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Join the Team! How to Make Friends in a New Place

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Expat life means having to begin from scratch in various places all over the world. This does not only concern practical issues, such as finding a new apartment, but also your personal relationships. This can be particularly hard for single expatriates without a partner or family to come along, or for shy, more introverted types. Our guest author Paul Sanders gives you some helpful pointers on making new friends after you move.

Before you move to a new city, it feels like it’s going to be a new start and an opportunity to make new friends, but once you settle in, you start wondering how to actually make friends in this new place. A few months go by, and you start to feel depressed to see friends and couples laughing and having a good time on a Friday night.

Why should it be so hard to make friends in a new city? We learn about dating, relationships, health, money, and many other useful life skills. But we act as if the skill of making friends is something you should be born with.

Making Friends in a New City – Revealing the Hidden Challenge

Not being able to make friends in your new home is just a surface-level challenge. But it hides a bigger problem… Not knowing how to make friends altogether is the real challenge.

Moving to a new city puts you “on the spot”, and you feel stuck. You don’t know where to go, what to do, and what specific steps to take to meet new people, socialize and form personal connections beyond basic small talk about the weather.

In the next section of this article, I want to tell you about the steps to take to get you from loneliness to having a nice circle of friends.

Making Friends – Specific Steps and Techniques

As I said before, there are specific steps you can take to go from a place where you have no friends, feel lonely, rejected, and literally ostracized from society (I know, I’ve been there), to a situation you want: a situation where you have people to go out with, friends that understand and support you, friends to celebrate holidays, and have great weekends with.

These steps are as follows:

1. Meeting new people
2. Having great conversations
3. Keeping in touch and creating a friendship
4. Forming a solid group of friends

These are perfectly learnable skills. If you learn them, you would never have a problem making friends again, in your current city, or a new one.

For the first of these steps, meeting new people, I want to share with you what I call the “Join the Team” technique. It works so well that I like to joke around and say that it’s a “diplomat-level” technique. We all know how diplomats can make friends with anyone in the world, no matter how powerful they are.

Meeting New People – the “Join the Team” Technique

Everybody tells you that if you want to meet new friends, you need to join a club of some kind, like an expat association or an InterNations Activity Group. But that takes lots of motivation and dedication. If you are a little shy or introverted, it can be very intimidating to go do that and fit in with an established group.

There is a way to meet new friends without much work.

What you can do is find a club that holds regular get-togethers, show up once or twice, and seek to join the organizing team. Just go to the people that run the events and tell them that you’re available if they need some help.

Tell them specifically: “Hey guys, I really like these events, and I’m starting to think that I could maybe help you out. I have a little extra time, and I would love to contribute to organizing these events.” Most teams that manage these groups love it when new people offer to help.

This works so well because it obligates you to show up to the events. If you’re not a member of the organizing team, it’s easy to procrastinate and stay home. When you commit to helping the team, you just go to the event, you don’t even think about it.

It also works well because everyone becomes grateful for your help. You don’t need to be extroverted or popular to help, anyone can do it. The team and the members will naturally come talk to you and meet you, which makes things even easier – and the organizational tasks and shared activities automatically give you a topic of conversation to break the ice.

Now, you might be thinking, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m busy as it is. I don’t have time for extra work!”. If that’s the case, then you can relax. That’s what I thought at first. As it turns out, these teams are already established, which means they already share the major tasks between them, and there is usually not too much to do for complete newcomers.

I don’t think it can get easier than this. Go ahead and give it a try – good luck!

Paul Sanders writes about how to overcome shyness and loneliness, master conversation and social skills, make friends, and build a social circle. If you want to know more about these topics, check out his site: Get the Friends You Want.

(Photo credits: 1) Cloud 9 – Round 2 by Flickr user Rick A. 2) Jerry Weiss, Friends 3) Hands Overlaying by Wikimedia Commons user Vicki Nunn)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Don’t spend your whole time with other expats. If you make friends with expats, you will find they come and go from China. If you make friends with Chinese people, they are far more likely to stay put, and it will give you more insight into the country. They are also more useful in emergencies.

  4. hello Adewale, I would be glad to meet you I am in Nairobi though i am not an environmentalist. However I enjoy meeting interacting with people from all over the world

  5. Hi, i want meet new friend from all over the world, both males and females. I am a lecturer of Urban and Regional Planning in Africa. I need people whom we can share ideas and exchange scholastic view about environmental issues.
    Getting to know new people is my hobby

  6. Hi Paul,

    this is a nice article. I personally am still in the struggling stage to make new friends here and am quite hesitant to go to the organised get togethers but I think that your advice is practical. I think I’ll try it.

  7. Also, showing up about 15 minutes early is also good. Just place yourself near the entrance and you will be able to see someone else who is new coming in by themselves.

    Excellent article.

  8. I have lived , this experience to got o cities and have no friends, but , my sincere smile and polite approch, make it easy for me, its true we need some courage to go toward people ” Just do it” .

    but am here to offer some thing else, if you come to Paris and have no friends, please contact me, and lets take a drink together, let’s make it simple, because more simple is more beautifull.

    Internation, is avery smart idea and very dedicated network, all my wishes.

    Regrads,
    Khaled

  9. Hi everybody. In spite of having the name “Ivan” I don’t twnd to be a hairy drunk Russian man with a bear friend 🙂 I’m looking forward to making friends with people who happen to live in Moscow and those who talk English! Please, contact me if you are intersted in it. My e-mail is [email protected]

  10. I think this ‘joining the organizing team’ really does work. I have tried it before when I moved to Hong Kong and I of course, started it with my church. Joining some ministries at church is always a good start for me.

    • @Elaine:

      I agree. Church groups are a good way of getting to know new people and sharing some responsibilties. Or, for the non-religious folks, joining a local charity or non-profit group has a similar effect. I think it’s the sense of having a shared task and “mission”, so to speak, that helps to bring people together.

    • Hi,

      nice to meet you and welcome to InterNations! I hope you’ll enjoy our platform. 🙂

    • Hi Harim,

      In order to connect with new friends from over the world, please try joining the InterNations platform. You can start by filling out the form on our homepage:

      http://www.internations.org

  17. It’s never easy make a friends in a new city, especially in a new country. You need to know the better places to make friends and pass more time outside home than inside. You cannot be shy and talk about things that the others like. Have a group of friends, makes your life more easy. Profit what the life has best.

  18. Make friends in a new country, it’s a little like learn a new language, you always learn something new. But when we move to a new country we need make friends, no matter the amount, since they are true friends. With no friends, the time is not the same, you feel alone and many times, you are not happy.