How to Make Friends as an Adult?
This is a question I never, ever thought I’d be asking myself. But here we are. By nature, I am an outgoing and easy to get along with person, so building relationships comes very easy to me.
I spent the first 37.95 years of my life in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. My close circle of friends are lifelong people from my childhood throughout my teenage years. I worked at the same company for 15 years. On paper, I look like someone who hated change.
That all changed when my husband and I decided to move 1,500 miles across the country to Albuquerque, New Mexico at the end of the summer in 2021. He was offered a very important job that we knew would change his (our) life significantly in terms of work - life - fulfillment balance. I had changed companies and was working fully remote at the time, so we took a chance. We picked up (literally) and moved our little, safe life to the desert (more on that another time).
And that is how I found myself wondering how to make friends when you make such a significant life change. So the journey began and let me tell you, I can only imagine how insane I must have come across to people in my first few months of trying to meet people. On one hand, I do admire my ability to be so open to figuring out this strange new life but on the other hand I cringe when I think about how obnoxiously desperate I must have come across at times. For example, I think it was our second night in town and we went out for drinks (and after one too many) we were sitting next to a couple with a great dane and I love dogs so it was easy for me to start a conversation. By the end of the night I had exchanged phone numbers with this person. Literally just handed my phone number out like it was candy. After the hangover fog wore off the next day, I realized that she is someone I would never have probably hung out with had I not just been drunk and desperate (side note: she was very nice but aside from dogs we had nothing in common).
Situation after situation I found myself meeting people only to realize they were just passing through the city (the University of New Mexico has a lot of programs where people rotate in/out) or they were not a right fit. That is where Bumble Best Friends comes in! Someone had asked me if I had tried that out yet and I thought why not? I have nothing to lose.
Getting Started
As someone who works in a technology / product space I love the idea of using technology to meet people - I just never had a use for it since I met my husband prior to the popularity of using online dating apps.
I LOVED making my profile and just the idea of swiping and meeting people with the same interests as me was exciting.
Picture of Author’s Bumble Best Friend’s Profile Picture
My First Match <3
My very first match was probably freaked the &%^* out when they read my overly excited/aggressive message about matching with them. I said something along the lines “OMG! I am so excited to have matched with you!!!!” I realize now, that is a little odd. Ok, very odd. So, I had a bit of a learning curve on how to appropriately use a matching app, no biggie!
My Learnings….
In my experience, there are three types of people on Bumble BF (and I’m sure all with good intentions) but either people did one of the following:
Ghosted me. I would initiate a conversation to hear nothing back. Ok, cool. Like, what’s the point of even swiping on me if you’re not actually going to talk to me?
Only wanted to be message buddies. It seems like this was a more common category of people who just message and message and message with no real intent of connecting in real life. Again, that’s fine, but just not what I was looking for.
Flakey McFlakersons. I had several people make plans just to cancel at the last minute. I know Covid has been weird to us all and I think it’s intimidating to put yourself out there but again, I am not sure what the point is of going through motions just to not really get together? I also understand things happen (work runs late, etc.) so there are times this is unavoidable but these cancellations in particular never reached back out later or attempted another get together.
Did Bumble BF work for me?
I would say yes. However, what I would have changed were my expectations. I went into this ‘experiment’ just assuming I would make friends easily and life would go on as normal. It took a lot of matching, messaging and being picky in order to find the right people. But I have a small handful of new gal pals and that is what I set out to do using the app.
Would I recommend Bumble BF?
I would recommend it. Like anything, it’s not perfect, but patience and knowing what you want will definitely go a long way with something like this.
All it takes is a pinch of hustle.
Sarah