Being an introvert doesn’t always mean that people with those personalities are antisocial or shy. Introverts are just quite particular at which conversation they should invest their energy and focus.
Because of that, if you are an introvert and you moved to a new city, started a new job, or started studying in a university, you might have difficulties meeting new people and making new friends in your new environment.
As an introvert, these social activities will seem like herculean tasks. Introverts find themselves drained and socially over-stimulated rather quickly. In this article, we will take a look at how introverts make friends and help you throughout this process.
Why is it hard for introverts to have friends?
Introverts, as we stated above, are people who don’t like to engage in every social interaction. They prefer to choose with whom, when, and how much to engage socially.
An introvert may not get too many friends an extrovert gets. it may stick to one or two max. The main reason being is that they stick their thoughts to themselves. They do not express them, leaving the conversation only on the shoulders on the other side.
Therefore, if only one person keeps the conversation going, he might feel drained after a certain amount of time, or that particular person might even feel that they are not an interesting companion because the introverted person doesn’t engage in the dialogue.
Moreover, the person, who keeps the conversation going, might not see and feel that he is having a monologue and will keep going, which will make the introvert much more socially drained, than before
Let’s explore a couple of ways of how you can easily make friends as an introvert!
How to make friends as an introvert?
Find “your” place for hangout
“Your” place should be close to home and take minimal effort to get there. By “yours” we mean that you visit the same place often and at the same time. It will take about a couple of visits until you appear as a regular customer to the staff, and about double to feel comfortable if you’re an introvert.
Normally, after a first visit anywhere, introverts are more relaxed, and “know” the place. That way, you’ll be more confident, relaxed, and not-so shy when approaching someone or being approached at “your” place.
Find a hotel lobby bar
Look for a hotel lobby bar in your neighbourhood. There you’ll tourists and people out of town who will talk to you just out of curiosity. Do it right, and you may even get a couple of free drinks in exchange for tips and heads-up on the best local places to eat and points of interest they can check out. Chances are, that you might even end up with a friend from another country or city and receive an invitation to visit their homeplace.
Find a roommate
If you are looking to make friends as an introvert during your university years – we recommend finding a roommate. If you think that if you share a flat with other students could quickly turn into a nightmare, you could be wrong! Living with other students in the shared university student dorms or private student rooms will help you make friends in university. As an introvert living with roommates, you will meet new people as well and you will end up making memories that will last you a lifetime. Besides, you can always have some time for yourself to step out of the student social interaction activities. Your roommates will get it and won’t be offended.
Develop a walking or jogging routine
Not only, that these activities will be incredibly healthy for you, but are an interesting way of making new friends, especially if you are an introvert. The thing is, that there’s something about taking a walk on a quiet morning and seeing other members of your community in their daily routines. If you follow the same route every day, you’ll start to see familiar faces. This provides a sense of security and comfort. As an active member of a running or walking group, you easily meet others with the same health and fitness goals.
These types of activities have a clear start and end time, and everyone has something in common to discuss. If you don’t want to talk after a while, you can always change your pace without disappearing or say that you’ll miss your target time.
Get a dog
Getting a dog or adopting one will be one of the best things you’ve done in your life. Want it or not, the dog will be really useful in making new friends and meeting new people in your local area.
According to a Harvard study, the survey respondents stated, that having a dog was the third most common way they met people in their local area. Just like jogging and running – you will have a dog-walk routine, you’ll start seeing familiar faces and you’ll have a huge variety of topics regarding dogs, which you can discuss with those other dog owners.
Moreover, if you are sitting alone with your dog in the park on some random bench, people will be more likely to approach you, rather than if you were just sitting there without a dog. This is concluded by a study by Lynette Hart, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of California.
Conclusion
In the end, everyone is an acquaintance. Only a few are friends. And it is really important to have a few good friends, which you can rely on.
If your friendships are not lasting long – that has nothing to do with benign introverted. You would find many extroverts who can’t keep their friendships alive for long.
You can have a best friend, which you haven’t seen for 5 or 6 months, but both of you will still know, that you can count on each other even tho of this long period of no talk.
Most importantly, it isn’t introversion that makes it difficult to socialize. Some introverts are good at it but prefer to stay home. Shyness would be a better word to describe it but finding out why you are shy might help you understand. There could be a deeper meaning behind it.
So, next time you go out to some party and you have no friends, go out there and talk to random strangers because you never know who you will meet and what you do. But take small steps in doing so. And great & valuable things come with small steps.
Photo by Raghu Nayyar on Unsplash
