5 Tips for Making New Friends Through Friends of Friends

A new friend could be closer than you think, just ask your friends.

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Welcome to buildbetter, your weekly guide to understanding and building meaningful relationships in all aspects of your life.

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Read time: 4 minutes

Today at a glance:

• Topic: The power of friends of friends
• Tactic: Making new friends through existing ones
• Devin's Finds: 📰, 📰, 🎞
• Commitments: 🤝

There are countless ways to make new friends. Often it's from sharing space, like school or work, where you let friendships form naturally over time. Other times it's from frequenting a third place where you gain a sense of community. Every so often, you put yourself out there by knocking on a random person's door and make a new friend for life. But one of the most common ways to expand your friendships is through your existing friends.

I call this the "friends of friends" method, and we will dive into what that looks like today.

One of the best ways to experience the friends of friends method is when you are at a bachelorette or bachelor party. It just so happens that much of what is needed to create a new friendship is built into the experience.

Think about it: You’re dropped into an Airbnb with a bunch of strangers with one thing in common—a strong relationship to the person getting married. You may know a few of the others, but rarely will you know all of them. But for the people you don't know, it doesn't have that typical awkward feel of meeting a stranger. You get this feeling that you're obviously going to get along because:

• It's likely you have overlapping interests
• You're thinking "if my friend likes them, I probably will too"
• You're able to connect on funny stories about your mutual friend 

Right off the bat, you sense you're more connected to these people. But over the course of the next few days, you'll create real shared experiences while celebrating the bride or groom to be. Those hungover mornings making fun of each other and the late evenings reminiscing about the good ole days are brand new experiences you all share together. You begin learning about everyone else as a group and as individuals. Next thing you know, the weekend flew by and you're excited to get that same crew back together at the wedding in a few weeks...or you’ve barely survived and can’t wait to start your recovery process with some Chinese food on your couch.

Either way, it's the perfect storm to kickstart a new friendship through friends of friends. In one weekend, you check the most important friendship boxes, including...

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Best of luck building,

Devin