Making Friends After Moving Home

Posted on 13/09/2016

Moving house may be damaging on many levels, and one of those levels is the social one. The social life often suffers when you undergo a relocation and you end up in an entirely unknown place, surrounded by strangers. At that time it is up to you to start socialising and making friends in order to fill the void that your old friends left. Of course, they haven’t disappeared, but friends do tend to get alienated after moving away, so it’s always a good idea to make new ones. And that is basically a must if you are an extrovert. Introverted people may cope with as little as one (if that) friends, but extroverts do need a social life to thrive. So when your removal van drops you at your new house, start doing some of the following:

Be Proactive

People who sit at home don’t get too many friends. Same goes for people who go out to socialise, but don’t speak to anybody. If you want to make friends, first you have to make an effort. Be proactive and engage. Mingle. Try to be the centre of attention. And even if you don’t want to be the centre of attention, do try to enter conversations at least once per day. Depending on how successful you are with talking, you might reach great successes in friend-making just based on persistence. Do show restraints, of course.

Go Out

Again, people who sit at home will hardly get many chances to enjoy the company of others. In order to have a chance to be proactive, you need to go places. Until you make the number of friends you want or that you feel content with, simply keep going out and go to gatherings. There is a variety of options for venues where you can go. Visit social events, go to community gatherings, find the right places where you can be part of huge crowds. Cities like London, for example have plenty of places of gatherings, such as festivals and big city events.

Where?

This cannot be a serious question. Go to the park. Visit the library. Go to nightclubs and pubs. Visit concert halls, enter contests, join clubs. The options for ‘where’ are basically as limited as the city or town is and the venues and events it offers. If you live in a big place, then you should never worry about ‘where’ or ‘when’, because those are already covered for you. You simply need to take part of whatever is in store and combine the advices above to get going.

Alternatives

Apart from where, there is also the how. Of course, there are alternatives to leaving the house or walking up to people and talking to them. Today’s technology offers you various options, ranging from websites specifically designed for making friends, and then there are also the newly-arrived apps. There are actual friend and dating apps that locate other such app users around you and signalise them to your location. This is among the easiest ways of making friends, or at least getting some form of romance in your life – which, of course, does not always result in friendship.

And this is how it is. After moving home, it is up to you to fill all the voids in your life. Make friends as fast as possible so that you eliminate one of the problems of going through a relocation – loneliness. It is a common occurrence, which you can easily avoid with a simple outing to the nearest pub or music venue. Making friends is easy, making yourself do it is the part you should be worried about.