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> "Researchers also find that when we develop groups, our friendships are more sustainable than they are with individuals. Because there's multiple touch points

> "Researchers also find that when we develop groups, our friendships are more sustainable than they are with individuals. Because there's multiple touch points now, right? Someone else in the group could reach out to all of us, and then we all keep in touch." This is the most important tip in the article, in my experience. When I lived in SF, most of my friend hangs were 1-on-1 catchups over coffee or lunch. Scheduling and comparing calendars would sometimes feel like an impersonal chore. Meeting so many people individually was time consuming, repetitive, hard to schedule, and yet somehow infrequent -- it felt like the main reason to hang was to catch up on what's new, so you needed to wait a month or two to let new things pile up. Then I moved to Seattle. I decided to switch to only really attending (or inviting people to) hangouts that included multiple people. Basically, my new policy was to try to hang out with multiple simultaneously whenever possible. And it worked wonders! My friends met all my other friends, and things played out exactly as described by the article -- some of them hit it off, became friends with each other, and started initiating invites and events without me. In addition, hangouts are just more fun with more people. There's more to talk about, more excitement, more fun. And it's easier to schedule, too, since you can see more people in a smaller number of hangs. The value of the hangs goes up, too. There's more reason for people to say "yes" because they're getting to catch up with multiple people, not just one person.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
I'm glad that worked for you. My experience has become that as my friends groups have gotten older, getting larger groups together has become very difficult. You have to plan it far enough in advance that everyone has sufficient notice, you need a venue large enough to host everyone, people have kids that need to be accommodated somehow, and everyone also lives further apart. All of these mean that we've gone from getting together once or twice a month to maybe once every 3 months or so. So while everyone still keeps in touch online, in-person meetups have reduced a lot in frequency.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  You shouldn't obsess on having everybody or even the majority of your groups together. Besides your friends also have friends and vice-versa that aren't part of your circle so you shouldn't even think of having any kind of exclusivity. People come and go in your life. What I am struggle with aren't local acquaintances but friends that aren't local to me anymore.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    At this point, the obsession isn't about having everybody or the majority present, its about having the minority, or even anyone at all, present.
- amerkhalid 4y ago
  Yeah this is my experience too. Especially, once you have kids, it is so hard to align everybody's nap times, classes, etc. And if you somehow are able to get whole group together, then too many preschoolers around is just chaotic. Heard it will be easier once kids are older. But for now, we usually hang out with one or maybe two families at a time.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Would encourage still prioritizing 1:1 time with close friends. Even if that means traveling. It's a different experience, though I agree introducing friends to other friends is usually a pleasure.
rjh29 4y ago
I hate hanging out in groups and almost exclusively do 1:1. I have no problem talking to my friends for hours on end, it never feels like a chore and I always makes time. Your experience reads quite strangely to me. Even if there is nothing new to talk about, spending time with friends is rewarding in itself.
- fisherjeff 4y ago
  I don’t think they were saying that the 1:1 time itself was a chore, so much as the logistics behind them. I completely agree. Another nice thing about group hangouts is that not everyone needs to be there so it makes scheduling a lot simpler.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    Just the wording in that particular post made it seem like a lot of work. I have had 'friends' like that in the past, and if you need things to 'pile up' so you can hold a conversation, and you find it hard to motivate yourself to do the logistics and make time, maybe they're not the most compatible people for you. However I can't judge, because I personally dislike group hangouts, so I can understand if conversely someone finds arranging 1:1 meetings difficult.
- baby 4y ago
  It’s a scaling issue. If you have a lot of friends 1:1 don’t scale.
  - rektide 4y ago
    Strongly disagree. It's not a scaling issue. 1:1's don't renew. You have to keep feeding the relationship. The relationship can be extremely rewarding for chit chat & conversation, but it could drop at any point, and become a memory. It has no self-maintaining spirit, no ability to repair itself if one person loses some availability or time. A group can fend for itself in a far different way. Assemblages can have members come and go, but maintain a core purpose and identity. There's rhizomatic affiliations that can find each other & get new currents & excitements going, whereas in 1:1's the potentials for connection are bounded. Closed systems can only keep processing the same pieces of energy again and again for so long. They can steal some vitality from the surrounding, but the lifetime of the relationship is limited. You need more open dynamical systems if you want to keep interesting things going. Long term survival requires systems that can perpetuate & share themselves. 1:1's by definition cannot.
denvaar 4y ago
Thats an interesting take. I prefer 1:1 type of events, or maybe a small group. I just find it easier to hold a conversation that way. I don’t have too many friends, so the time factor is not an issue for me.
- rjh29 4y ago
  I think 1:1 is best for close friends who you have a strong connection with, and groups are better for more casual friends. You can have a group hangout with people who in 1:1 format you'd struggle to converse with. Personally I don't have any of those friends anymore so I don't do group hangouts.
  - pfannkuchen 4y ago
    I also strongly prefer 1:1 or small groups and I’m confused how one can be friends with a person they would struggle to converse with 1:1?
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      I can relate. For a lot of people, "friends" is someone you might find yourself sitting with at the same table at a group dinner or playing the same board game with a bunch of other people. But meet up with them one on one and you will quickly run out of things to talk about.
shalmanese 4y ago
One thing I found strange about SF is that I never found a group that would do the weekly hang. The weekly hang is a socially porous experience, it has a fixed location and fixed start time but everything else is improvised. Different people could dip in and out, people felt free to bring new friends, people they just started dating, friends from out of town etc. Some people came once and never again, others become regulars. The hallmark of a great weekly hang is that the entire initial cohort gets replaced but the weekly hang still persists. It's a commitment in time that "busy professionals" ostensibly had no time for which is why I think it was so unpopular in SF but it really killed a big part of the vibe of the city for me.
- e40 4y ago
  I think a weekly hang is really nice. My best friend and I would walk on Sunday morning. Did it for 8+ years until he fell ill and passed away. I really miss those Sundays.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I’ve never heard of this sort of thing. It almost seems more like an informal club than a group of friends. (Not to knock the idea, it seems interesting).
  - shalmanese 4y ago
    Really? I feel like every time I'm in another part of the country for more than a few days, one of my friends will invite me to their weekly hang and I get to meet a bunch of other cool folk.
    - rocketbop 4y ago
      I don’t live in the US but I’ve also never heard of this or really come across it. Is it about going to someone’s home? Or meeting at a bar? I can’t quite visualise what you’re talking about.
      - deleted 4y ago
Freire_Herval 4y ago
This is ultimately what I discovered. Friends with groups are superficial, you really only have one or two real friends but the superficial friendships formed with large groups is actually more important for your mental health simply because humans are designed to live and interact this way. Historically, humans lived in tribal groups where they're in constant contact with a large but cohesive group of people. So in terms of anthropology this is the more natural way.
legerdemain 4y ago
For a while, that was my strategy to cultivate a social life: organizing brunches with 6-10 former teammates and acquaintances. As social occasions, the brunches didn't lead to anything in my life. The guests made extremely generic smalltalk. I don't know if anyone had fun. I didn't get invited to anything else in those people's lives. I was kind of glad that COVID killed the brunches because of how fruitless they were. I get the idea that spending time one on one can turn into giving each other life updates instead of a more intimate exchange. But group events can also be really shallow and demotivating.
- thesnowdog 4y ago
  That sounds like too many people; three or four usually works best in my experience.
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    That's 1.5 to 2 couples. I haven't had a lot of single coworkers who also do brunch instead of, say, DOTA.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Is "couples" the reason? I (implicitly, no idea why now that you bring it up) read the other descriptions of weeklies as not-with-partner events. Perhaps not strictly not-with-partner, but default without. "Couples" puts everybody in involuntary performance mode. It starts super harmless, the "and" element (the side in a couple that came along) having a natural desire to be good with the friends of their partner (the "and" side is prone to greatly overestimate the depth of the relationship that lead to the invite!), the other side (the one that had the "link") trying to make their partner feel good with that group. So far so good, everybody does the reasonable thing, sounds super nice. But that very same thing happens within every couple, nobody in the room who isn't in "prove myself to my partner" mode. Before you know it escalates into a take-no-prisoners battle of showing off which couple functions best. It's certainly possible with couples despite all this, but there is infinitely more that could go wrong along the way.
pengaru 4y ago
How is this not just tribalism vs. meaningful 1-on-1 connections?
- lannisterstark 4y ago
  It is. OP probably isn't thinking(or cares about, if I were to be cynical) about the people in the group who are peer-pressured into joining (by some of their other 'friends' probably) and are just anxious/awkward throughout but can't/don't want to say anything.
  - csallen 4y ago
    I haven't experienced anyone in my friend group being pressured by others to join into group activities, and I'm pretty perceptive about interpersonal issues. More commonly what I've seen happen is occasionally two people I'm friends with don't get along with each other, and have negative feelings coming to events/hangs where the other person will be there.
- csallen 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with having meaningful 1-on-1 connections. But how many of those can you really have in your life, simultaneously? Read the other comments on this article, and there are so many men in their 30s, 40s, 50s+ saying that they have a partner, a sibling or two, and 0-2 friends, and that's enough, they feel saturated and don't want anymore friends. In my opinion, this is because they're treating every relationship as if it has to be the highest level of meaningful 1-on-1 connection. I'm super duper close to my brother, my girlfriend, my mom, and to one high school buddy of mine, to the point where we talk for hours a week, every week. Beyond that, I have lots of friends, literally several dozen friends, many of whom I absolutely love, and who I've gotten super vulnerable with, who feel comfortable dropping by unannounced. But I don't make a big deal out of needing to hang out with them 1-on-1 all the time.
lannisterstark 4y ago
Ugh, no thanks personally. I know that the friend I'm hanging out with will get my jokes - inside jokes, weird humor etc. Now I have to worry about an entire group, some of whom may not like my humor, and now I have to put on the 'you're in public, be brusque and minimal' anxiety filled mask, and can't open up as I would in 1-1 or 1-2 with a friend or just a couple of friends. Now add that to other people invited who may feel the same way. Maybe they're only comfortable with that one or two friends they hang out with, and not the rest of us they don't know. Groups aren't my thing sadly. Nor, I assume, are a thing for many young people.
- akvadrako 4y ago
  This is a weird persective for me, who mostly hangs out in groups. I've never thought about having to impress each individual member of the group at once or that I should be brusque; I dont even know what that means. And we have plenty of inside jokes and weird humor.
  - yakshemash 4y ago
    I am firmly in GP's camp, but I think this difference has more to do with introverted vs extroverted personality types than weird vs. not weird perspectives. Some people find it hard to express themselves in group environment because group environments tend to be highly competitive for 'air time', at which introverts are at a great disadvantage.
    - akvadrako 4y ago
      I don't agree. I'm pretty introverted and that's one reason group environments are better. You can talk less and take a break from even paying attention more easily than 1-on-1.
  - lannisterstark 4y ago
    >And we have plenty of inside jokes and weird humor. You've never had a person or two in the group that was sensitive? >I've never thought about having to impress each individual member It's not about 'impressing everyone.' It's more about being conscious that everyone may be listening to your comments and/or judging you. This gets worse the more anxious person you are, and/or if you were an introvert. I don't think it's a great idea to tell those people to 'get over it' either as we used to in the 80s.
protocolture 4y ago
Some kind of Metcalfe Friend Group.
Alifatisk 4y ago
"...things played out exactly as described by the article -- some of them hit it off, became friends with each other, and started initiating invites and events without me" Is that a good thing?
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Unless you are planning to be the middleman and change a fee, yes.
- csallen 4y ago
  Totally! Especially considering that they also invited me the vast majority of the time.
jwmoz 4y ago
You know what they say, 3 is the magic number.
simonh 4y ago
Groups is an important point I think, preferably based on a common interest. I'm fortunate in that I'm a tabletop gamer, and as it's an inherently social activity I've always been able to find a roleplaying games group or club wherever I've moved. I'd be interested if there are any other hobbies or interests that have a similar built in social component?
- csallen 4y ago
  Poker! I had an awesome group of poker friends in SF, maybe 10-12 of us who'd play regularly, although on any given weekend it'd only be 4-8 who'd show up. We'd sit around a table playing poker for hours and hours, and after half a year, we were pretty close!
adave 4y ago
An introverts nightmare is to meet random folks along with other and without a purpose.Call a spade a spade, its a group event and that itself is even harder than 1-1 hang.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  What you describe is social anxiety, not introversion. Introverted people without social anxiety exist. I'm one of them. I have no fear of meeting new people and the like, but social situations exhaust me more quickly than others and I need alone-time to recharge.
golergka 4y ago
There's an easy lifehack to get around it: host parties and introduce your friends to one another. I've done it multiple times in the past, and there's at least two married couples that I've introduced to each other.
- csallen 4y ago
  Yes, I do a lot of these! Very chill house "parties" with a handful of people.
snarf21 4y ago
I have found that making friends around a hobby or activity is quite easy even as an adult .. Throwing yourself into a hobby (photography, pickle ball, boardgames, running, etc.) and you will meet people who love that hobby and throw them selves into it completely .. They will talk to you for hours about it .. If you are a nice person and just ask for help, people will be available to help you in your journey .. In those groups, you will likely find a few people to start developing a friendship with .. I think it takes the risky and scary part of making friends away as it just feels like hanging out until you find those persons you click with
JohnBooty 4y ago
In addition, hangouts are just more fun with more people Love everything you said. Additionally: when you're hanging out in a group, you avoid those awkward situations where some people (or their partners!) might be wondering if it was a potential "date" kind of situation.
neop1x 4y ago
An an introvert I have a different experience. When I am with a larger group, people start talking to each other about subjects that don't really interest me, and I tend to switch to listening mode, not interacting much with anyone. I can converse for hours with one person, however.

genocidicbunny 4y ago

I'm glad that worked for you. My experience has become that as my friends groups have gotten older, getting larger groups together has become very difficult. You have to plan it far enough in advance that everyone has sufficient notice, you need a venue large enough to host everyone, people have kids that need to be accommodated somehow, and everyone also lives further apart. All of these mean that we've gone from getting together once or twice a month to maybe once every 3 months or so. So while everyone still keeps in touch online, in-person meetups have reduced a lot in frequency.

prmoustache 4y ago
You shouldn't obsess on having everybody or even the majority of your groups together. Besides your friends also have friends and vice-versa that aren't part of your circle so you shouldn't even think of having any kind of exclusivity. People come and go in your life. What I am struggle with aren't local acquaintances but friends that aren't local to me anymore.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  At this point, the obsession isn't about having everybody or the majority present, its about having the minority, or even anyone at all, present.
amerkhalid 4y ago
Yeah this is my experience too. Especially, once you have kids, it is so hard to align everybody's nap times, classes, etc. And if you somehow are able to get whole group together, then too many preschoolers around is just chaotic. Heard it will be easier once kids are older. But for now, we usually hang out with one or maybe two families at a time.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Would encourage still prioritizing 1:1 time with close friends. Even if that means traveling. It's a different experience, though I agree introducing friends to other friends is usually a pleasure.

rjh29 4y ago

I hate hanging out in groups and almost exclusively do 1:1. I have no problem talking to my friends for hours on end, it never feels like a chore and I always makes time. Your experience reads quite strangely to me. Even if there is nothing new to talk about, spending time with friends is rewarding in itself.

fisherjeff 4y ago
I don’t think they were saying that the 1:1 time itself was a chore, so much as the logistics behind them. I completely agree. Another nice thing about group hangouts is that not everyone needs to be there so it makes scheduling a lot simpler.
- rjh29 4y ago
  Just the wording in that particular post made it seem like a lot of work. I have had 'friends' like that in the past, and if you need things to 'pile up' so you can hold a conversation, and you find it hard to motivate yourself to do the logistics and make time, maybe they're not the most compatible people for you. However I can't judge, because I personally dislike group hangouts, so I can understand if conversely someone finds arranging 1:1 meetings difficult.
baby 4y ago
It’s a scaling issue. If you have a lot of friends 1:1 don’t scale.
- rektide 4y ago
  Strongly disagree. It's not a scaling issue. 1:1's don't renew. You have to keep feeding the relationship. The relationship can be extremely rewarding for chit chat & conversation, but it could drop at any point, and become a memory. It has no self-maintaining spirit, no ability to repair itself if one person loses some availability or time. A group can fend for itself in a far different way. Assemblages can have members come and go, but maintain a core purpose and identity. There's rhizomatic affiliations that can find each other & get new currents & excitements going, whereas in 1:1's the potentials for connection are bounded. Closed systems can only keep processing the same pieces of energy again and again for so long. They can steal some vitality from the surrounding, but the lifetime of the relationship is limited. You need more open dynamical systems if you want to keep interesting things going. Long term survival requires systems that can perpetuate & share themselves. 1:1's by definition cannot.

denvaar 4y ago

Thats an interesting take. I prefer 1:1 type of events, or maybe a small group. I just find it easier to hold a conversation that way. I don’t have too many friends, so the time factor is not an issue for me.

rjh29 4y ago
I think 1:1 is best for close friends who you have a strong connection with, and groups are better for more casual friends. You can have a group hangout with people who in 1:1 format you'd struggle to converse with. Personally I don't have any of those friends anymore so I don't do group hangouts.
- pfannkuchen 4y ago
  I also strongly prefer 1:1 or small groups and I’m confused how one can be friends with a person they would struggle to converse with 1:1?
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    I can relate. For a lot of people, "friends" is someone you might find yourself sitting with at the same table at a group dinner or playing the same board game with a bunch of other people. But meet up with them one on one and you will quickly run out of things to talk about.

shalmanese 4y ago

One thing I found strange about SF is that I never found a group that would do the weekly hang. The weekly hang is a socially porous experience, it has a fixed location and fixed start time but everything else is improvised. Different people could dip in and out, people felt free to bring new friends, people they just started dating, friends from out of town etc. Some people came once and never again, others become regulars. The hallmark of a great weekly hang is that the entire initial cohort gets replaced but the weekly hang still persists. It's a commitment in time that "busy professionals" ostensibly had no time for which is why I think it was so unpopular in SF but it really killed a big part of the vibe of the city for me.

e40 4y ago
I think a weekly hang is really nice. My best friend and I would walk on Sunday morning. Did it for 8+ years until he fell ill and passed away. I really miss those Sundays.
bee_rider 4y ago
I’ve never heard of this sort of thing. It almost seems more like an informal club than a group of friends. (Not to knock the idea, it seems interesting).
- shalmanese 4y ago
  Really? I feel like every time I'm in another part of the country for more than a few days, one of my friends will invite me to their weekly hang and I get to meet a bunch of other cool folk.
  - rocketbop 4y ago
    I don’t live in the US but I’ve also never heard of this or really come across it. Is it about going to someone’s home? Or meeting at a bar? I can’t quite visualise what you’re talking about.
    - deleted 4y ago

Freire_Herval 4y ago

This is ultimately what I discovered. Friends with groups are superficial, you really only have one or two real friends but the superficial friendships formed with large groups is actually more important for your mental health simply because humans are designed to live and interact this way. Historically, humans lived in tribal groups where they're in constant contact with a large but cohesive group of people. So in terms of anthropology this is the more natural way.

legerdemain 4y ago

For a while, that was my strategy to cultivate a social life: organizing brunches with 6-10 former teammates and acquaintances. As social occasions, the brunches didn't lead to anything in my life. The guests made extremely generic smalltalk. I don't know if anyone had fun. I didn't get invited to anything else in those people's lives. I was kind of glad that COVID killed the brunches because of how fruitless they were. I get the idea that spending time one on one can turn into giving each other life updates instead of a more intimate exchange. But group events can also be really shallow and demotivating.

thesnowdog 4y ago
That sounds like too many people; three or four usually works best in my experience.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  That's 1.5 to 2 couples. I haven't had a lot of single coworkers who also do brunch instead of, say, DOTA.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Is "couples" the reason? I (implicitly, no idea why now that you bring it up) read the other descriptions of weeklies as not-with-partner events. Perhaps not strictly not-with-partner, but default without. "Couples" puts everybody in involuntary performance mode. It starts super harmless, the "and" element (the side in a couple that came along) having a natural desire to be good with the friends of their partner (the "and" side is prone to greatly overestimate the depth of the relationship that lead to the invite!), the other side (the one that had the "link") trying to make their partner feel good with that group. So far so good, everybody does the reasonable thing, sounds super nice. But that very same thing happens within every couple, nobody in the room who isn't in "prove myself to my partner" mode. Before you know it escalates into a take-no-prisoners battle of showing off which couple functions best. It's certainly possible with couples despite all this, but there is infinitely more that could go wrong along the way.

pengaru 4y ago

How is this not just tribalism vs. meaningful 1-on-1 connections?

lannisterstark 4y ago
It is. OP probably isn't thinking(or cares about, if I were to be cynical) about the people in the group who are peer-pressured into joining (by some of their other 'friends' probably) and are just anxious/awkward throughout but can't/don't want to say anything.
- csallen 4y ago
  I haven't experienced anyone in my friend group being pressured by others to join into group activities, and I'm pretty perceptive about interpersonal issues. More commonly what I've seen happen is occasionally two people I'm friends with don't get along with each other, and have negative feelings coming to events/hangs where the other person will be there.
csallen 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with having meaningful 1-on-1 connections. But how many of those can you really have in your life, simultaneously? Read the other comments on this article, and there are so many men in their 30s, 40s, 50s+ saying that they have a partner, a sibling or two, and 0-2 friends, and that's enough, they feel saturated and don't want anymore friends. In my opinion, this is because they're treating every relationship as if it has to be the highest level of meaningful 1-on-1 connection. I'm super duper close to my brother, my girlfriend, my mom, and to one high school buddy of mine, to the point where we talk for hours a week, every week. Beyond that, I have lots of friends, literally several dozen friends, many of whom I absolutely love, and who I've gotten super vulnerable with, who feel comfortable dropping by unannounced. But I don't make a big deal out of needing to hang out with them 1-on-1 all the time.

lannisterstark 4y ago

Ugh, no thanks personally. I know that the friend I'm hanging out with will get my jokes - inside jokes, weird humor etc. Now I have to worry about an entire group, some of whom may not like my humor, and now I have to put on the 'you're in public, be brusque and minimal' anxiety filled mask, and can't open up as I would in 1-1 or 1-2 with a friend or just a couple of friends. Now add that to other people invited who may feel the same way. Maybe they're only comfortable with that one or two friends they hang out with, and not the rest of us they don't know. Groups aren't my thing sadly. Nor, I assume, are a thing for many young people.

akvadrako 4y ago
This is a weird persective for me, who mostly hangs out in groups. I've never thought about having to impress each individual member of the group at once or that I should be brusque; I dont even know what that means. And we have plenty of inside jokes and weird humor.
- yakshemash 4y ago
  I am firmly in GP's camp, but I think this difference has more to do with introverted vs extroverted personality types than weird vs. not weird perspectives. Some people find it hard to express themselves in group environment because group environments tend to be highly competitive for 'air time', at which introverts are at a great disadvantage.
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    I don't agree. I'm pretty introverted and that's one reason group environments are better. You can talk less and take a break from even paying attention more easily than 1-on-1.
- lannisterstark 4y ago
  >And we have plenty of inside jokes and weird humor. You've never had a person or two in the group that was sensitive? >I've never thought about having to impress each individual member It's not about 'impressing everyone.' It's more about being conscious that everyone may be listening to your comments and/or judging you. This gets worse the more anxious person you are, and/or if you were an introvert. I don't think it's a great idea to tell those people to 'get over it' either as we used to in the 80s.

protocolture 4y ago

Some kind of Metcalfe Friend Group.

Alifatisk 4y ago

"...things played out exactly as described by the article -- some of them hit it off, became friends with each other, and started initiating invites and events without me" Is that a good thing?

goodpoint 4y ago
Unless you are planning to be the middleman and change a fee, yes.
csallen 4y ago
Totally! Especially considering that they also invited me the vast majority of the time.

jwmoz 4y ago

You know what they say, 3 is the magic number.

simonh 4y ago

Groups is an important point I think, preferably based on a common interest. I'm fortunate in that I'm a tabletop gamer, and as it's an inherently social activity I've always been able to find a roleplaying games group or club wherever I've moved. I'd be interested if there are any other hobbies or interests that have a similar built in social component?

csallen 4y ago
Poker! I had an awesome group of poker friends in SF, maybe 10-12 of us who'd play regularly, although on any given weekend it'd only be 4-8 who'd show up. We'd sit around a table playing poker for hours and hours, and after half a year, we were pretty close!

adave 4y ago

An introverts nightmare is to meet random folks along with other and without a purpose.Call a spade a spade, its a group event and that itself is even harder than 1-1 hang.

acuozzo 4y ago
What you describe is social anxiety, not introversion. Introverted people without social anxiety exist. I'm one of them. I have no fear of meeting new people and the like, but social situations exhaust me more quickly than others and I need alone-time to recharge.

golergka 4y ago

There's an easy lifehack to get around it: host parties and introduce your friends to one another. I've done it multiple times in the past, and there's at least two married couples that I've introduced to each other.

csallen 4y ago
Yes, I do a lot of these! Very chill house "parties" with a handful of people.

snarf21 4y ago

I have found that making friends around a hobby or activity is quite easy even as an adult .. Throwing yourself into a hobby (photography, pickle ball, boardgames, running, etc.) and you will meet people who love that hobby and throw them selves into it completely .. They will talk to you for hours about it .. If you are a nice person and just ask for help, people will be available to help you in your journey .. In those groups, you will likely find a few people to start developing a friendship with .. I think it takes the risky and scary part of making friends away as it just feels like hanging out until you find those persons you click with

JohnBooty 4y ago

In addition, hangouts are just more fun with more people Love everything you said. Additionally: when you're hanging out in a group, you avoid those awkward situations where some people (or their partners!) might be wondering if it was a potential "date" kind of situation.

neop1x 4y ago

An an introvert I have a different experience. When I am with a larger group, people start talking to each other about subjects that don't really interest me, and I tend to switch to listening mode, not interacting much with anyone. I can converse for hours with one person, however.