Let's Look - Making Friends

 

Linking up with Shay and Erika for Let's Look.  Today we are talking about how to make friends, or how to make couple friends, more specifically.

I feel like I need to acknowledge that people you know and talk to don’t immediately translate into “friends” in the true sense of the word, but those acquaintances can become friends as time goes on.  Therefore, the first step is meeting people, and then maintaining some sort of connection with them over time. 

For us, many of the people we are meet are because of our kids’ activities.  We have met the parents of their friends at school, skiing, and baseball. Inevitably you keep running into these same people and sometimes there is some crossover between activities, or you run into them in the neighbourhood. 

It helps if you volunteer for various things - I have done pizza day and field trips at school, we help coach and manage the baseball teams, I will do the scoring at the baseball game, we help out with ski races, and all of these things increase interactions with other parents. 

Another place to meet friends is your neighbourhood, but the key is to go outside. When we first moved here, we would be out doing yard work, playing with the kids, cleaning the cars, or just going for a walk or bike ride, and that’s how we initially met so many people. Some are in similar places in their lives like us with kids, but some have younger or older kids or no kids, or are retired, but they can all become friends. It also helps that we host our annual Christmas drop in party where we invite all of the neighbours. It’s a good way to keep in touch with people, even if it’s only once a year. 

We have also met friends at the golf club. Golf is great because you can often be golfing with people you don’t know, but you’re forced to spend 2 to 4 hours together making small talk, and you can usually figure out if you seem to have things in common (other than golf) and then if you’re at a private club, you end up seeing the same people over and over and strike up a friendship. It doesn’t need to be golf, but find a hobby, join a club or a league, and frequent the same places, and you will find friends.

I have made good friends at work, but I find that was more common when I was younger with no kids. I had three or four ladies that were my age and we all had our first kid at the same time so that was a good way to make connections and hang out outside of the office. 

And then you can also keep in touch with people from high school or university like we have and although we don’t see them all the time, they are real friends.