Making Friends Feels Like Dating
“No new friends”… or whatever Drake said.
I’m not sure when the cutoff happens, but it’s starting to feel like once you reach a certain age, the opportunity to make new friends, or even the desire to make new friends, significantly diminishes. Somewhere along the way, many of us seem to reach an unofficial but widely accepted consensus: I don’t need new friends.
I’m not necessarily arguing against that sentiment. I’m just wondering whether it’s helpful for someone like me—someone who recently moved to a new state without a built-in local community.
Is it possible to live a fulfilling life as a fully independent person with no real, local platonic connections?
Technically, yes. But I’m starting to learn that isolation, especially self-imposed isolation, predicts loneliness.
In the wake of COVID, the United States has entered what many public health experts describe as a loneliness epidemic. A recent 2025 study from the American Psychological Association found that loneliness is associated with negative health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and even shorter life expectancy. The research also highlighted another factor that intensifies loneliness: social division, such as moving away or having friends relocate.
Social division is exactly what I’m experiencing right now. I’m physically separated from the community I once had.
I’m lonely. I’m far away from my established social connections. But I’m still acting like I shouldn’t need new ones.
We already know that the absence of friendship and community can negatively affect our health and well-being. The inverse is also true: the presence of meaningful relationships can significantly improve it.
Friends can raise your sense of connection, purpose, and belonging. They can improve happiness, lower stress, and help you cope with difficult moments in life. They can also lovingly check you before you wreck yourself.
Community, it turns out, isn’t just nice to have. It’s a necessary component of a healthy life.
So this realization led me to ask a new question: how do you build genuine, meaningful platonic connections as an adult?
On this quest, I’ve realized something surprising.
Making friends as an adult feels remarkably similar, if not comparable in effort, to dating.
Opportunities to meet people were a natural part of everyday school life. You had classes, dorms, clubs, teams, and shared environments that made connections almost inevitable.
Now the process requires strategy.
First, you have to find events worth attending. Then you have to gather enough courage to start conversations with strangers. If the interaction goes well, you exchange numbers or social media. And after that comes the real work: following up and nurturing the connection before it quietly fades into a random contact in your phone or a social media mutual from an event you attended three months ago.
It’s essentially the awkward first-date phase… but for friendship.
So the question becomes: should those awkward early interactions deter us from putting ourselves out there?
Or are they simply part of the process of building something meaningful?
If you’ve ever moved to a new place or found yourself starting over socially, I’m curious: how are you building community?
I’m unpacking all of this and more in the newest episode of Let Me Claire-ify.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letmeclairefy.substack.com [https://letmeclairefy.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
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