Making new friends as an adult, especially in a new city can be a herculean task. Factors like being anti social, introverted or extremely busy can contribute to making this a huge task. For most of our life growing up, it’s quite easy to have friends and get along with people. Meeting new friends back then was quite easy like admiring a girl in class for her hair style and becoming her friend with such gesture.
Back then, you have neighbors you spend all evenings with, classmates, people that attend same church as you, and even friends of friends. But with adulting comes a busy life and demanding schedule. You no longer have time for yourself during the weekday and you ensure to use your weekends for rest and chores.
More often than not, you’ve received several invitation to events, lunch dates and casual hangouts but when you look at your calendar, it has never fit. And then, you wonder how come you have no friends?
7 Tips To Making New Friends In a New City
1: Social Media
Making new friends via social media isn’t such a new gist, I believe. A lot of people have even connected with their soul mates through social media how much more making new friends. When I first started blogging, I didn’t start out as a style blogger but a writer. Eventually, I realized I love to wear clothes, style them and take pictures. The beauty of being a style blogger is your network, community and style appeal. I started geo-tagging my pictures on Instagram to include Abuja and also using abuja related hashtags.
It was only a matter of time before I started getting noticed by bloggers in Abuja as well as other residents who are non-bloggers. And it’s interesting to say I have made great acquaintances and friendship with most of them. Like Opeyemisdiary for instance is one of the most amazing acquaintance I have met on Instagram.
2. Attend Events in the New City
I can be the queen of canceling on events and spending the day lazying on my bed reading a book or watching a movie. I did this for the first few years of moving to Abuja and my best friends forever remained the characters in the books I read. Until I realized the importance of networking and building a community. I had first met PrincessAudu and Tonye at a blogger event sometimes in 2017 and afterwards, we’ve connected, collaborated and even gotten brand gig referrals through each other.
3. Attend Classes for Programs and Short Courses
Last year, I completed a training in Human Resources and became qualified as an Associate Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria. During the two years intense training for this program, we had physical classes that I attended. These classes are not compulsory and you can choose to just study at home and still pass the examination.
But if you are one who enjoys classes while preparing for an exam and looking to network with like minds, then I will advise such physical classes. It is an avenue to meet new people, share ideas, create a community and even build lasting relationship with them. Most of my new friends in this city are from the class. I even shared a post about the importance of friends during one of our last lunch date.
4: Volunteering
This is another major way to finding new friends in a new city. I moved to Abuja in 2013 but I never really started socializing until 2015 thereabout. One of the groups that gave me supportive and amazing friends that I could call family is Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative, MANI. I started out as a volunteer, then content lead and eventually became the Team Lead for the Abuja chapter. It was a wholesome and amazing experience for me as I have built a good network of friends through it.
5: Join Book Clubs
Most major cities has book clubs where book lovers get to meet and talk about a book while sharing thoughts and reviews. This is such a great platform to connect and make new friends as they are people of similar interests and values.
6: Take Pictures at Events
This is an interesting way to make new friends for introverts. If you are not someone who knows how to start a conversation or bond with new people, then you can chose the art of using your camera to do so. Take lovely pictures of people, then ask them for their phone number or email so you can share copies with them. Or better still, ask them for their social media handle so you can tag them when you share the pictures on your own page.
This is one way to build traffic for your website or page while connecting with new people. You would never know what great friends they could turn out to be.
7: Meet With Friends of your Friends
If you are new in a city, one of the most daunting but impressive ways to make new friends is to meet up with friends of your friends. Ask your good friends in other cities to link you up with people they know in the new city. You could be meeting your future soulmate in the process.
Conclusion
Other ways you can make a new friend in new cities include gym, hiking, joining a workforce in church, relating with your colleagues and even belonging to Whatsapp Forums for people in your city. While all these are tips to meeting new people in your city, it is important to study people well before calling them a friend. A lot of people have rushed into making new friends to avoid being lonely or hanging out alone and it has cost them a lot. Hence, it is important to select your friends and not make your them choose you.
For this shoot, these beautiful Abuja bloggers and I decided to team up to shoot a monochrome look. Did we nail it? Be sure to head over to their blogs as linked above and Instagram pages to read their take on this look: , and .
What other tip will you add to the list on getting acquaintances and friends in a new city?
Let’s get social:
Facebook –
Twitter –
Instagram –
Pinterest –
Beautiful post babe. It was a fun shoot. Let’s do this again sometime.
Author
Yes please, totally enjoyed it. Next time will be over food and drinks.
You ladies totally nailed it! You look great and with your smiles! Those smiles! 😍
Amazing tips as well that I need to honestly start implementing.
Thank you for sharing.
http://www.theportablehub.com
Author
Thanks darling. You totally need to implement.
These pictures are everything! i am lowkey jealous, I have to make mine
Author
Aww, thanks b. You should.
First of all your photos are so amazing!! You guys really look like you were having fun. I’m so jealous😭 it’s so hard for me to make friends and it’s getting harder by the day. Just reading the post title sef my palms are already sweating. Hay God😂😂
But I completely agree with these tips. Hopefully I will try to implement some(if not all) of them this second half of the year.
Thank you for sharing Debs…xxx
Author
Awww, I can totally relate dear. It wasn’t an easy walk for me too but gradually I’m getting a hang of it and making great acquaintances.
I hope you do. And thank you, we sure had fun with the shoot.
Very helpful tips there! I definitely agree on the social media thing – it’s nice to be able to connect with people offline from online relationships
Author
Absolutely, Amaka. Thanks for reading.