In our current day and age, it’s rather hard to meet new people and make new friends, particularly for those of us who do not participate in mainstream social media. So, how and where do you meet new people? Feel free to add some context around that.
Honestly, besides family, everyone I know outside of work, including my partner, came through sobriety-related meetings.
Outside of that resource (and assuming I was normal and not drinking myself to death), I’d say I would need to be volunteering or involved in some cooperative activity.
The friends don’t come from the activity, either. Not in sobriety, nor otherwise. The friends come from showing up early and staying late. The people of character are going to be the ones keeping the activity happening for everyone else.
Volunteering
My go-to when I move is to check out board game shops. Generally you meet some pretty great people there. You can also check out “makerspaces” and art galleries if you’re interested in crafts.
Mostly what’s important is to make the location do some of the filtering for you. Bars aren’t great because they cast too wide a net. Think about what niches interest you and try to find a group that’s based around it.
Clubs and volunteering. Even at a homeless shelter or similar.
Volunteering is especially powerful because you are implicitly “supposed” to be there. Your presence is already explained and accepted, due to the service mission of the volunteer organization.
Therefore you have already achieved the first step of building friendships: shared experience, and shared time spent. Now that those are established you can step out beyond that to get drinks or pursue a then discovered shared hobby, like cycling or hiking or gaming whatever.
I made some friends through Meetup when it was a more popular website. I think it might still be around. I went to some board game and rpg meetups.
One of my friends met a lot of her friends through the local music scene. Go to shows, talk to people.
Local meetups are great, I met some of my best friends through attending some tech related meetups, and then ended up getting a job through a connection made through running our own meetup / tech club for a couple years and meeting new people who showed up.
Local makerspaces and startup groups are also great if that’s your crowd.
Gaming usually.
Late to this thread, but wanted to add to it:
Going out, and going out regularly. Go to places you enjoy, partake in activities that interest you, be consistent about it, and you will meet people. It can be as little as going to the same mom and pop shop every week for a sandwich or coffee, or as big as going out to some kind of club weekly. I actually made a few friends by going to this coffee shop pretty regularly, even hooked up with someone who worked there. Nearby to that same shop was a little occult shop that I liked to frequent and made acquaintances there as well. At one time I was involving myself in a HEMA club and that was super fun and you engaged with a lot of cool people.
Now with that said, there’s another part to this. In addition to putting yourself out there to be met, so to say, you also need to know how to converse and listen to other people. Frankly it doesn’t matter if you surround yourself with people, because if you are annoying or incapable of holding a conversation, or always come off too strongly, you’ll inevitably be ignored.
Find some groups on meetup.com and attend some. It isn’t that hard it just takes time. Don’t expect to go to 3 or 4 and become friends, depending on the size of the group you may only make friends with one sub group of the main group.
Seems like a neat page, particularly for US folks. Unfortunately it only showed online events in my country.
I have used it quite a bit in Australia and the Netherlands. Might just not be enough interesting in your area.
Through other friends and work
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Most of the people I’ve met recently have been via university or work. I’ve tried going to a board game club as well as taking dance lessons, but there don’t really seem to be many of people there my age. For context, I’m in my early twenties, living in northern Europe - and not particularly a fan of going to bars, parties or drinking.
Get a hobby and find places nearby where people who have that hobby meet and get together. Prime factor is genuine passion and interest on the hobby. You’ll meet tons of people who at least have that same interest than you, which sorts the first step towards friendship. Then as you get to know these people things will sort out by themselves. The second ingredient is to meet regularly and spend time with people.
I mentioned it in my initial reply, but it’s important to say that friends aren’t generally made during the activity itself. You’re going to make friends by helping set up, making sure the space is clean afterwards, etc. During a club meeting or volunteer time, you really only have time to focus on The Thing, not each other. The magic happens in the fifteen minutes before the event
Absolutely this!
My two closest friends were scenarios where I met them outside the activity. Usually walking to the car and noticing something to spark a convo, or someone making a recommendation for a “after-hours social event”.
Generalizing a bit here but you seem to dislike one of the bigger social evens that your age demographic enjoys. Maybe give bars a shot? Now I’m not saying you need to go clubbing, but there are many different varieties of bars. Scope out some quieter places that focus on more group activities. Places that will host a trivia night, or are a pool hall or something like that. My only other suggestion would be to focus on activities that are your interests/hobbies. If you don’t have any hobbies or interests that in social it might be time to get some new hobbies. Treat it like dating, if you have certain expectations of someone then you need to at least meet those expectations if not exceed them.
You should delete the first half of your response. OP said they don’t like bars, drinking or parties. Your advice should not be “well other people your age do so just do what they do.” They told you they weren’t into it, so listen to them.
And they also said that they are having trouble making friends, especially their age. So nah I’m not going to delete it. That’s my advice, if they don’t want to take it that’s fine, but there 0 reason to be so annoyed by my comment. If you have exhausted your options and nothings working, sometimes you may have to do things you might not want to.