The pandemic has left many people isolated, but there are tried-and-tested strategies for expanding your social circle. Photo / Getty Images
The pandemic has left many people isolated, but there are tried-and-tested strategies for expanding your social circle. Photo / Getty Images
The UK is in the grips of a global crisis, but not the one you’re thinking of. According to research from The Survey Center on American Life, people are suffering from what they dub “a friendship recession”. These findings are backed up by a YouGov study into friendship that found one in five Britons say they have become distanced from close friends because of the pandemic, while 40 per cent lost contact with some friends entirely.
Many of us have found that it’s far easier to let friendships wither than to make new ones. Even our jobs no longer offer the middle-aged everyday social interactions – there are 300,000 fewer 50 to 65-year-olds in work now than before 2020, while many more of us are working from home. The ease of doing everything online – from shopping to exercise classes – as well as the way we got used to saying no to social events that went on in the pandemic – has contributed to an epidemic of loneliness. And it matters. Strong social connections are associated with a reduced risk of dementia and other age-related memory issues.
Sarah Siegert is a friendship coach whose work was inspired by her own experience of moving to the UK from Germany five years ago, with her only friend being her partner. She now runs a six-month course to help others, especially expats, make friends (via her Instagram account @friendships.abroad).
Her first rule begins at home: “I always recommend people start with having a healthy relationship with themselves before they try to make friends with others. People have to feel confident, worthy and good enough by themselves without needing anyone else to validate them.”
We also need to admit that we want to make friends and to recognise that it doesn’t happen by accident. Marisa Franco is a psychologist, expert on friendship and author of the bestselling Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make – and Keep – Friends. She points to a study that showed “older adults who think that friendships happen based on luck are lonelier five years later than those who think it’s based on effort … you have to go to volunteer, to a place of worship, find a book club.”
2. Start small
Putting “make new friends” on your to-do list creates Herculean barriers to getting anything done. Seigert instead recommends “small doable steps”. For example, “if you know you enjoy Zumba, look up some local classes and just doing the research is a first step you can feel proud of,” she says.
Psychologists have long valued the importance of what they dub “weak ties”. Tiny, passing social interactions have benefits that are different but as valuable as deeper connections. What’s more, they develop our socialising “muscles”, which need flexing just as much as our biceps. “Utilise the resources around you such as going to local parks, engaging with neighbours or talking to the woman in the local newsagents,” says Seigert. “It doesn’t need to be a massive new thing.”
Taking part in your local parkrun is a great way to meet new people and improve your fitness. Photo / Getty Images
3. Sport for all
Earlier this year, researchers in the Netherlands found that patients with mental health issues who did two or three 45-minute group runs a week felt as much improvement as a comparable group using antidepressants. In addition, the runners had the physical benefits of weight loss, reduced blood pressure and improved heart function.
In other words, if you take up group sport, even if you don’t make new friends, you’ll improve both mental and physical health. But everyone I know who has joined a team or club has found new friendships to be a happy by-product. Twelve years ago, I went to a tennis drop-in at my local courts in the mistaken belief that I had learnt to play as a child (I hadn’t). As my abilities improved, I was drafted into a team and have found the Highbury Ladies Thirds to be the wisest, warmest and wittiest of women. I came for the forehands, but I’ve stayed for the friends.
Age and lack of experience is no impediment. If you think you’re too old for football, try walking football, a growing sport for both men and women that reduces the risk of knee or ankle injuries. The number of people playing netball increased by 92 per cent last year, especially among women over 50. Prefer to run or jog? There are over 1650 athletics clubs in the UK and most do not have speed tests on entry, welcoming runners of all abilities.
Of course, hobbies that don’t involve bats, balls or rackets can be just as good at improving mental health and fostering friendships. Book clubs, bridge and pottery all allow for less pressurised conversation from which friendships can naturally grow.
4. Volunteering – help yourself by helping others
Dan McVeigh, 45, has direct experience of both sport and volunteering as a way of meeting new people and found that the latter has the edge. He now works as the volunteer impact and engagement manager at parkrun UK: the free, timed five-kilometre run held weekly across the country. But his involvement began in 2011, when he started out as just one of the millions who line up in their local parks to run every Saturday at 9am.
Later, returning to London after a period of working away, he found himself in a new area where he knew almost no one. “I think I instinctively knew that volunteering at parkrun would be a good way of meeting people locally,” he says.
Despite describing himself as “naturally introverted”, the shared endeavours of setting up the runs and timing the participants lead to “friendships organically developing – we’d have a coffee in the bakery afterwards and chat and then I was invited by a fellow volunteer to join her pub quiz team. I’ve now been going every week for two years.”
Sarah Oliver, a teacher in her 40s originally from the US, knew she’d meet new people through volunteering, although she primarily chose working in her local ecology centre and a community garden in order to do what she loves – being outside and in nature.
“At the nature reserve,” she says, “I’m the youngest there – the others have all seen the Beatles live. They have a different life experience and if I’m having a difficult time with something they always have something to help.”
The latest survey of members from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations found that while only 14 per cent of respondents cited making new friends as their motivation, once volunteering was under way, 87 per cent said that it had helped them meet new people with 68 per cent reporting that they felt less isolated.
While the rise of the internet has robbed us of many social interactions, it can also provide ways in which we can make new ones.
“Meetup is a great website where people host different activities like book groups,” says Seigert, “while lots of my clients have used apps like Bumble BFF, which uses dating app technology but for friendships instead.” You swipe for people you’d want to hang out with just as you’d swipe to find new partners.
A quick look at Meetup shows there’s a plethora of friend-making opportunities to be had. The Bexley and Bromley Belles, for example, is a group of more than 100 women aged 45 and over, all looking to meet new friends in the area. Elsewhere on the site, there are sober socials, badminton clubs and burlesque dance groups.
6. Keep it local
Sometimes friends are not necessarily those most like you, but those who live nearest. It’s far easier to nurture new relationships if you don’t have to trek to see them.
Grace Cameron, 63, had lived in her garden square for over two decades but had never felt close to her neighbours. This changed during the pandemic when the council stopped tending the garden so they grouped together to do it themselves. “I got to meet a huge amount of people that I’d never been on more than nodding terms with,” she says. “We now meet for supper, will cook for each other if someone is ill and share stories as we kneel in the mud for two hours weeding.”
It has transformed her sense of place and community. “I get so much value and warmth seeing people in the square and gardening with them. I could never move away.”
The joy of friendships associated with an activity or place is that you can get all the benefits of socialising without the labour of having to organise it. Photo / Getty Images
7. How to deepen new friendships (but don’t worry if you don’t)
Dr Franco refers to the importance of “re-potting – varying the setting in which you interact to deepen your relationship. Find someone you connect with and ask them if they want to get a coffee sometime.”
But this can be hard – Seigert says it can feel like asking someone on a date: “Keep in mind that it’s going to feel scary, but it’s going to get easier the more often we do it.”
With her clients, she suggests breathing and physical exercises, as well as rehearsing both making the suggestion of meeting up and of dealing with any potential feeling of rejection. “The worst that can happen is an emotion, which we can all survive,” she says.
At the same time, it’s not imperative that these friendships move beyond the confines of wherever you meet. The joy of friendships associated with an activity or place is that you can get all the benefits of socialising without the labour of having to organise it. “Even if it doesn’t spill out into other times, it’s important not to minimise that time on a Saturday or Sunday morning,” says Dan McVeigh. “I find these anchors to be so valuable.”
Sarah Oliver agrees: “I don’t need to see them more often than I do, because I know I’m going to be doing one of my favourite things with them every week.”
