How to Make New Friends After College

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

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here

Read time: 7 minutes

Today at a glance:

The first edition of every month is about friendship in adulthood—making new ones, keeping old ones, and how those friendships change over time. 

• Series: Friendship in adulthood

• Topic: Making a new friend in a new place

• Tactic: Increasing the odds of creating a lasting friendship

• Devin's Finds: 🎙, 🎙, 🎞

• Commitments: 🤝

My college self was so naïve to how much went into making a new friend.

Why wouldn't he be? College is an adult playground for meeting new people and making new friends. You are around the same people, interested in similar topics, and get to interact with them almost every day. It's making friends on "easy-mode"....just steer clear of the guy in the hotdog costume.

But senior-year-of-college Devin wasn't aware that once you take away the campus, mutuality, and serendipity of bumping into the same people often and replace it with a full time job and real-world responsibilities, much of that changes.

Many weeks, you're lucky to have enough energy to make it to that one trivia night you love going to. But more often than not, you'd prefer to sink into your couch and numb your mind with reality TV and TikTok.

In your new, post-college reality, the switch flips to "hard-mode" for making new friends.

So I want to share my experience of making my first friend after college.

I'll set the stage: I grew up on Long Island and went to school in Pittsburgh. I fully expected to end up in NYC post-graduation, where many of my home and college friends were planning to end up as well. With a core NYC group like that, I wouldn't have to worry about making new friends, although I assume it would have looked like this—one friend brings their friend by, and we then become friends with them as well. Easy!

But that wasn't my reality. I instead decided to take a job in Charlotte, North Carolina—a city I had absolutely no ties to. No one from my hometown or college group was moving there post-graduation. Plus, I had a job where I would be expected to commit ~100 hours per week …so how could I make new friends?

Making One New Friend in a New Place After College

Tactics for making new friends are in green.

There I was dropped in the middle of Charlotte not knowing a single person. Everyone's similar advice rang in my ears "do your best to put yourself out there and be outgoing!"

I decided to approach it the same way I did while backpacking through Europe alone a few months prior. I made an agreement with myself: It's better to experience a new place with someone I may only meet for a day than to shy away and do everything on my own. So, I always tried to find one person with at least one shared interest and quickly make some plans with them for that day.

I approached Charlotte with that same mindset. A few days after my parents helped me move, I was on yet another furniture run. But this time I heard my neighbor blasting some obnoxious house music as I passed (kidding, I love the beep boops 🕺). So, I decided to knock on his door to introduce myself and compliment his music taste (I'd later find out his music taste was Habit T-Mass remix played on repeat, but still).

Putting yourself out there, often in slightly uncomfortable situations, is the natural first step in making any new friend after college.

That's when I met Keem and quickly made plans to hang out with him and his friends that night in Charlotte over cheap drinks and live music.

Building momentum is a key part of friendships after college. You don't have the luxury to just see the person around on campus in the coming days/weeks. It's important to get something to do in the books so you can build positive friendship momentum.

This was the first time I really met anyone in Charlotte and it ended up being a blast. So much so, I was convinced to get late night drunk pizza. (If you know me by now, any non-NYC pizza is a sin…but Charlotte pizza? Consider it a felony.)

Creating a shared experience is the best way to connect with another person in a genuine way, especially when it has to do with something you are both interested in.

If anyone ever asks how Keem and I became friends, I usually will end the story here and say "the rest is history, we've been best friends ever since." But in reality, there's more to forming a friend. It doesn't just happen from a few knocks on someone's door and then hanging out at a bar one night.

We often mistake one shared experience as enough but in reality, we only see a sliver of that person based on that experience. You should aim to have multiple different types of shared experiences with them similar to how in college, you may spend time with friends in the library, sharing hobbies, going out, and more.

After that night, Keem had mentioned he was heading out of town for a few weeks on a work trip. Since I was starting my full time job the next week, I knew if I waited to make additional plans for when he got back, it may feel awkward given the time that passed or even worse, I would be too caught up in a demanding job that I didn't prioritize taking a step back to make time for new friends. So I asked him if he was up to anything when he got back and he invited me to an escape room with some of his work friends.

Don't say you'll get to it when you get to it when it comes to plans with friends. It's an easy way to trick yourself and end up with no plans.

Doing an escape room and hanging at a brewery after was a great way to get to know a different side of someone. After all, you only get to see a sliver of someone when you're hanging out at a loud bar playing drinking games.

At Wooden Robot brewery, while sipping the best beer I've ever had called Good Morning Vietnam, I learned more about all the similarities Keem and I had. Both fans of outdoor activities, came from big families, placed a lot of value on those families, loved to travel, and enjoyed similar music and going to concerts whenever we could.

There is a tactic called old-new and new-old that you can apply to strengthen your friendships (learn more here). When meeting old friends, you should try to make new memories instead of just reminiscing on the old ones. When making new friends (like this scenario) you can apply the new-old tactic. When you meet someone new, try to find something to connect on that you share with them from the past such as similar experiences, interests, or dynamics from your childhood.

After these plans, there were more planned activities and serendipitous knocking on each others doors to hang out on weekends.

What followed were plenty of planned and last-minute hangouts that continued to strengthen the friendship. Sure, proximity and living next door made it easy at times, but when Keem moved across town we still got hung out just as much. 

Proximity is important but living next door to each other or in the same building is by no means a requirement to make a new friend. Being able to make plans and easily get to similar places plays a larger role.

Maybe you’re thinking this sounded oddly similar to a dating experience. Well, the reality of adulthood is if you want to make a brand-new friend that becomes as close as a childhood one, you are basically friend dating. I think many of us have a particularly tough time accepting this reality. But as the loneliness epidemic continues to grow, it's important to remember that putting yourself out there to have recurring experiences with others and creating the space to be vulnerable are two necessities for creating a friendship that will last. You may not remember it, but these are things that used to come naturally as a kid—try channeling that.

Tactics for Making a New Friend Recap

• Put yourself out there even if it feels awkward. You have nothing to lose.

• Build momentum early on by scheduling shared experiences soon after meeting. Don't push this off!

• Have different types of shared experiences to get to know different sides of people.

• Try the new-old friendship tactic to find something to connect on that you share with them from the past.

• General proximity is important, not that they live in your exact building. Prioritize ease of creating shared experiences with them.

Devin's Finds:

🎙 Won’t You Be My Neighbor—The Friend Next Door from Man of the Year podcast (~40 minute podcast): Aaron Karo and Matt Ritter’s funny banter on the positives and negatives of making friends with your neighbor.

🎙 How to be a Better Friend with Nikki and Martina from the Portfolio career Podcast with David Nebinski (~50 minute podcast): David speaks with Nikki and Martina about different ways to be a better friend including shared experiences, running errands together, leaving voice notes and building momentum.  

🎞 A touching clip (~1 min) emphasizing how we do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. In a world that seeks connection, we often hold our feelings back, silence our instincts, and treat vulnerability as taboo. But really, it’s okay to tell someone you like being around them.⬇

lenosnaps

View more on Instagram

Best of luck building,

Devin