How to Make Friends as an Adult (Yes, Really)

Making friends as a kid seemed pretty straightforward. You sat next to someone on the bus, discovered you both liked the same cartoon and that was pretty much it. By the end of the week, you knew their favorite color, their entire family history and what they were bringing to your sleepover.

Making friends as an adult is a different story. You can work beside someone for three years, know their coffee order, their dog’s name and intimate details about their ongoing feud with their homeowners association and still have absolutely no idea whether you are actually friends.

Apparently, a lot of us are trying to figure this out. Google searches for phrases like “how to make friends,” “how to make friends as an adult,” “where to make friends” and “where to meet people” have climbed in recent years. And the numbers behind those searches are a little sobering. The CDC says about 1 in 3 U.S. adults report feeling lonely and about 1 in 4 report not having social and emotional support.

That matters for reasons beyond having someone to send increasingly hilarious memes to at 10:47 p.m. The U.S. Surgeon General has identified loneliness and social isolation as serious public health concerns, citing research that links poor social connection with increased risks for heart disease, stroke and premature death. Social connection, on the other hand, can affect our health, resilience and overall well-being.

So, how exactly do you make friends as an adult, especially when you no longer have a playground, dorm room or cafeteria forcing you into repeated contact with the same people every day?

Start by going somewhere regularly

This may be the least exciting friendship advice ever given, but it works: keep showing up.

Adult friendships rarely begin with two strangers locking eyes across a crowded room and immediately realizing they were destined to become pickleball partners. They tend to grow through repeated, low-stakes interactions. You take the same group exercise class every Tuesday. You start recognizing the person who always sets up a few spots away from you. Eventually you say hello. Then you learn her name. A few weeks later she misses class and you find yourself wondering where Jamie is and whether Jamie is OK.

This is one reason places that bring people together regularly are so important. You need somewhere to become a familiar face, and somewhere other people can become familiar faces to you. The YMCA happens to be particularly good at this because people come back. They take the same classes, swim at the same time, play in the same leagues, volunteer at the same events and slowly move from “person I have definitely seen before” to “person I actually know” to “person who drove me to my colonoscopy.”

Do something you actually like

Technically, you could stand in the produce section of the grocery store every Thursday evening hoping friendship finds you, but there are more efficient strategies. Start with something you already enjoy or something you’ve always wanted to try.

Take a group exercise class. Join a walking group. Play pickleball. Volunteer. Try yoga. Learn to swim. Sign up for an event. If you have kids, you could even talk to another parent during practice instead of spending the time trying to crush candy, rescuing a king (who, frankly, should have learned to manage his own kingdom by now) or maintain a suspiciously demanding virtual farm.

Doing something together takes some of the pressure off because you already have something to talk about. You don’t have to walk up to a stranger and manufacture a conversation out of thin air. You can ask how long they’ve been coming to the class, whether they’ve played before or whether they also deeply regret choosing the heavier dumbbells.

The Surgeon General’s advisory on social connection specifically encourages participation in fitness, hobby, community service and other groups that can foster belonging and purpose. In other words, the advice for making friends as an adult is surprisingly practical: find something you like, go where other people are doing it and keep going back.

Give it enough time to become your place

There’s a difference between going somewhere and feeling like you belong there, and that difference is usually built through a lot of small interactions.

Someone at the Welcome Center knows your name. Your instructor notices when you miss class. The person on the treadmill beside you asks how your vacation went. Someone saves you a spot. You walk into the building and realize you recognize half a dozen people before you’ve even made it to the locker room.

None of that sounds particularly dramatic, which is kind of the point. Friendship usually isn’t built in one grand moment. It grows out of dozens of ordinary interactions until one day someone who used to be a stranger is part of your life.

We see that happen at the Y all the time. People may initially join because they want access to a pool, fitness equipment or a particular class, but somewhere along the way, they find people. The workout may be what gets them through the door. The relationships can become part of what keeps them coming back.

Try volunteering

If walking up to a stranger and announcing, “Hello, I am currently accepting applications for friendship,” feels a little too forward, volunteering gives you a much easier way to connect.

You already have something to do and something in common. Maybe you’re coaching a youth sports team, helping at a community event, supporting a food distribution or working alongside other volunteers on an advisory board. Conversation happens while everyone is focused on the work, which can make getting to know people feel considerably less awkward.

There’s a bonus here, too. Volunteering puts you around people who have chosen to spend their time helping with something you also care about. You may not become friends with everyone you meet, but you’ve already established some common ground before anyone has to make small talk.

Eventually, you do have to talk to someone

There is, unfortunately, no workaround for this part.

You do not need an opening line worthy of a meet-cute. “Have you taken this class before?” works. So does “How long have you been coming here?” or “Do you want to play another game?” If you’ve seen someone several times, even “Hey, I feel like we’re always here at the same time. I’m Alex” will do the job.

Then comes the part adults are inexplicably terrible at: following up. Ask if they want to grab coffee in the lobby after. Suggest playing again next week. Get their number. Sit beside them again. Someone has to be the person who turns a pleasant acquaintance into an actual friendship, and there is no reason that person can’t be you.

Yes, there is a chance it will feel awkward. Adults survive much worse every day. Remember the colonoscopy? 

So, where do adults actually make friends?

If you found this article because you searched “where to make friends,” “how to meet people” or “how to make friends as an adult,” the answer is less mysterious than it seems. Go somewhere people gather around shared interests and activities, and go often enough that strangers have a chance to stop being strangers.

The Surgeon General describes community organizations, sports groups, volunteer organizations, parks, libraries and other gathering places as part of our “social infrastructure,” the places and programs that create opportunities for people to connect. That idea is built into what the YMCA has been doing for over 175 years.

Yes, you can come to the YMCA to work out. You can swim, take a group exercise class, learn something new, volunteer, play pickleball, coach a team or show up for a community event. But all of those things have something else in common: other people are there.

So come because you want to get stronger, move more or finally figure out what Pilates actually is. Keep coming because you like the class, the game or the routine. Say hello to the person you keep seeing every Tuesday.

You might get more than a workout out of it.