An Expert's Guide Tested In The Real World

Sat on the floor of my bedroom on a Friday night eating dinner solo whilst First Dates played in the background, I felt deflated. I’d moved to London a few months earlier and still hadn’t made any friends. It can be hard to meet people as a fully grown woman in a big city and I know that it’s not just me feeling that way. Perhaps owing to our famous aloofness, the Office of National Statistics recently revealed that Britain is the loneliest country in Europe. And if the Time Out Index and the funny looks I get from trying to chat to strangers on the Tube (crazy, I know) is anything to go by, London is the epicentre of Britain’s pit of loneliness. First, Fox Weber explained the most important thing we can do when meeting new people is ‘Having self-trust.

It’s okay to grope for words or ask something in an awkward way when speaking to a new person, and to ‘tolerate those self-conscious moments,’ she explained. From speaking to the cool woman at the party to finding common ground with a co-worker, trust yourself enough to have that conversation and not shy away from it - it’s okay if it goes wrong. ‘I know it seems like a massive abstract concept to say ‘have self-trust’. In some ways that can make you even more anxious… If you’re really struggling with this kind of social anxiety, therapy can help. While I’m by no means a shrinking violet, I do often worry about whether I’m saying the right thing and I fear the dreaded too-long pause in a conversation.

Nattering with strangers can be awkward but as per Weber’s advice, I decided to have a little self-trust and throw myself in. When I saw that one of my Facebook friends (a person whose relationship with me had been mostly confined to nods in the street at University) had moved to London, I took the plunge and dropped her a personal message. I told her that I’d seen she was in London, asked what she was up to and offered to meet her for a coffee. It was a classic friend of a friend of a friend type situation. I had no idea whether we’d hit it off and I was 100 percent sure there would be awkward silences and I would fumble up my words at some point.



We met for a drink in an edgy coffee shop in Brixton and I awkwardly sat waiting for her to turn up. The first thing to conquer (and most difficult) was the greeting. A handshake is way too formal and as a northern gal, I’m really not comfortable with the typical London kiss on the cheek. If you don’t make friends straight away - that’s totally fine. ‘It’s so important to have resilience and perseverance and to be able to just continue even when there are setbacks, even when you feel like a disaster or a failure,’ Says Fox Weber. As an adult, it can often be easier to form a romantic relationship than it can to build a friendship.