs* I know. So far I kind of mother new girls at work until they think we’re friends. So far this has worked 2/2 times, so I have to recommend it.
Go to the bar and get drunk. Start talking to random strangers and the bartender. Forget their names when you see them next week. Eventually you’ll be best friends and joke about how you could never remember their name.
Get a crap job. Hate everything about said job except one other human. Leave crap job and keep said human. Convene every now and then to bitch about how “the only good thing about that job was you”. Add wine and stir.
This is my strategy. It works.
“Get out of the house and participate in activities where you’ll meet like-minded people. For most people that means going to a rock-climbing class or signing up for a wine tasting. You don’t like those things? Well, do them anyway. All potential friends are into rock climbing.”
This is so freakishly close to advice I have gotten from actual therapists. Also, they don’t listen to me when I reiterate that no one under 60 is part of book groups or knitting groups or whatever at the public library. (Not to mention, not at times when working people can actually go anyway.)
I should add here I don’t live in a big city; options are more limited in general.
My favorite part about rock-climbing and wine tasting classes (both of which I’ve done) is that they’re 99 percent couples doing couple things, and you’re the odd one out who has to interrupt some couple’s Date Night to ask if you can get a belay.
Maybe you are supposed to be bouldering? I understand that this does not require belaying? (I know v. little about rock climbing I went once and was like “yup, still terrified of heights”.)
oh that sounds like fun.
hey, at least you’ll get a chapter in your memoir out of it, right? (my default “this situation is so embarrassing and can i not be here and instead be ANYWHERE else?” saying.)
I joined a rock climbing club in college and it was all couples except this girl who greeted me with ‘most people belay members of the opposite sex because it’s a good view of their butts’
No one will join the knitting groups I start. It is saddening.
Where is it? I’m looking t join one, to lazy to start one of my own…
This is my problem too! So far I’ve joined two book clubs, a knitting group, and a choir and I am the only person under 60 in any of them, let alone under 30.
I’ve met some very nice people, but I doubt I’m going to find a punk rock concert buddy in the retiree age set.
That also is why none of my efforts to find friends by joining groups that like to do things I like to do have resulted in me getting laid.
I swear I was once given a solo in my old (in both senses of the word) choir because I was the youngest person there by at least two decades and I think they were so happy that a ‘young person’ was there they were prepared to ignore the fact that I’m not that good at singing.
Also I feel you on the lack of punk rock concert buddies, I have somehow managed to only make friends with people who like radically different music to me.
I love my choirs, but they do tend to skew older. We’re getting more of a mix over time, but often the younger singers find jobs elsewhere and move, or simply self-select out into a group they feel more comfortable in.
On the other hand, as cohorts age, punk rock concert buddies in the retiree age set will become more common, although concerts may have to begin and end sooner to accommodate sleeping patterns. (This is a real thing. I, an unregenerate owl for all my previous life, have slipped effortlessly into the lark lifestyle as I near fifty. it is very weird.)
Wow, I suddenly feel really fortunate in my smallish town–there’s a nice age range in the library’s drop-in knit and crochet group on Sunday afternoons, and while it’s not going to be a source of much connection outside the group I really like everyone I’ve met there. Same for the other events I’ve attended–definitely not dominated by the over-60 set.
Agree, everyone is decades older or everyone is female.
Date someone who is more outgoing than you are, and just hitch yourself to their social circle.
Or at least that’s my method. So far it’s worked out, but we haven’t broken up yet, soooooooooo…..
Alternative: force your introvert boyfriend to just join a band already, literally any band, because by being in literally any band you can meet Other Band People and then you will meet Cool Band People and you can cannabalize his bands and their SOs for friends.
NB: You will also meet a lot of meatheads using this method, so you will have to be very choosy about which ones are given friend status. The ones who refuse your home grown strawberries because they are not made of animal flesh? Those ones are not given friend status. The ones who remember that your erstwhile roomie uses gender neutral pronouns and 6 months later employs them like it ain’t no thing? Those people get let in.
Replace date with marry and this is me.
It’s kinda perfect, because I’m not *obligated* to spend lots of time with them cause they technically belong to my spouse, but they are always around when I feel like being social/hosting a dinner party/going bowling/whatever.
I had a friend once.
We would lay on the floor on the white carpet in the sunbeam.
He was a cat.
So much depends
on the sunbeam on the white carpet
next to the cat
Poetic.
“All potential friends are into rock climbing.”
I have long suspected this…
For some reason, this popped out to me as the truest part of the whole text.
Frequent local drinking establishments. Sit around in semidarkness nursing your drink while you imagine what people nearby may be saying if you could hear them over the music. You may choose to occasionally voice a contribution by screaming as loudly as you can.
I guess?
“Stalk them in Toast comments for a while, then realize they live near you and ask them if they will teach you to lift” worked pretty well for me, I recommend it.
Ok but honestly I’m just about at that balloon person stage.
I made friends with a some rock climbers outside of a rock climbing situation, and they’re much easier to talk to when not halfway up a sweaty knobble wall or giving themselves groin strain
With every person into rock climbing I have met/associated with, all they talk about is rock climbing, even outside of rock climbing situations. It gets dull when you are not also into rock climbing.
I have enjoyed rock climbing in the past, but I really don’t feel the need to be part of climber culture. It’s pretty single-minded.
I’ve been having a hard time striking up a conversation with my balloon homunculus. There is literally no hope.
Channel your loneliness into joining a lot of nostalgic pen pal organizations…
Tape about 20 balloons together into a human form. Cover with papier-mâché and wait until it dries. Paint with any flesh colored paint you desire, and apply makeup. Voilà, a new friend.
Definitely the best option here.
If you have any tendencies towards introversion, never live with someone you are very fond of. You will never go out again.
As a child and teenager, I had no motivation to go out and socialise because I had siblings I was very close to (stupid triplet bond). I got together with my boyfriend at university and we now live together; my social life is basically non-existent because why bother when going out is exhausting and I have a nice, equally introverted person at home who’ll watch Netflix with me? Sometimes I panic thinking about how utterly screwed I will be if we break up or he dies.
Yup. I’ve stayed in more than one failed relationship just because it was easier than trying to find someone else to hang out with.
It me. I love my husband and his existence provides enough of a social life for me 90% of the time, but if he were to die or run off with his personal trainer or something I would be 100% alone. I would love to have 1-2 other friends, but I’m not very friendly and I use all my social energy being at work. Bah.
Straight up, say “I’ve decided you are my new best friend, and you get no say in the matter.” People respond to directness!
This is how I’ve made most of my best friends…seriously
I followed one of my best friends to Fairway after rehearsal and was like sorry, I’m just aggressively friendly.
Living a block apart is the greatest.
“If they ask where you grew up, go into intricate details about your dental work.”
Did this, now I have many new friends, but I hate them all, please help.
It took me so long to realise this was a joke.
(Is this a joke?)
Oh, late entry but: I met my current best friend because I was at a free lunch thing (Food not Bombs except not that group), they were serving and they pointed at me from across the room and yelled “I know you from tumblr!” and hugged me.
Wait for all your current friends to marry lovely people. Simultaneous advantages of having awesome new friends and being constantly reminded of the beautiful healthy relationship you have never had.
I’ve actually met people through mutual interests, but I am also really really outgoing??
Like bike rides that were also parties–a huge part of my IRL social circle is people I met on bike rides; both the kind where we stopped and looked at heritage trees/interesting architecture/spots related to local history, and the kind where people had loud music and everyone was drinking and/or in costume. (Ah, Portland.)
One of my other IRL friend circles I made through going to a weekly Doctor Who trivia night that no longer exists. Also where I met my boyfriend.
Wait, that one in the Tardis Room on Killingsworth?
Yyyyyyup. But we stopped going almost two years ago. One of the friends I met there had started dating the dude who did the questions every week, and after nearly a year broke up with him and told us he’d been an abusive dick the whole time. He always gave off an icky vibe (blaming everyone but himself for his problems, that kind of thing) but I’d figured I’d read him wrong; nope.
(Considering how often I’ve seen it happen, where a friend says “yo my ex was abusive” and everyone does the whole “oh, I don’t want to take sides/cause drama” bullshit, seeing everyone in that circle of friends go “that’s awful, fuck that guy, we’re never going back, are you okay? what do you need???” was kind of nice.)
Ew, I just know it exists because my partner and I went there occasionally for a drink. We had fun a couple of times eavesdropping on the Dr Who trivia game. Sorry the guy that runs it is a jerk…
IN ANY CASE I don’t even know if it’s going on anymore. But the food there was always ….not great (especially as I’m a vegetarian and it’s all fried in lard) and the service was slow and the guy who owns the place is a dick to his employees. It makes me mad to know that our one real “geek bar” in a city with a hell of a lot of geeks is so awful. (I mean, I guess we have Ground Kontrol, and the new place with pinball machines and stuff, but it’s not the same as a place with bathrooms decorated like tardises.)
ALSO pardon me if I’ve already met you or asked you, but did you know there’s a pdx toasties group on facebook? There’s not a lot of activity right now, but we had a meetup in March that went well.
I will look for that FB group. Thanks!
My new year’s resolution this year was quite literally – make a new adult friend, by being yourself but more outgoing and less argumentative.
I’ve had very positive feedback from my existing friends on my new ‘debating’ skills – recently managed to convince a friend’s boyfriend that rape culture is a thing … the last time I’d had that conversation at a dinner party it ended in yelling and me crying into my beef stew with disappointment… not my most successful social outing …
AND I joined a new book club – and didn’t hide in the toilets during the first session once!
Not actually made any new friends yet but it is only April…
As a person who is actually into rock climbing, I find that finding “hey, do you want to go climbing sometime?” buddies is one of the most fraught parts of finding friends in a new town.
You are cool. I want to spend time with you. You are terrified of heights. Ok, that’s fine.
(I am also terrified of heights.)
Guys, you just need to make one friend. Make sure that friend has lots of friends, and then attach yourself to their social group. Send group emails saying “Had so much fun with you guys!!!! When/where is the next dinner. Let’s all throw out some dates.”
This is my strategy. “Hey Friend are you doing something this weekend” and Friend says “Yes, five things.” And then tag along to, like, one of them because that’s all you can really handle, but you get to hang out casually with people with little effort.
Except, of course, Friend is moving to the other side of the country this fall. And we haven’t really moved beyond casually hanging out with a few of Friend’s friends when Friend invites us along. So that might be a wash.
Other option: Join the most manageable team sport you can. Identify one nerdy person. Ask nerdy person if they want to join your weekly games night. NEW NON-MEATHEAD FRIEND YAY.
“I already know an awful lot of people, so until one of them dies I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else.”
So, going to places, finding a corner, reading my book, hope someone cool who also knows how to read, says “hey whatcha reading?” and is actually a book person stops by to chat for a while, is a fond, faint, fading thought?
See if you do the same drugs. Do them together