finding friends

[firecat]

inspired by snippy

for some folks, online friends don't fill the same social needs as in-person friends.

for those of you who have had difficulty at times making in-person friends, and have found ways to solve that problem, what worked for you?

Some things that have worked for me are

• inviting co-workers to a home-made dinner
  
• joining and organizing ongoing religious/spiritual groups (in my case, eclectic/women's spirituality/shamanic)
  
• participating in and organizing in-person meetings of people I knew from online forums
  

Things that seem to work for other people that don't usually work for me are

• parties
  
• bars
  
• volunteering (I love volunteering, but I haven't usually made friends that way)
  
• classes
  

Comments

[punkmom.livejournal.com]

All right, I'm weird, I have the opposite problem. I make plenty of in-person contacts and friends, but the on-line variety are not so easy. Almost every one that I correspond with online I knew in-person first. There are a few notable exceptions, and a few that I met both ways at nearly the same time.

I talk to people, which I realize isn't for everyone. I talk to people wherever I go and whatever I do. Sometimes it results in new friendships, and sometimes it just results in a pleasant experience on that day, at that time. In either case, I've had a better time than if I hadn't talked to someone.