Making Friends in London

silvervixen84

I was reading this week's TimeOut on the Tube this morning and there was a piece about how difficult it can be to make friends in London. The writer of the piece went to a few different mixing events to see how many new friends she could make.

She went to:
http://www.drinkshopdo.com/ for a doodle club
The Friend Zone http://shoobs.com/events/4573/the-friendzone for 'social skydiving'
http://www.gothicvalleywi.org.uk/ which is an alternative branch of the WI
City Socializer https://www.citysocializer.com/ seems to be of a similar vein to http://www.meetup.com/

Most of the friends I've made in London have been through this very forum, by attending Boards Beers, and starting up a regular pub quiz team. I'm friends with my flatmates, but we don't socialise together that much. Where I work, it's quite cliquey and there isn't much mixing of departments, and the only 'after work drinks' I seem to go to are when someone I'm friendly with is leaving the company! I have a few other friends dotted around the city and outskirts that I knew from back home/met at a gig/met through a mutual friend.

How did you make friends when you moved to London? Did you find it difficult or are you a natural social butterfly? Do you have many friends in your area you can 'pop down the local'.

FTA69

I came here at 18 and moved into a flat above a rough-as-sh*t workingman's boozer. Needless to say I fitted in perfectly. I got chatting to a load of Travellers in there one night and became good friends with them, we used to go and watch the GAA every Sunday and have marathon drinking sessions. After a while I became friends with the barman in the pub I lived with and he introduced me to all the young people who used to head in there and so I had a group of friends from then on. I was working 60 hours a week so I really only saw them at weekends.

When I moved back over here at 24 I was with my girlfriend at the time who lived in a block of Irish nurses so that was one avenue. I was working in an Irish pub with a good squad of people (mostly Irish) and also for an Irish construction company and other builders, all of whom I met through the pub work and many of whom I'm still great friends with today. On top of that then I have a good network of people I knew from Cork who moved over so all in all I'm spoilt for social networks really.

Fluxfan

I've been in London a few months now and the only friends I have are ones I know from Ireland who had already made the move. I'm finding it difficult to move some work relationships etc from acquaintances to actual friends.

Signed up to meetup and a book club but Im really shy so still working up the courage to go to these!

Also I'm finding it hard to come to terms with the idea of "friend dating" - you know, meeting up with someone as if it were a date, finding out if you like them, if they like you, if you've anything in common,will you meet again etc. I feel its kind of artificial making friends that way, and a lot of work! I'd love to just make the friendships organically through work, or other people etc.

I think also it may have been easier if myself and my bf had moved into a shared house. At the moment its just the 2 of us in our apartment so it's not exactly social circle expanding.

Everyone tells me it gets easier though :pac:

Fysh

I've made friends here in the same way as I did when I moved to Cork for a post-grad course - mainly through getting involved with activities or group meetups. I find once you're working full time it's much harder to have friendships kind of blossom naturally, especially if you work somewhere where people travel a fair distance to get to work.

I was quite lucky in that I found a monthly group meetup that happened to appeal to myself and the OH shortly after we moved over, which gave us an easy social outing amongst like-minded folks to start with. It took a while but we made a few friends from there. Even though I had a few friends from college who were already here, the size of the place means it's easy for weeks to go by without catching up with folks. I've formed friendships with complete strangers at gigs or events - almost always ones that involve hours of queueing and hence boredom.

Santa Cruz

You do really have to get out and about. From an Irish viewpoint the usual GAA clubs, Irish centres have a variety of activities where it is possible to meet. Alternatively look up activities in your general area, choirs, political parties, voluntary groups. It does take time but as the newcomer to a city it does fall on you to make the contacts

howisshecuttin

Been here almost 5 years and have to say 2 things about making friends

1.Join something, anything really with a group of people...whether it's sports, arts, conservation etc...in London there is something for every taste.
I took the opportunity to take up a hobby I'd always wanted to do but never got around to in the rut that my life has become in Ireland, and it has been the most fantastic experience. I've learnt so much, made a gaggle of friends from all over the world [including a few from Ireland] and had some fantastic holidays /weekends away here in UK and around Europe.

2. Give yourself and others a chance...London is a very transient city so there are lots of people looking for company and very open to offers and to making suggestions to do something. If you show that you are open to being friends/ being invited to things, you'll be invited, and one way of showing this is doing the inviting...take a risk.

In the smaller and more closed environments we are used to in Ireland we generally have a ready made group of companions who might or might be real friends i.e. school/college/neighbours/work so in many ways its a very passive approach to friendship....here in London where not everyone is a 2nd cousin a you have to take a little more responsibility for making this happen. But you've been brave enough to move, so the city is your oyster.....

theteal

Similar to FTA69 above, when we first moved over, we lived in the hospital accommodation. They had big recruitment drive in the wake of some terrible publicity and it just so happened that quite a few Irish girls were taken on at the same time - all from the same Uni too. That was a properly drunk first week!

Anyway, from there, I joined the GAA club up the road in Goodmayes - Irish friends. A few of the GAA lads played soccer so I inevitably went out to play for them, meeting more people - Irish/English friends. A few of the English lads on that soccer team played a higher standard on Saturdays, that's who I mainly played for last year - English friends.

Now that I'm working in town, the lads in work are sound and are very partial to a scoop - had my first sick day in 10 years recently due to the boss calling an impromptu Tuesday session. There's also a weekly game of astro with them.

Also, one of the original girls from the nurse accommodation moved over to Finchley with the fella about a year ago. There's a good gang of Dub's and possibly my favourite pub over there.

Funny how life kinda pans out. . . .

FTA69

What's the pub, Gerty Brown's is it?

theteal

FTA69 wrote: »

What's the pub, Gerty Brown's is it?

Got it in one!

LadyMayBelle

Good topic Silvervixen!

I'm not a natural social butterfly, and neither is my boyf. I didn't know anyone when I moved here 4 years ago, and only for this forum, I am not sure how well I would have done! Have met some really sweet folk through this (ye know who ye are!).

Work colleagues are much older, live outside London and have children, so going out with them isn't an option. Im not a pub person either really, altho have met a few people this year since moving to Hackney, mainly thanks to a really great barkeeper who kept introducing everyone to everyone else! I don't enjoy sports, but do attend classes which I find keeps me fit, but conversation stops at 'that was a tough class' or 'see you next week' (plus no one wants to grab a coffee having done 60minutes of aerobics!). I am in few 'groups' like Action for Happiness, a craft group etc. But no friendships as such where I could call someone and say 'do you want to grab and coffee and wander round Brick Lane, whereever'.

I did a 'thing' last year, to do at least one thing a week that was different from my usual activities and whilst the expectation was not to specifically make friends, it would be an added bonus..didn't really work out but did lots of new things!

Currently, the people I know in London, are the people from this forum, two girls from 'home' who i lived with in Galway but have moved to London. In the UK, I have two other friends who contact saying they struggle at times (leicester and norwich), and we wonder maybe it;s because we didn't move over in our younger years when we would have moved into a house share, gone to uni, etc.

That, and I'm rubbish at taking 'the next step'!

Choccie Lover

Fluxfan wrote: »

I've been in London a few months now and the only friends I have are ones I know from Ireland who had already made the move. I'm finding it difficult to move some work relationships etc from acquaintances to actual friends.

Signed up to meetup and a book club but Im really shy so still working up the courage to go to these!

Also I'm finding it hard to come to terms with the idea of "friend dating" - you know, meeting up with someone as if it were a date, finding out if you like them, if they like you, if you've anything in common,will you meet again etc. I feel its kind of artificial making friends that way, and a lot of work! I'd love to just make the friendships organically through work, or other people etc.

I think also it may have been easier if myself and my bf had moved into a shared house. At the moment its just the 2 of us in our apartment so it's not exactly social circle expanding.

Everyone tells me it gets easier though :pac:[/QUOTE

You should definitely go to that meet-up you signed up for. I met one of my best friends on there through a hiking society I was part of. In most cases, you will just meet really nice people who you will bump into again at further meet-ups, but not necessarily stay in touch with outside of the meet-ups......But, then if you meet someone you really click with, you can take the friendship further. If book clubs are your thing, then there is a good chance you can meet people like you there. My friend is astonishingly like me......kind of scary!! :-)

I wouldn't worry about the friend-dating thing. When you meet lots of people in a group setting, there is no pressure on meeting again. You will just end up suggesting future drinkies with the ones you get on with :-)