Making Friends

MAKING FRIENDS

Making friends sounds like something we should have figured out by now. As children, we simply ask, “Do you want to play?” As adults, we overthink a smile, rehearse a conversation in our heads, and sometimes spend three days wondering whether we were too awkward.

There’s a whole unspoken etiquette to making friends as a grown-up. How many times do you need to see someone before you can call them a friend? Is it weird to invite someone for coffee if you’ve only spoken twice? And when someone says, “We should definitely hang out sometime,” are you supposed to put a date in the calendar, or is that just a polite way of saying goodbye forever?

We’ve all had those moments when we’re desperately hoping someone else will make the first move. We stand around at a party pretending to be very interested in the snacks. We join a new group and laugh a little too enthusiastically at jokes we don’t quite understand. We finally work up the courage to message someone, then immediately regret every word, punctuation mark, and emoji. Making friends can feel surprisingly similar to dating, except nobody has told us what the rules are, and we’re all just trying to seem like reasonably well-adjusted people.

And yet, friendship so often begins in the smallest, most ordinary ways. Someone saves us a seat. Someone remembers a detail we mentioned weeks ago. Someone notices we’re standing alone and comes over to say hello. Sometimes we discover that the person we thought was intimidating is just as nervous as we are. And sometimes, the people who end up mattering most to us are the ones we might never have met if one of us hadn’t taken a tiny, slightly awkward leap of faith.

Tonight, we’re here to share stories about those moments: the friends we found, the ones we never expected, the friendships that changed us, and the small acts of bravery that brought us closer to someone else. The funny beginnings, the unexpected connections, and the times when reaching out turned out to be worth the risk.

Because in the end, making friends is a little like offering someone a leaf and hoping they’ll come a little closer.

COME WING IT WITH US

Whether you have been telling stories for years or just suddenly thought “wait… that makes me think of this moment when I...” while reading this, we'd love to hear it.

You don't need a perfect story. You don't need a perfect ending. Come take the stage, tell us what happened, and see where the experience takes you from there.

And if you're not ready to tell a story yourself? Come for the stories and a community of strangers turned friends.