- I attended a Dinner With Friends dinner party at a stranger's apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
- I wasn't looking for new best friends, but I found some really meaningful social interaction.
I empathize with people who say it's hard to make friends as an adult.
Without the forced proximity of school or the built-in camaraderie of extracurriculars, finding and sustaining relationships takes a lot of effort.
As someone who's never been in a committed romantic relationship, I consider myself a bit of a friendship expert. Everywhere I've gone throughout my life, I seem to stumble upon fulfilling, meaningful friendships that perfectly suit whatever stage I'm at.
But we don't have to find soulmates to be less lonely, and I think I've unlocked the secret to making the simplest connections with people: structured social interaction. If there's a recreational kickball league, book club, or community-theatre production within reach, I'm joining it.
Luckily, there are like-minded individuals out there, like Anita Michaud, who runs Dinner With Friends. The NYC-based group throws dinner parties where strangers come together over a home-cooked meal.
When I attended a September event, I met so many people who were craving meaningful connection as much as I was.
Being in a room of strangers can be awkward, but it's also weirdly freeing
Throughout the dinner, we talked about friends, family, partners, and other people in our lives. But mostly, we talked about ourselves. It was liberating to have a captive audience.
I love my friends, and I cherish the ways we're able to show up for each other. But we know too much about each other's lives to give each other that kind of stage on a regular basis.
Similarly, I usually have a bad habit of bristling at compliments from my friends and family. But at the dinner party, someone told me they thought my hair suited me perfectly, and I'd honestly never felt so seen.
Instead of laughing it off like I normally would, I took a second to process what she was saying and told her I actually do feel more myself since growing it back out long.
The structured nature of Dinner With Friends gave me the chance to push myself out of my comfort zone with a soft place to land. There's an inherent risk in going to a stranger's house, but learning to trust others is a fundamental part of building community.
Once we accept that we all feel lonely sometimes, I think it's easier to build connections
It's easy to forget that friendships are relationships.
They take effort, empathy, forgiveness, and sacrifice. It means processing another person's grief and celebrating their wins without the capitalistic rewards of marriage. That's a hard sell.
But you don't have to be there for every crosstown move or expensive wedding to be part of other people's lives.
I also need casual acquaintances to try new restaurants with every other month. I need people who can sit and read in the park with me when my social battery doesn't allow for deep conversation. I need people who text me to get my take on the latest gossip surrounding our shared obsession.
All of those connections are meaningful. There doesn't have to be a ranking system or defined terms or set plans. People can come in and out of our lives fluidly if we're willing to put forth a basic level of communication and a certain amount of vulnerability.
Widespread loneliness wouldn't be the problem it is if all of this were easy. It's not. But if we dig deep enough, I think we'll find that building these connections is instinctual — even if it takes a little practice.