How to Make Friends in a New City: Based on Personal Experience

I am 34 now and have lived in 6 different cities (Seoul - Toronto - New York - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Hong Kong) growing up, pursuing my studies, and going through career changes which allowed me to make a diverse group of friends lasting for decades. Now, I am running an app that has helped over 2000 people find friends online through deep conversations. I have compiled here everything that I have tried in my life to make new friends, including what worked, what didn’t, and what I haven’t tried but look forward to trying, and some rules of thumb that I have developed for maintaining long-lasting friendships based on my personal experience.

What Worked

Taking Same Classes

When I moved to Ithaca, New York for university, I met some of my best friends by taking the same classes. There was this one friend that I was acquainted with through mutual friends but was not that close to. When we ended up taking a biology class together, we had a lot of common topics to talk about, starting with what homework we had to quizzing each other for upcoming tests. Not only that, we went to the library to study together and naturally grabbed meals together before and after. Having common topics of discussion and spending a lot of time together doing daily activities brought us closer. It has been more than 10 years since graduation, but I would still crash at his place when I happen to fly to a nearby city.

By the way, this is also how I had made friends when I was a kid in Seoul, South Korea whom I still talk to to this day: going to the same school classes and after-school classes together for many years.

New Student Welcome Events

I met my wife at the new student orientation in college when I participated as a student leader, so yeah, school events can be a big deal :) In grad school, I also met one of my closest friends at, again, a new student welcome event. We shared many interests and did a lot of things together including playing tennis, going out to eat at different restaurants in Koreatown, grabbing coffee, and going to clubs in LA with mutual friends. I think the success rate of making new friends at these events is very high because everyone is primed for making new connections and you are also excited about being in a new environment, which means you have a lot of things to explore together.

Hobbies (A Cappella)

I joined an a cappella group in my freshman year in college, and continued for the rest of 4 years. Meeting the same people twice a week and performing at various school events together throughout the academic year created so many fun memories. And our shared love for singing made socializing very easy: gather at someone’s apartment or go to a karaoke bar and sing! While it is true that the friendship was mostly only tied by our shared love for singing and didn’t end up lasting a couple of years after graduating, the sense of community and the excitement that we shared as a group was electric!

Sports (Tennis, Climbing)

I made many friends playing tennis.

I had electrifying times when I played tennis and climbed together with new friends I met when I moved to Los Angeles for my PhD and to San Francisco for my full-time job. Similar to hobbies, we were loosely tied only by our shared love for the sport. While this can guarantee a big group of people that you can get acquainted with, getting close to someone at a deeper level needs more emotional resonance and more shared experiences outside of the sport as well. If I were actively looking for new friends, I would’ve actively tried to engage with some that I liked outside of the sport, starting with grabbing a meal together before/after a tennis/climbing session. I actually did that a couple of times, and I could feel that our friendship could get deeper if we kept at it, but I was moving around a lot and I also wasn’t really looking to add to my friendship circle at the time, so I let it fizzle out.

Work Colleagues

When I was working at Apple in San Francisco Bay Area, I got really lucky because I ended up making friends with colleagues who sat next to me and in front of me. Maybe the proximity had a little bit to do with it, but it so happened that one loved playing tennis and the other loved climbing, both of which I love. We all had immigrant backgrounds (originally from Germany, Russia, and South Korea, living in the US for over a decade) so there was some shared understanding that didn’t need to be spoken but was felt. We hung out even outside of work playing our favorite sports and spent holidays together at a cabin owned by one of them. Every time I visit California, I make sure to hang out with them, and they honestly feel like good old friends from college.

Friends of Friends

There are too many to count and they all happened very organically. The fact that you are both friends with this one person probably indicates that you will also share similar interests and emotional resonance. There were several cases where I only knew of my friend’s friend and initially felt a bit awkward, but as we all hung out together, we got to understand each other better and sometimes got closer to each other even more than our mutual friend. So, be open to hanging out with your friend’s friends. They have already filtered the people who are most likely to be friends with for you!

Friendship App (Bubblic)

I made Bubblic to help people make new friends through deep conversations

I created Bubblic after my painful lonely period during grad school when my project was going nowhere and all my closest friends started dating which led me to spend many weekends and weekday evenings alone. I am currently in Hong Kong with zero friends here other than my wife, but it is fascinating that I actually made friends through my own app with people from all over the world (namely New Jersey, Texas, and North Carolina in USA; Germany, Swiss, and Portugal, globally) whom I exchange messages with EVERYDAY that I don't feel lonely at all. I designed Bubblic based on my own experience of feeling stuck in having to make new deep meaningful friends from scratch in the midst of my PhD busyness and wishing there was an app that could bring two strangers close together through deep conversations instead of swiping on profile photos which felt superficial.

What Didn’t Work (But Could Have If I Tried a Bit Harder)

Hosting Game Nights

I only hosted a couple of nights of Super Smash Bros and Mario Party for my friends and their partners, and went to play Settlers of Catan hosted by my lab mate. Although they were really fun during the game, the new acquaintances I made there didn’t lead to anything further than that, probably because they were partners of my friends. If I had hosted it for a wider pool of people, the result might have been different.

Neighbors

Neighbors can, in theory, be your ideal new friends since you live close by and can see each other regularly. However, I discovered that I want to be left alone and have my privacy after a long day, and having a small talk with my new neighbor is the last thing I want to do when I just want to walk through my front door and collapse on my bed. During grad school, a neighbor who just moved in next door introduced himself one day and offered he would like to invite me over one day for dinner, but I ended up secretly avoiding running into him after that for the rest of the year by sneaking in and out of my apartment in the mornings and evenings.

Petsitting

My adorable cats on a window hammock in Hong Kong.

I have two adorable cats, and I managed to connect with a couple through a mutual friend who also had a cat that needed to be pet-sat. The couple were similar ages as me and my wife, so we exchanged pleasantries and said we should hang out sometime!… which never materialized. We ended up just being friends-with-benefit sitting each others’ cats for free, with no other interactions that would bring us closer as friends because we were all too busy with our lives. It was a mutually beneficial relationship that saved us a lot of money, though!

Volunteering

When I was 16 in Toronto, Canada, I volunteered on weekends as a facilitator at a community center for children with mental disabilities. I worked with coordinators who would organize activities for the children for 2 hours every week for about 2 years. Despite seeing the same coordinators for 2 years, I did not make friends with them, probably because we had different duties and there was the age gap. If there were other volunteers around my age, it might have been different, though.

Randomly Assigned Roommates

I had randomly been assigned roommates twice in my life, once in college and once during grad school, and both times, I did not vibe well with them. Aside from incompatibility, I think it is because of the same reason as why I couldn’t become friends with my neighbors: my desire for privacy after a long day didn’t open many opportunities for us to get closer. However, it was a totally different story for roommates that I got to choose. With the people that I was already close with, I didn’t mind being in the same space as them after a long day, and we would do many activities together like grocery shopping, playing sports, and grabbing meals, and we are still very good friends to this day.

Going to Bars

I went to a couple of bar crawls in Los Angeles when I was in grad school. The moment can be magical in the midst of it: everybody is drunk and is feeling more friendly than usual, so there are lots of hugging, whispering, and talking to each other like long-lost friends. I would exchange numbers with a few of them, but when I woke up the next morning after the hangover, I would not want to contact them. Those magical moments stayed magical in my memory and did not carry over to my sober life.

Chat Apps (Reddit, Discord)

When I first got Discord during the pandemic and joined a bunch of random servers as everyone was stuck at home, some people would add me and we would get into intense, fast-paced conversations. I had one that lasted for about a week and I was learning a lot about this person that I thought maybe we can be real-life friends. But she one day decided to ghost me forever and delete her account, and I never heard from her again. Similar experiences on Reddit as well. So, if you want quick dopamine-laden chats with a random username, apps like Reddit and Discord are right up your alley. However, I do hear success stories of how couples and friends had initially met on Reddit and later met in real life, but that wasn’t the case for me.

Haven’t Tried:

Meetup Apps

I heard some good stories online about apps like TimeLeft and 222 where they match you based on some questionnaires with 5 other people for a dinner together followed by drinks at a bar. Some friends have also tried Meetup.com with some mixed results. I like that you get to physically meet people instead of just chatting with strangers online. However, they work only if you are in a dense enough area.

Church

I heard stories from my lab mate and friend from college how they were able to quickly find a community in a new country or a new state by going to church on Sundays. I used to hear that there were many cute girls who go to church during college, so I would recommend my single friends to go because I had already been dating at the time. Aside from going to church out of obligation when I was young in Korea and Canada, I never really went.

Dog Parks

I have two cats, but I heard that people often make new friends when they bring their dogs to a dog park. It makes sense because dogs are silly sometimes and they can help break the ice between strangers. Also, the shared love for these silly creatures can bring hearts close together fast, just like how so many cat lovers can laugh at funny cat videos and feel united.

Rules of Thumb for Long-Lasting Friendships

24-Hour Rule

When I acquaint new friends and I want to get closer to them, I make sure to follow up by sending them a text or a voice message. If I had met them in person, it could be about when we should grab lunch together or go to an event together that I heard about. If I had met them online, like on Bubblic, I would respond to their message within 24 hours to keep the conversation going. I’ve had times when I thought it would be ok to reply a day later or even a few days later because we had a good interaction, but no. 24 hours is the window for keeping the intimacy alive, keeping the juice flowing. So, don’t be lazy. Reply or follow up within 24 hours, earlier the better. It only takes 5 minutes but can lead to a life-long friendship. However, the rule does loosen up to 48 hours once the friendship is fully established with months of interactions under your belt. But I still wouldn’t go beyond 48 hours without a good excuse for doing so.

Thinking-of-You Message

When you see, hear, or experience something that reminds you of your friend, let them know. Not only does this provide an opportunity to catch up and add to your conversation, but it also brings you emotionally closer because it shows them that you are thinking of them. Just imagine someone had told you that something reminded them of you. Doesn’t that give you the butterflies in your stomach?

Proactive Without Expectations

I often hear people say that they doubt their friendship because they are the ones who always reach out first. To that, I say, you should reach out to them without expecting the same back in return because reaching out to them by itself should make you feel happy. In my friendships, I tend to be the one who reach out first, texting about how something reminded me of them or my travel plans to near where they live so we can plan to meet each other. When they don’t reach out first, it is either they are too busy or they don’t know what to say to reach out so they choose not to. One thing I learned about people is that most of them don’t have enough activation energy to act on things that they know they want to or should do, so they don’t act on anything instead. You can be the one with the agency in your relationships and lead them to the desirable future. And being proactive without expectations applies to your friendships generally. Whenever you do something for your friends, do it out of your own desire because it makes you feel happy and gives you joy to help them, not because you expect them to help you in the future. Friendships are not business transactions. Friendships return in the joy you feel inside, not in compensations.

Cut Off Energy Vampires

My introverted friends tell me that they tend to attract energy vampires: those who like to talk about themselves all the time without listening. I’ve had a few in my life. I am very easy going and I smile a lot, so some people assume they can easily entertain me without giving me much respect. Some just lack the EQ to listen to other people’s stories and they think they have the most interesting stories to tell. When I sense my boundaries being crossed where I feel my energy and time are just being uni-directionally sucked up by someone, I immediately place some distance between us by interacting with them less. They may feel a little hurt because I would sometimes do this pretty abruptly, but I treat my time and energy as precious assets, and if I see that the future state of our relationship is non-existent, I start marching towards it as soon as I can.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed my lifetime of friendship summarized into one blog post and found some of it useful to your life. As this is a personal experience, your mileage may vary by a lot, so take it as a reference point and come back to it as you continue in your friendship-making journey. And, if you want to give my friendship app a try, feel free to check it out and give a shoutout to VioletKite717 (that’s my username)!