It was so easy to make friends during my undergrad because I lived in the dorms. But I lost half of them due to a messy situation with my ex girlfriend, and the other half doesn’t live in town anymore.
Now I’m 22, working on my Master’s, and I feel like I have no one.
@yewler
I hope I’m no longer banned. (Hurray, I’m no longer banned from this place)
I’m looking at @StalinIsMaiWaifu as I was failing with 1, 3 and 4, although that was 20 years ago.
- It’s not about “talking to people”. I’m not good at that, so that didn’t work for me.
- The biggest win for me was joining the anime/game/book (all-rolled-into-one) club, as it was the ideal social setting for me.
- The people I ended up making friends with were those that just joined,
because those don’t have friends yet and once they do, they no longer look for new ones, just like you would.
You should look for those people in particular.
Those are the three best advices I could give you.
I play disc golf and my city has a weekly random doubles league which is more focused on making friends than competition. I joined a community organization to push our local officials to fix stuff. I also try to take art classes when possible. I’ve done all that stuff for a year now and still only really have acquaintances or distant friends, it will take time to figure out which ones I truly feel comfortable with and can confide in. For reference most people I see at these things are 30+, those folks are slower to warm up to each other since they usually have adult commitments. I did a lot of these same activities in my 20s too and you’re right it was easier to become close with people in a shorter timeframe than it is now.
Volunteer orgs and intramural sports
Outside of university I’m active in several groups related to activism and civil rights and have met a lot of people I’d consider to be genuine friends. It is also possible to make friends online if you know where to look. Could be possible to start a niche discord/revolt/matrix server related to something that interests you and try to make friends that way. I find that having 10-20 active users in a server is the golden number for making online friends.
At the risk of being a sour note in a thread of good advice: it gets worse, and worse, as you get older.
So when you act on the good advice in this thread, plan ahead as well: you’re creating the conditions for meeting new people when you act on the advice here, but maintain those conditions for as long as you can as well. Don’t let friendships ‘naturally’ wane. Keep them going.
