Where Friends Come From

A couple months ago, I moved to a new city where I knew next to nobody. As I have written about in previous posts, since then I have been trying to adjust to a new period of my life, and one significant change is in my social life as I have needed to meet new people. In this time, I have thought some about exactly how friendships happen. Do you ever think about that? Take a moment to run through a list of some of your friends, and ask, "How did that person and I become friends?"  You normally don't think much about how your various friendships have developed. You just know that you have friends, and you don't stop to think about how that happened in the first place.

But the truth is that any friendship has to have some sort of beginning. Relationships are created ex nihilo.

So how do friendships happen?

That question is probably asked by more people than one might realize. I would suspect that there are a lot of people that just don't know how to build friendships. (And by "out there," I mean "sitting on my couch and typing on my computer"). I did a little Google search on the topic just a bit ago and found a site that covers "How To Make Friends and Get a Social Life" (www.succeedsocially.com). People want to know how to make friends. So how does it work?

I think it's different for different people. We all have different ways that we tend to make friends.

There are some people who talk their way into friendships. When I say that, I don't mean that they're deceitful or anything like that. I simply mean that there are some who create friendships simply through conversation. They can sit with someone at a coffeeshop and talk and talk forever, and then the two people walk out the door as best buds.

That's not how I roll. Now I try my best to make good conversation with people. I just feel that I'm not all that great at it. I (once again) relate to Donald Miller's sentiment when he writes in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, "I can get tired when I talk to somebody new, because if there is silence in the conversation, I feel it's my fault." Of course, that isn't a necessary way to feel, but I think it might be a common one for a lot of people. It's an awkward and uncomfortable thing to be around people you don't know well with nothing to do but make conversation. It works for some people, but not so well for others.

What I have come to realize is that, historically, I tend to begin most friendships by sharing a common experience. It happens by doing something together--playing basketball, playing ping-pong or cards, going bowling. (Or maybe it's just that I really like games....) But for me, it's difficult to sit in a room and make small talk for very long. I simply run out of things to say. I need an activity to go along with it.

So what about you? How do you tend to make friends? Are you one of those people who can do it by just by conversing? Do you also prefer to have a common activity with someone? Or do you just stare at someone across the room for a while? Or maybe you just randomly add strangers to your Facebook friends list. (Or maybe you're Google+ list? I'm not cool enough for that yet).

Or maybe it's by reading someone's blog and then sending him Chick-fil-A gift cards. I hear that's a pretty popular method.