I just graduated and moved to another state for my job.
I didn’t move with anyone but my dog, left all of my closest friends back at college, and don’t have any immediate family in the state. I’ve made friends with co-workers, joined a rec kickball team, and made a few acquaintances since moving here, but then I got sick.
In the 6 months I’ve lived alone I’ve been in and out of the hospital, out of work a lot, and no longer able to go out and socialize. This has isolated me a great deal and it has made feeling at home in my new state very difficult.
You move around a lot and are obviously familiar with the feeling of being physically separated from those you’ve built relationships with. Do you have any suggestions, tips, or secrets to learning your new community/home and making new connections where you go?
I’m well on my way to being done with the treatment for the illness that took away the last 3 months and I want to start engaging more and building a life here.
-Grace
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Hey Grace-
Good on you for taking initiative and making plans for when you’re able to get out and about more frequently!
Starting to implement changes and lay your social groundwork is a great way to set the proper rhythm for when that back-into-the-world-more-fully moment arrives.
I can’t speak with any authority about that sort of illness, but loneliness is an old friend of mine. And I tend to think of it as a valuable, if at times painful, presence.
Solitude can seem nearly unbearable at times. Not having a friend to call or hang out with when you really need a kind word or a board game buddy can amplify an existing sense of loneliness or isolation.
But that same experience can force you to take serious stock of yourself, your habits, your wants and needs, your priorities; to perform a full internal inventory.
Loneliness can be a catalyst for personal development in that you’re able to focus on you, and get more comfortable entertaining, inspiring, and caring for yourself.
Acknowledgement of your own capacity for self-sustainability can allow you to make smarter choices about who you bring into your life, and that capacity is exercised in seclusion.
Not being reliant on another person to be complete, to be happy, can allow you to have a healthier relationship with that person. You can choose with care who you spend your time with, how often, and what that looks like, rather than feeling dependent on them for happiness, or they on you.
That said, there are many benefits to healthy relationships with our fellow human beings, and few among us who don’t feel compelled to engage with other people at some point in our lives.
But there are two main tasks, which at times can seem like hurdles, standing in the way of those who want to build new relationships in an unfamiliar place: making contact with new people and building rapport with those people.
To achieve the former, it usually helps to look at established networks—online and offline—to see what groups and gathering places already exist.
I find that looking for clubs and meetup groups is a good way to start, but I’ll also sometimes peruse social networks like Twitter and Instagram to see who in the area is active and talking about/visiting/doing the sorts of things I care about.
More than once I’ve arrived in a new city and reached out to someone who seemed to know the area well (or at least posted photos that indicated they did) to ask their advice on what coffee shop I should check out, or which museum to visit. A few times those connections have resulted in meetups where I buy the coffee and they tell me about the area. And in a few of those cases, we’ve become friends as a consequence of that coffee and conversation.
It’s also helpful to seriously consider what sort of people you’d like to spend your time with.
Anyone who’s friendly and likes similar things (or different things, but in an appealing way) can work out fine, but if you’re starting fresh and building your network from scratch, it can be beneficial to think through where your time and energy would be best invested, and what sorts of people might help you become the best possible version of yourself.
So if you’ve been trying to quit smoking, maybe don’t recruit a new group of friends who smoke. If you’d like to get into painting or music, maybe expose yourself to people who are also walking that or similar paths.
Consider taking some classes, attending events, and joining groups.
You needn’t be a board game fanatic to join a weekly board gaming club, and you’ll meet a lot of interesting people from various walks of life if you do so.
Similarly, if you’re keen to become more physically fit, join a dodgeball league, play pickup ultimate frisbee at the park with the group that meets there every Saturday, or sign up for a martial arts class.
Attend talks at the local library, get politically involved in your city, or take up a new hobby and share what you learn via a blog or YouTube channel.
A key component of building relationships is establishing contact with people in a setting in which doing so isn’t weird. And all of these options can be helpful toward that end.
By learning and growing and building upon what you know, you’ll tend to cultivate passions, become more interested and interesting, and attract people to you as a consequence. Working on yourself and being accessible can help you create a kind of social gravity, which can be helpful if you’re looking to make new acquaintances.
Once you’ve met some new people, the next step is to find folks who you’d like to continue hanging out with and then actually do so.
When I was living in Los Angeles, it was kind of just understood that if you have 100 people RSVP to an event you’re holding, maybe 30 or 40 will show up. It’s a lot easier to commit to future plans in the moment than it is to act on those plans in the future, and getting past life’s many frictions—exhaustion from work, the appeal of just sitting down and watching Netflix at home instead of going out—in yourself and in others, can be a significant task.
That said, keeping things loose and easy and as convenient as possible for everyone involved helps a lot.
Having folks over to your place for drinks may seem like an obvious, inoffensive hang-out idea, but it might be more convenient to continue meeting at that bar or bookstore downtown for a while, instead. Maybe it’s more centrally located, maybe it’s more comfortable for folks who prefer spending their free time in public places, maybe going to someone else’s home seems a little too intimate for the time being.
The trick is to go with the flow, take people as they are, figure out who you want to have in your life and who wants you in theirs, and to invest more of yourself in the truly valuable relationships that emerge.
This isn’t meant to diminish the casual, acquaintance-like relationships. You needn’t be best friends with someone to get value from them, and to provide value in return. I find it’s generally ideal to have maybe three or four really good, best friends, and several dozen friends who are situationally the same, even if we don’t talk to each other every day.
Research has shown that friendships can be vital to our health, especially as we get older, and that one of the most vital components of a successful friend is putting in the time: being there for the person, certainly, but also spending time with them, over time. Having shared experiences, inside jokes, and life paths that allow you to empathize with each other.
It is possible to fall into unhealthy rhythms and harmful relationships, however, so it’s important to remember, as you start cobbling together new ones, that you are already okay and worthwhile and complete.
You don’t need anyone else to become accomplished or successful or happy; other people you add to the mix have the potential to be the icing on the cake, but they are not the cake itself.
You’re the cake.
Remember that, and remember to treat yourself, your time, and your wellbeing with the respect they deserve, even as you do the same for the new people you bring into your life.