How To Make New Friends When You’re Single

Shani Silver
10 min readOct 21, 2024
Photo by Shani Silver

Everyone has this question, and I think that’s a good thing. A collective with a recurring problem doesn’t stress me out, it makes me feel like I’m a part of something. Oh, this is annoying for everyone? Thank goodness, I’m not alone. The most recurring question I receive isn’t about dating, which is the go-to assumption when you look at…oh I don’t know, literally all content created for single people. The most prominent question in singlehood is actually: How do I make new friends?

We’re not in school anymore. We’re not obligated to go somewhere every day with a bunch of people in our own age bracket who are experiencing the same stage of life that we’re in. School provides common ground, but adulthood introduces variables and iPhones and distances us from each other. So it’s not any great mystery why in adulthood we all have so much trouble making new friends: We never really had to try before. Further, of all those comically useless classes they made us sit through, “how to form and maintain healthy, fulfilling friendships” wasn’t one of them.

On top of this skill set deficiency, friend retention gets more difficult with age. All kinds of adulthood eventualities separate us. Schedules get hectic. We spend more time with romantic partners and less time with friends. (It happens, it’s okay, calm down.) We spend time with colleagues. We move. We…

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Shani Silver
Shani Silver

Written by Shani Silver

Author, podcaster. shanisilver@gmail

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