Leverage Your Interests
Want to know where to go to meet new friends? Put your interests to work. Finding ways to actively participate in the things you’re already interested in makes it easier to find your people. If you’re a tabletop gamer, find a gaming group that needs someone new. Are you a reader? Join a book discussion club. If you’re into anime, find an anime club. Find MeetUp groups that are based around things you’re already into. Join an amateur kickball league. Take a class you’ve always been interested in. Not only will this give you a more active life, but it will also put you in contact with people with whom you already share commonalities. By having that immediate common ground, you neatly cut through the many differences that might mean you wouldn’t meet them or interact with them otherwise. You may be in different stages of your life, but you’re both taking part in this thing you both love… instant rapport building material.
“We like to get together, drink and bond over drawing smut!”
Remember those two times I mentioned making friends within an hour and change while standing in line? It’s no coincidence that both of those were at events for the Veronica Mars Kickstarter. We had immediate commonalities – being fans of Veronica Mars – which led to finding more commonalities like video games, Joss Whedon shows and making really inappropriate jokes out of just about anything.
Another benefit to finding new friends via your hobbies is that it makes you part of a community. Part of the reason why it was so much easier to make friends in school was that sense of shared identity – you’re all students together at the core, even if you subdivide into other cliques within that group. Being part of a new community helps trigger the pack-instincts that make us bond together; you’re no longer a “you”, you’re an “us”, which in turn makes others warm up to you faster.
And of course when you’re part of a group that meets regularly, it’s much easier to build that cumulative “getting to know you” time that helps you make the transition from “new guy” to “new friend”. It takes much less effort to bond with people you see on the regular, whether it’s weekly or monthly, than people you only see sporadically.
