How to expand your social circle, according to Club Sup founder Sophie McIntyre
IMAGE VIA @clubsup_/instagram
WORDS BY DAISY HENRY
“I found some of my closest friends after I sold all my stuff and moved into a share house because I was free from a life that wasn’t serving me.”
Making new friends in your twenties is simultaneously the easiest thing you can do, yet somehow the hardest. Certain friends will be climbing the corporate ladder, others are getting married and saving for house deposits, and a handful are taking off to travel the world. It’s a tricky period to navigate.
While some people can are doubling down on their existing friendships, you might find yourself craving a change in your social circle.
Interested to hear how others navigate the world? Head to our Life section.
Either way, our friendships play a crucial role over the course of our lives. According to Sophie McIntyre, the founder of Melbourne-based events group Club Sup, they’re worth just as much time and investment as our romantic pursuits.
Though it can feel harder to make new friends when you’re out of school, juggling work and other adult responsibilities, Sophie’s confident there are ways, both tangible and intangible, to expand your social circle in your twenties.
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Know your values
“I know this isn’t a practical tip to make a new friend but I think everyone needs to start here,” Sophie says. “A therapist taught me that life can be a lot easier to navigate when we have a conscious understanding of what our values are.”
Our friendships don’t need to be built on identical guidelines, and our friends don’t have to live and breathe by our values, but as Sophie says, understanding what matters to you is a fairly useful starting point for finding people you naturally connect with.
So, what are your values? If, like me, that questions sends you into an existential crisis, Sophie suggests asking yourself: Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I love doing in my spare time?
Move in different currents
“The people in your life are a reflection of the life you live. Sometimes we need to change it up a bit so that we can get out of ourselves and find our people,” Sophie explains.
Whether it’s a job you’ve outgrown, a friendship circle you’ve fallen into by default or a routine that feels stagnant, Sophie suggests taking a second to step outside yourself. “I found some of my closest friends after I sold all my stuff and moved into a share house because I was free from a life that wasn’t serving me.”
If you’re currently in a rut, chances are the kinds of people you want to attract will be sitting just beyond the edges of your current day-to-day. And it doesn’t have to mean going to ground and starting over. It can mean creating one new space in your week where different kinds of people can drift in, whether that’s working from a different cafe, taking a class or turning up to an event by yourself.
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Attend a Club Sup event
“It’s a shameless plug, yes, but I built Club Sup and our various events so that no matter what you’re doing in life, you can drop in and out,” Sophie explains.
Club Sup’s events come in different forms. “You can attend a book swap and chat people over books, join us for a walk on a Saturday morning or dinner during the week. All these events are designed to expose you to a new vein of like minded people.”
Whether you attend once or become a regular, it’s a low stakes way of meeting new people, go outside your comfort zone and flex your conversational skills.
Treat friendship like dating
“If I’m at an event and have a great chat with someone, I have no hesitation following them on Instagram and sending them a message straight after,” Sophie says. Usually for her, that’s followed up by asking them out for a coffee or drink.
“When we do hang out I approach it like dating,” she adds. “I’m present, and after I always follow up and try to organise another hang or make an effort to drop off a book we’ve talked about.”
Making friends takes just as much effort as a romantic pursuit, sometimes more. “In 2018, a study by Professor Jeffrey Hall suggested that it takes the average adult roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend,” Sophie tells me.
“For more advanced levels of friendship, it can take more than 200 hours before you can consider someone close.”
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Set up the friends you do have
Building a strong social circle can extend far beyond your immediate friendships. As Sophie says, connecting the friends you already have with each other enriches your entire community.
“In the last few years, I’ve made a really conscious effort to connect the friends I have from different areas of my life at every opportunity. And guess what has happened? From those connections, people have gotten jobs, rooms in share houses, travelled together and so much more.”
Of course, doing this might leave you worried about overstepping or being excluded yourself if your friends organise catch ups without you. But Sophie encourages you to push past the anxiety. As long as you’re conscious, considerate and genuine, she’s adamant that the benefits are undoubtedly worth it.
For more on taking online friendships offline, try this.
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