How to make friends as an adult: A 3-step guide from a millennial who moved from NYC to LA knowing nobody

• Making friends as an adult isn't easy. When I moved to a new city, I struck out for months.
• It took some time, but I now know enough people to fill a dinner table.

My best friend in elementary school was Beth.

I have no memory of how we met — not because she isn't memorable but because making friends as a kid isn't necessarily a significant event. It's simple and natural. There's no judgment, no overthinking. We probably hit it off on the playground, and that was that.

Things got a little trickier in middle and high school when it came to making friends, but I survived those years with a core group of classmates. And then there was college. I played tennis, which meant I basically had a built-in group of friends — the other 10 women on the team — from day one of my freshman year.

My teammates, whom I saw every single day for practice and matches, became my closest friends, and after graduating, we mostly all moved to New York City for our first jobs. At that point, I didn't feel the need — or desire — to make any new friends. I had everyone I needed within a 5-mile radius. Plus, making friends as a working adult sounded like a time-consuming, inconvenient, and, frankly, intimidating task.

In August 2019, when I was 27 and five years after I moved to NYC alongside my friends, I was forced to reevaluate this.

Moving to a new city knowing nobody

I moved 2,800 miles across the country to Los Angeles, where none of my college friends or family members lived.

I'm enough of an extrovert that I knew my overall experience and happiness levels in LA would largely hinge on my ability to meet and connect with people. I didn't necessarily expect to make "forever friends," but I hoped to meet some like-minded individuals and not feel completely alone, which begged the question: How does one make friends as an adult?

I didn't have any experience in that subject matter, and it showed. My first strategy failed to yield a single friend.

The strategy was to reach out to friends of friends in hopes that they would transition from friends of friends to actual friends. I did at least 10 coffee meet and greets during my first three months in LA, and while most of them were lovely, none of them resulted in a second meetup. Each prospective friendship fizzled.

I realized that unless you shared an intense passion for latte art, chances were you're not going to continue having coffee with the same person week after week.

While I didn't have any success going this route, I eventually made friends. Over the past four years, I've become entwined in running and tennis communities, have met enough people to fill a sizable dinner table, and have even found some "forever friends."

It seemed to happen naturally but, in retrospect, there were a couple of steps that I took — and it did require an open mind.

How I made friends

Rather than approaching the task as a chore, I thought of it as an adventure. I shifted my mindset from, "It's impossible to make friends as an adult because everyone already has their established circles," to, "There are so many interesting people out there that I have the opportunity to meet."

I have to say that unless you're a social butterfly who thrives in new environments or you love small talk, the beginning of the friend-seeking process isn't that fun. If you join a group, you have to power through the introduction phase, learn everyone's names, understand the group dynamics, and perhaps spend more time than you would like talking about the weather. The process can be uncomfortable and awkward. But the more consistently you spend time with someone, the more natural it becomes — the less small talk you experience and the more real talk you engage in.

Here is my three-step guide to making friends when you're not a kid on a playground anymore. While highly unscientific, it worked for me and could work for you:

1. Make a list of your interests and hobbies.

What do you like to do in your spare time? What are you passionate about? What makes you tick? It doesn't have to be an extensive list — mine consists of running and playing tennis. Yours could be hiking or cooking.

2. Find people who share your interests and hobbies.

The easiest way to do this is to find a club or group in your area centered on your interest. For example, I joined a track club and a paddle-tennis league.

I found both through word of mouth, but you can also use social-media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook to find various communities and meetup groups in your area.

3. Consistently do activities related to the shared interest with the person or group of people.

What I like about the third and final step is that there's zero downside: You are already going to be doing the thing that you like to do (whether it's running, hiking, knitting, playing board games, etc.), so you may as well do it with a group of prospective friends.

The key is consistency. Making a friend — building a relationship — takes time and effort. That's not to say it needs to become a part-time job. Small, consistent batches of effort can add up over time.

For example, I started going to "Track Tuesday" with an LA-based run club once a week. Most of the time was spent running, but the 10 minutes before and after each workout were spent socializing. In those small blocks of time, week after week, I started to build relationships. I gravitated toward certain people in the group, and after the painful small-talk phase, I started forming real friendships.

Today, my closest friends in LA are from the track club, and as a bonus, I became a stronger runner throughout the process.

These rules are simplified — everyone has their own style, and not everyone needs to follow a "guide" to make friends — but it's the framework that worked for me after months of striking out.