5 Tips for Making New Friends Through Friends of Friends

Welcome to buildbetter, your weekly guide to understanding and building meaningful relationships in all aspects of your life.

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Read time: 4 minutes

Today at a glance:

• Topic: The power of friends of friends

• Tactic: Making new friends through existing ones

• Devin's Finds: 📰, 📰, 🎞

• Commitments: 🤝

There are countless ways to make new friends. Often it's from sharing space, like school or work, where you let friendships form naturally over time. Other times it's from frequenting a third place where you gain a sense of community. Every so often, you put yourself out there by knocking on a random person's door and make a new friend for life. But one of the most common ways to expand your friendships is through your existing friends.

I call this the "friends of friends" method, and we will dive into what that looks like today.

One of the best ways to experience the friends of friends method is when you are at a bachelorette or bachelor party. It just so happens that much of what is needed to create a new friendship is built into the experience.

Think about it: You’re dropped into an Airbnb with a bunch of strangers with one thing in common—a strong relationship to the person getting married. You may know a few of the others, but rarely will you know all of them. But for the people you don't know, it doesn't have that typical awkward feel of meeting a stranger. You get this feeling that you're obviously going to get along because:

• It's likely you have overlapping interests

• You're thinking "if my friend likes them, I probably will too"

• You're able to connect on funny stories about your mutual friend 

Right off the bat, you sense you're more connected to these people. But over the course of the next few days, you'll create real shared experiences while celebrating the bride or groom to be. Those hungover mornings making fun of each other and the late evenings reminiscing about the good ole days are brand new experiences you all share together. You begin learning about everyone else as a group and as individuals. Next thing you know, the weekend flew by and you're excited to get that same crew back together at the wedding in a few weeks...or you’ve barely survived and can’t wait to start your recovery process with some Chinese food on your couch.

Either way, it's the perfect storm to kickstart a new friendship through friends of friends. In one weekend, you check the most important friendship boxes:

• Shared interests: You quickly discover common interests—some that might overlap with the groom and others that are uniquely between you and new friends

• Shared experiences: You create a weekend's worth of memorable, in real life, experiences with everyone attending

• Shared challenge: Everyone at the bachelor party has a shared goal, make it the most fun weekend for the groom to be. That creates a sense of comradery amongst everyone there

• Friendship momentum: You don't even need to schedule the next time you see these people, seeing them again at the upcoming wedding is already built in

It may be easier to find this perfect storm at a bachelor or bachelorette party, but the ability to meet new friends through existing ones can happen anywhere you have at least one friend.

How to Make New Friends Through Friends of Friends

Think about all the opportunities you have to meet friends of friends:

• Birthday parties

• Housewarming parties

• Watching sporting events

• Joining a friend's team or club

• Festivals—food, music, cultural, and more

Really any time that you hang out with a friend and there is an opportunity for them to bring along their friends!

But making new friends doesn't come from just being around these people. There are things you should actively be doing.

1. Encourage Your Friends to Bring Their Friends

You can't begin to make friends of friends if you've never met any of them. Start being more inclusive of who you invite to hang out and encourage your friends to invite a few of their friends.

2. Be Approachable and Welcoming

If there are friends of friends around, don't just stick to chatting with the people you already know. Show genuine curiosity in getting to know them, ask good questions, and actually spend time hanging out with them. This is where shared interests are found and shared experiences begin to form.

3. Leverage Shared Interests

You can figure these out based on how they know your mutual friend or just by asking good questions. If you are both close with your mutual friend, it's likely that there is some mutuality between you both that’s yet to be discovered.

4. Create Friendship Momentum

Friendships don't happen over the course of a couple hours, in fact, the best ones take over 200 hours! That means you'll need to plan to see this person again in the future. Creating momentum here is key—if you hit it off, you should try to plan something sooner than later to keep the friendship building going.

5. Be Patient

If you didn't just spend every hour of every day together at a bachelor or bachelorette party, you may not have as quick of a connection. Encourage them to come out again (or for your friend to invite them out again) and you'll be able to build it up over a few occasions. Don't be discouraged if the connection isn't immediate.

Devin's Finds:

📰 Soaking up solitude is important (1 minute read): We continue to have a loneliness epidemic but it’s important to differentiate between being lonely and being alone. Spending quality time alone is important (and no, the time on your couch doom scrolling TikTok doesn’t count).

📰 How Communities Emerge by David Spinks (10 min read): An interesting read describing how communities aren't designed, they appear organically (or "emerge"). Just as they do in the wild with flocks of birds, schools of fish, colonies of ants and more. David argues that we've never built communities, only effective containers where communities have a chance to emerge. He covers the differences in human communities vs. those in nature and the common emergent attributes of communities.

🎞 This 1 minute clip reminding us that little moments can often have deep impact on others. Sometimes that smile or small act of kindness goes much further than you expect. ⬇

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Best of luck building,

Devin