I was getting lonely. Here’s what happened when I tried to make new friends in my 30s | Friendship

I I am lucky enough to have some wonderful friends. But recently, many of them have moved away because they could not bear, or could not bother them, to live in a huge city like London anymore. And when you are in the thirties of life, communication with new people is not a feat.

I am not alone in a little loneliness: In 2023, the World Health Organization said that social isolation became a “World Public Health Fears”. From the office’s retreat to the appearance of one apartments, our social life is eliminated away from us. At the same time, broadcasting services and food delivery applications discourage From us from going out, their ads glorify the safety and comfort of staying at home and not seeing or speaking to another person. It seems as if they wanted to keep us singles and friends, with no thing to spend our money on a disappointing chicken burger with a side of Deadpool & Wolverine.

It was not always like that. Look at the pictures The life of the city in the nineties or the twentieth century, and you will see cafes, night clubs, buses and trains that have life and conversation. People danced with each other, looked at each other, talked to each other and touched each other – in public places!

I was wondering if I could return at least some of this fun to my life. Here’s what happened when I got out of my comfort zone and tried to form some new friends.

Make an effort with strangers

If you go to a crowded public place in the United States – a bus, restaurant, a pub, a sporty event – it is a divorced Kakovone. They talk to each other. Loudly, frankly and proud, they speak. So I think: What is the best way to make social links from adopting a great way for Americans, who does not know the fear of social media? This means expressing the conversation at any specific opportunity, instead of to avoid This, and many of us in the United Kingdom are vulnerable to doing so. I try to do so to everyone I met, from neighbors and store owners to hospitality workers and groups of strangers in cafes and bars.

The first person to talk to him properly is a Little Crescent colleague. Let’s call it Graham. Albour is in a Glossier hotel in London, it is guaranteed and gentle as it is harsh around the edges; If you are a director of filming charged with finding a “boy” in London, I will choose it immediately.

One day we are talking, while he was smoking on the doorstep, and when he told him that I am a writer, he says: “My parents once told me, and I will always remember this” – he stops temporarily, and he takes a long traction on his path – “Words are to exercise what a body is.” Wise words are already. Even this brief chat has opened a channel and we are still exchanged in a small friendly talk every time I see it.

The rest of my reaction experiments are not going well. In a generation bakery by powerful Wi -Fi and heart attacks, I was attracted to the baker, which was sweeping Croissan drifting inside and outside the ovens. He caught my attention several times, although it is unclear whether it is in a terrible interest or because he believes I am not good. Refer to the top.

“Are you comrades responsible for this operating menu?” (You know by Alanis Morissette plays.)

“Yes.”

“Oh, great, I love him!”

Smiling thin, sweeping it.

“Wow, they are completely complicated, right?” I say, lean slightly over the meter. “layer.”

He smiles again and is “farewell” polite, and everyone knows: “Get away immediately, please.”

Contact with the former

When I was 15 years old, I fell in love with a river boat in Paris. I was on a vacation from Devon with my father. Mark was on a vacation from Minlo Park, California. I ran to him while the boat was withdrew to our stop and got his phone number, which he wrote on the paper full of boredom.

We had an appointment the next day, on Sacré-Coeur steps, dated long distances for the next two years, with the help of Skype and two groups of significantly open fathers. All this looks like a complete lie. Certainly, my friends at school thought about this, until my land of falling jaws, all of them presented to her brilliant, brilliant, shiny, and team friend, living, and breathing, when he came to visit one birthday.

We are completely different people and there is a comfortable shortage of romance. We were children when it started and looked back with the same loving nostalgia, as it might win on the beach or wrote the cry of terror. But we still click.

He and his friend London visit, so I ask if they want to go to a drink. Anyone with Ex Ex Expired will know that this is not simple and unofficial as it seems. It takes a little mental gymnastics. It takes a little courage. I will not lie: I chose my clothes very carefully, I am very trying to look like I am not trying.

We have fish and chips in Hawley Arms, and the Amy Winehouse bar was used to repeat and withdraw the McCill. I choose this without shame, knowing that it is just a kind of correct tourism for the educated millenniums.

I immediately realize that we grew up. We are amazed at our jobs, the world and politics. Change from the last time we saw each other personally, when our main arrest about Megavido no longer flows on our favorite TV program at that time, weeds.

The worst aspects of our similarity have fallen and remain the best. It is somewhat similar to the diver feast that you have, perhaps about 22 or 23 years, when you realize that you are an adult. We are both great and strong conversation.

Certainly I can see that re -contact with EX may not be everyone – God knows, there are some X no Reconnect. But if it does not grow for geographical and practical reasons, it may be useful to drop them a message. After all, there was something that attracted you to them in the first place. Perhaps this thing still exists, in a more cross and non -romantic way, but still is meaningful.

Join the club

Book clubs are not for me, nor film clubs. Get enough opinions (often unwanted) about what to read or watch from my friends, family and strangers on social media, thank you very much.

In the end, the only exercise I enjoyed – water sports. I grew up in Devon on the banks of the Dart River. It is one of the most lush waterways in Europe. Local population is fond of saying that if you descend the sun, it may be the Amazon.

The Regent channel can never be the Amazon, even if you wear VR headphones, but it is so One of the most expensive assets of the capital-rowing or hiking on its length takes you previous sites including a floating Chinese restaurant and art of world-class global walls, floating libraries, and while passing through the zoo, wthoj, colopus monkeys and African hunting dogs.

Regents Club It costs 90 pounds sterling for membership of the year, and the meeting on Monday and Thursday nights to hit the canal in the kayak and boats. Equipment is provided, and as soon as you are a member, there is no need to reserve forward – it has just appeared. In this economy, in one of the most expensive cities in the world, this is very good.

Ascending to the introductory evening, wearing the trousers of Ed Hardy, the shiny unicorn shirt and a lot of jewelry, and I feel immediate Vacation. The rest of the group is mostly women who have outdoors, wearing strong shoes, thick dress, and elegant ancestors.

Lee Roth, a long -term member, showed her phone from Rapid on Rapidz on Zambezi. “We were not worried about crocodiles,” she says with pleasure. “The adults are not approaching the slopes, so they are only young.”

“This is the most fun you can enjoy while sitting,” Alex says, after Ruth helped us give us a comprehensive but fun incitement to health and safety. I open my mouth to make an external joke, then I remembered that I am not in my usual company of gay men who enjoy it easily.

While we copy the boats from their shelves, I get a boom of serotonin, nostalgia for the past-voices and scents that evoke childhood-and the hair of discovering the holy cup: cheap social activity, not focused on alcohol, low-voltage in London. The Unicorn T -shirt may have been appropriate after all.

Knowledge is playing

There are always those ships at night that you met once or twice. They may be a friend of a friend, a person you faced at a party or festival, or a visiting colleague from another section of your company … I clicked, alike: “We will be the best friends”, then you did not see each other again.

It’s time to strike courage to contact them. Ignore this fear of refusal, and stop thinking about this thing that may or not less, that they may or not to be offended, and only bloody. A message to them.

Wonderful feature – it can be said it’s the only feature – for social media is that this is now possible. In the nineties of the last century, you have never seen them again, but now, as long as she got her first name and a mysterious idea of ​​where they live or what they do in a job, the opportunities you can follow.

I don’t even have to do this – I exchanged details with Amber and Elliot in the short time we were together. It was when I was in Oxford to spend the weekend a few years ago. One night, believing that I did not go to the gay bars myself enough, I decided to check the delicious Jolly farmers, who describes himself as “the oldest and strangest place of LGBTQ+.” It is definitely identical to the description, with Mery Melange from a few ancient times that literally pays almost a slightly unbalanced bar, the walls of cracks and disco lights.

Amber and Elliot were sitting in a corner playing giving? They were able to do so immediately and in the beginning I thought we already knew each other. They were wearing identical earrings in the form of Pops bottles and were cooler about 5,000 times more than anyone in a 10 -miles. Within minutes of meeting, I would have died for them.

Guess who? Soon we forget, we talked and talked about their experiences as Queer Oxford students, pop music and my life in London and more. The next thing I knew, I was at a hall party that would drink something of anise from a fractured plastic cup. We said goodbye to us under the bricks that are lit at about four in the morning and stayed in contact, and picked the laughter to the strange common.

Now, about three years after we met, I see that the amber has moved to London. I sent her to her correspondence if she wanted to meet for a drink. Elliot is in the city as well, and we all meet in an elegant bar insult in Stoke Newmington and remember our crazy Billa in Oxford. We also, just like anyone else in the crowded beer garden, past our functions and Lambast’s life. After that, it is time for a flat party, where I brought my friend and play what I am somewhat sure was the killing in the dark (but I can’t completely remember him).

He teaches me that you do not necessarily need complex tactics, new hobbies, or psychological instructions to improve your social life. Sometimes, like Italian food, it is best to keep it simple: quality ingredients and fast and easy techniques are all you need to formulate the most famous dishes – a beautiful new friendship.