At a glance
You have been open and willing for months, and there is still nobody in this new city you could call on a quiet Sunday. The obstacle is seldom too little effort; more often it is where the effort goes and how much of it shows. This article looks at what friendship in a new place really asks of you, and what to let go of.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- Busy diary, empty weekend. Clients can often list half a dozen pleasant acquaintances and in the same breath admit there is nobody they could phone without an excuse.
- Wanting it shows. The clients who want friendship most tend to arrive at gatherings slightly tense, and they can usually sense it changing how they come across.
- Giving up quietly. Many clients stop after a handful of invitations that go nowhere, and then treat that small number as the final answer.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why does everyone stay friendly but never get closer?
Most of the friendships around you were finished long before you arrived.
School, university, a sports team in their teens, a shared flat in their twenties. By their thirties many people have a circle that feels complete, and nobody in it is looking for new members. What you meet is less a locked door than a lack of any opening, which is harder to argue with and harder still to take personally in a way that helps.
The pattern is familiar. A long, warm conversation at someone’s party, real on both sides, ending in something that sounds like a plan. Then silence. For a few days you check your phone more than you would like to admit, then you stop, and you quietly record the evening as a failure, though it was nothing of the kind.
Why does trying harder seem to backfire?
How much you want this can be seen, and it changes what the other person receives.
You prepare a little. You agree a bit more readily than you would back home, laugh slightly too soon, and take care not to take up space. Without thinking it through, the other person senses you asking for something instead of offering something, and being asked by someone they barely know wears people out, however much they like you.
Here is the uncomfortable core. What tends to work is something close to being relaxed about the outcome, and being relaxed is exactly what is out of reach when you have felt alone for months. That tension does not resolve neatly. What usually helps is not faking indifference but taking enough weight off any one evening that it stops feeling like an audition.
Does simply being around the same people help?
Often more than anything clever you could say.
My reading of one large experiment is telling. Around 3,000 pupils in 182 classrooms were randomly seated beside one another for a term, and sitting together lifted the likelihood that two pupils named each other as close friends from roughly 15% to roughly 22%1. These were children in rural Hungary, the authors note the results may not carry over to other places, and the design cannot show whether closeness created new friendships or kept existing ones from fading.
Take the principle rather than the figures. What made the difference was not charm or common ground but repeated, unplanned contact. Adult life in a new city rarely provides that by chance, so you usually have to arrange it on purpose.
If I keep showing up, why is nothing changing?
Friendship takes two people, and the other person’s share is beyond your control.
Whether somebody takes a step closer rests partly on how their week is going, their energy, their language confidence and how much room they have for anyone new. Accepting that is a relief on good days and frustrating on others, because it removes the outcome from your hands at the same moment that it removes the blame.
What actually helps, and what if it does not?
Build the shape of your week first, and let friendships grow out of it. In my experience the people who make progress change their routine far more than their personality.
- Commit to two things you would enjoy anyway. Singing, a course, a craft group, regular volunteering. Choose the activity, not the people you hope to meet there.
- Let familiarity do the work. Becoming a familiar face lowers the cost of approaching you, and nothing you say does that as reliably as turning up again and again.
- Stop auditioning. Being a bit less impressive and a bit more ordinary often makes you far easier to approach.
- Accept an uneven first year. You will probably suggest plans more often than you are invited for a long time. That reflects who has free evenings, not how much people want you around.
- Count fairly. A few invitations that came to nothing is a very small sample. It only feels like a verdict because so much rode on each one.
My reading of a survey of 373 immigrants in the Basque Country is that those who joined in more leisure pursuits also reported fuller social networks and feeling more included2. It used a convenience sample at one point in time, so it cannot show which came first, but it fits what I see.
Sometimes these steps are the wrong tool altogether. If reaching out to people now scares you instead of merely tiring you, if the loneliness has seeped into your sleep and work, or if you were socially at ease everywhere else and barely recognise yourself now, more events will not solve it and struggling at them may reinforce the wrong belief. Looking closely at what happens inside you at the moment of reaching out tends to be more useful, and that is the work I do in online psychotherapy.
Questions people ask
Is making friends really a subject for therapy?
Yes, since the practical steps are seldom the real sticking point. People usually know what would help, and something stops them just as they try, and that instant is what therapy can work on.
Is this social anxiety, or just a hard place to make friends?
It often begins as the place and gradually turns into something closer to anxiety. Separating the two matters, since one needs a different setting and the other needs attention to what you anticipate will go wrong.
Can I see you by video from the city I have moved to?
Yes, all my sessions are by video and in English, wherever you live. A quiet room and a stable connection are all you need.
I am an introvert. Will therapy try to make me more sociable?
No, and that would be the wrong goal. What matters is whether your own style of connecting serves you where you live now, not whether it resembles anyone else’s.
My partner already has a social circle here. Should I come alone?
Starting alone usually helps. When one of you already belongs to a circle here and the other does not, the subject soon turns into a dispute about effort, and your side of it is clearer without that in the room.
If friendships in your new city are slow to come, online psychotherapy can help you keep going without losing heart.
Sources
- Rohrer, Keller and Elwert. Proximity can induce diverse friendships: a large randomized classroom experiment. PLOS ONE, 2021.
- Berasategi Sancho, Roman Etxebarrieta, Alonso Saez and colleagues. Leisure as a space for inclusion and the improvement of life satisfaction of immigrants. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2023.
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
