A fairly common social issue people have is that they’re not sure how to make friends and put together a social life for themselves. There are quite a few ways someone can find themselves in this situation:

• They’ve moved to a new city and don’t know very many people yet.
• They’ve been in a long term relationship and have let their social life wither.
• Their old friends have slowly been dropping out of the picture (moving away, busy with work or a new family, etc.) and haven’t been replaced by new ones.
• A large chunk of their social circle disappeared overnight, like everyone graduated from university and most of their friends moved out of the city.
• They feel like they’ve grown apart from their current friends and want to make entirely new ones.
• In the past they were happy being alone a lot of the time, but now they want to be around people more often.
• They never really knew how to make friends and have always wished their social lives were better.
• They’ve recently made a big lifestyle change such as deciding not to drink anymore, and need to develop a new social circle that’s more suited to it.
• Below are my thoughts on how to make friends. I’ll cover a basic structure first, then go into some attitudes and principles towards the whole thing that I think are important. I’ve noticed people who are already good at making friends naturally tend to do most of the things I outline below without thinking about it.