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Making new friends
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Ok, this has never been my strong point... but how do I make new friends? 
I've moved to a new city (London) hundreds of miles away from my friends and feeling kind of lost. I don't know where to start or how to even make friends.
To complicate things further, I'm gay, and living away from home is the first time I have really been open about this. It would be good to have some other gay friends I could be relaxed around and not pretending to be Mr Straight and just help me feel a bit included.
Anyway guess my point is how do I make new friends and make a new life for myself, because at the moment I'm failing miserably.
I've moved to a new city (London) hundreds of miles away from my friends and feeling kind of lost. I don't know where to start or how to even make friends.
To complicate things further, I'm gay, and living away from home is the first time I have really been open about this. It would be good to have some other gay friends I could be relaxed around and not pretending to be Mr Straight and just help me feel a bit included.
Anyway guess my point is how do I make new friends and make a new life for myself, because at the moment I'm failing miserably.
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Comments
Welcome to TheSite :wave:
London is an amazing city imo, but I'll be the first to admit it can be daunting at times, so I can totally see why you're finding it quite tough to get going socially.
You haven't told us much about your situation - are you in the city for work/study? Do you live by yourself or in shared accomodation? These things can make a difference to the approaches you take to making new friends. Mostly though, it's important to take any offers you get in the early days so you can try lots of things out and meet as many people as possible. You might find the advice in TheSite's article boost your social life helps with this.
Generally speaking though, AFAIK, there are quite a few gay groups/communities in the city and you can find out more on good ole interweb. For instance, there seems to be quite a few interesting events listed in the www.londongayman.com events guide. You might also want to check out queery.org.uk which is a database of information set up by the London gay and lesbian switchboard.
Other than that, there are other gay and straight Londoners knocking around TheSite who I'm sure will be happy to share their gems with you and maybe talk about how they found new friends.
Good luck and keep posting.
So yeah, hope that helps in some way!