How to make friends as an adult, from someone who had to start over after leaving a bad religious situation in their 20s and has also worked from home for a decade:

1) Develop hobbies and interests. What do you like to do? Where are the communities of people who also like them?

2) Accept at the outset that most people you interact with probably won’t want to be your friend and it likely isn’t personal. Be mentally prepared for the average encounter to be in passing or as associates.

3) As someone who’s also lived in 4 different states, ask friends you already have if *they* have any friends or associates where you are now. If you like them, there’s a good possibility you’ll also like their friends.

4) Don’t underestimate or devalue online friendships. One of my best friends lives in England and I’ve seen her a total of three times, but we talk on FB literally everyday.

5) If it seems like there’s a chance for friendship *make time.* You have fewer incidental encounters with people in adulthood, so developing friendships takes a lot more cultivation. Show an overt interest in getting to know them better while also being respectful of their time.

This where the hobbies and interests bit becomes especially useful. Like comics? Is there a ComicCon happening one weekend y’all can meet up at? Into cheese? Is there a cheese festival or something going on?

Sometimes, that may look like showing an interest in their hobby that you have absolutely no use for. That’s fine because it’s a part of friendship too.

My adult friendships have happened organically, where I do all this and then one day, we’re just friends.

And I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that shift happened if I tried, but one day we weren’t friends and then another day sometime later we were. But I do know it wasn’t by accident.

As an aside, I’m not a person with a TON of friends. I have a few very close friendships with people I care about a LOT. But I don’t collect friends like Pokemon. You get to be discerning too.