How to make friends as an adult: ‘I struggled to meet people when I moved to a new town but these tips helped’

The importance of friendship is a long-standing theme in many films and TV shows. Everyone seems to have a wonderful friend who lives closeby, including people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. But not everyone has a wonderful friend nearby. In summer 2021, I moved to a new town and I didn’t know anyone locally. All of my friends were around an hour away and owing to differing schedules, I struggled to see them regularly and often spent evenings sitting alone. I was lonely and wanted to make new friends, but I didn’t know how. Having just bought a house I didn’t have the money for a gym membership or class fee, and honestly I didn’t want to take up a hobby either.

There are speed-mating events - speed dating for friends - which I wrote about for sister title The Star, Sheffield when I lived in the city, but I found no equivalent events in my smaller hometown. So, I had to get creative. Thankfully, dating app Bumble has now recognised the difficulty of finding friends in later life and has created a friendship section of their app. It works in exactly the same way as its dating counterpart; create a profile, swipe through other people’s profiles and when you both swipe right it’s a match and you can chat. This was fun, but I found that there weren’t many people who lived nearby. I wanted to find someone who was a short walk or car journey away so that I wouldn’t be limited by time constraints when meeting up.

Then a letter came through my door encouraging me to sign up to NextDoor, which is a UK-wide community app. It suddenly gave me a link to hundreds of people who lived in my area, so I felt hopeful. I published a post explaining I was new to the area, had no local friends and wanted to meet friends. Soon, 12 people had sent me private messages, all saying that they admired my bravery in putting the post out because they felt the same. I began conversations with each of them, and while the chat dropped off with some in time, I have met up with some in-person and have found a particularly strong friendship with one woman, who happily lives a half hour walk away.

I also looked for local groups on Facebook. I found one dedicated to vegetarian and vegan people in my area. So, as a veggie of over 20 years, I joined and published the same post there too. All friendships start because you find commonality with someone, I thought, so why couldn’t it be because of a plant-based diet? Again, I soon received a private message from another woman who, like me, is in her twenties and had recently moved into the town and didn’t know anyone. We met up after two weeks of chatting online and found we shared other interests too - and six months later we’re still discovering common ground.

I would urge anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation to be brave, be honest, be patient, and take chances. I know it’s extremely nerve-wracking but if you put yourself out there, and are also open to meeting people in unusual places, there are new friends to be found.