Dear Roe,
I graduated from college last year and I’m leaving my current job to move abroad to a different city. I don’t know anyone there and I’m not travelling with anyone I know from Ireland. I’ve drifted from the friends I made in college as I realised shortly after graduating that we didn’t have a huge amount in common without the structure of lectures and assignments, especially in terms of values. I don’t have a huge circle of friends in Ireland. I moved around a lot growing up. This experience was positive. However, as an adult I’m finding that a lot of people my age seem to have a built-in friend group from primary school, have collected friends along the way since and are closed off to making friends outside their network. It’s not that they’re unkind, it’s just it seems to me they’ve no interest or need for new friendships. While I have a few close friends here, I feel quite lonely. I’m planning on joining a sports team and going to events when I move away. I’m just worried I will move to the new city and will find myself in the same situation but in a different country. Am I wrong to think people in their mid-20s have little interest in making friends outside their circle? Is this an Irish thing? Is it still possible for me to have a circle of friends?
I’m so excited for you. Everyone should have the opportunity to live abroad at least once if they so wish; it’s such a life-enriching experience. You’ll gain self-trust and resilience as you navigate life without your usual support systems, and being away from your usual routine and social circles will give you the opportunity to explore different sides of yourself.
Having moved around a lot and not being bound to one social group will actually serve you really well abroad. You’re used to introducing yourself to new people, being open, and not being overly reliant on anyone else to build your social life for you.
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You’re already planning on joining social groups and attending events, which is great. Get used to saying, “I’m new in town and don’t know a lot of people – what do you and your friends enjoy doing? Here’s my number, I’d love to join you some time.” If it’s a big city, there will probably be lots of other people who have moved from elsewhere, and newbies tend to be welcoming to each other. If you’re single and on the apps, putting “New here. Open to friendships and more. Show me your favourite thing to do in the city” on your profile is a great move – even if you don’t click with someone romantically, you can ask them to be friends.
All of this is about being open-minded and intentional about building your social life, which I think is the underlying issue of your question: the narratives we create around friendship.
You’re not necessarily wrong to think that a lot of Irish people stay in core friendship groups they’ve had from childhood or school. That can happen, and it can mean some groups are less open to integrating new people. They are operating with a particular narrative of friendship – that old friendships are inherently better than new ones, that the group is all they need, that new connections are less valuable or possibly disruptive to the group’s balance. This isn’t a dig – long-lasting friendship groups can be beautiful and life-enriching, and maintaining them can involve a lot of patience, loyalty and forgiveness. But maintaining a group over years can also involve some rigidity; difficulty adapting to change; or a shared value system, shorthand or history that makes it more difficult for others to join.
However, I also want to warn you against falling into easy narrative traps about friendship yourself. Groups are inherently more visible than individuals, so you may notice them more, but that doesn’t mean they’re ubiquitous or even the norm. Many people have individual friends who don’t necessarily hang out with each other, or friendships that only began in adulthood – and these friendships are no less valuable or enriching than long-established groups. Individual or later-won friendships can have more room for people to grow; conflicts can be dealt with openly instead of glossed over for the group’s comfort; and there can be an intimacy that is harder to reach in group gatherings navigating different levels of closeness.
I worry that part of you has internalised a very common narrative – that not having a large group of decades-long friendships somehow makes you deficient, or means the friendships you do have are inherently less valuable. I wonder if by holding friendship groups up on a pedestal, you’re devaluing the close friendships you say you already have here.
[ ‘Cheating has caused my entire friend group to fall out’Opens in new window ]
And there’s a danger that if you arrive in your new city thinking what you need is a friend group, you’ll overlook the much smaller, messier beginnings of friendship. A team-mate you get chatting to after training; a colleague you have lunch with occasionally; the person you go on two dates with before you both realise you’d make excellent friends. None of these encounters will necessarily announce themselves as the beginning of your new social circle, because friendship rarely does – so don’t discount invitations to connect because they come from individuals.
Adult friendship is different from school and college friendship largely because the prescribed repetition has disappeared – nobody is putting you in the same classroom five days a week, so you have to manufacture the repetition yourself. That means being brave enough to say, “Do you want to get a drink next week?”, and then, crucially, asking again. It means becoming a regular somewhere; showing up consistently; making plans and accepting invitations even when staying home would be easier. Friendship is partly chemistry, but it is also repetition, attention and effort.
And remember that a friendship group can be something you build rather than something you are admitted into. You might meet one person through your sports team, another through work, and another at an event, and eventually invite two of them to the same thing. A year later, you may look around a table and realise that the circle you were so worried about finding is one you created yourself.
Try not to limit yourself to people who look like the friends you imagined having. Your friends don’t all have to be your age, work in the same field, come from the same country or know one another.
So no, I don’t think people in their mid-20s have stopped wanting new friends, and I certainly don’t think you’ve missed your opportunity to have a circle of them. But I would loosen your definition of what you’re looking for. Don’t go abroad searching for a ready-made group that will prove you belong. Go looking for people you find interesting, kind, funny, curious, generous, strange, challenging and warm. Keep showing up. Ask them to do things. Let individual relationships develop at their own pace.
You’re embarking on a whole new adventure. Don’t keep yourself tied to an image of a life you thought you were supposed to have. Instead, focus on building a life that feels true to who you are now.
