The Current - How to make friends as an adult

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

We all know that making friends as an adult is difficult. Everyone’s busy with their families and careers, while time online and remote work is leaving some people increasingly isolated. We meet some young adults finding creative new ways to meet potential new friends in the real world, from dinner with perfect strangers to making conversation at a run club.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. If you're a kid making friends, pretty easy. Go to the playground, meet people in school. If you're an adult, making new friends can be difficult. People are busy navigating their careers, starting families, trying to maintain old friendships. Plus there's things like contactless food delivery, remote work, streaming platforms.

So where are you supposed to go to meet new people? Who would actually want to talk to you if you're trying to meet new people? Well, it turns out that young adults are finding creative new ways to make new people. Who would actually want to talk to you if you're trying to meet new people? Well it turns out that young adults are finding creative new ways to make new friends. Time Left is an app. You select your city, then you sign up for a dinner. Any Wednesday night, you show up at the restaurant at 7 PM, and you meet a group of total strangers. Hey.

Hi. Hello. Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm Samantha. Samantha. I'm Robin. Nice to meet you guys.

Hey. Hi. What's your name? David. Yes. I'm Samantha. I'm Robin. Nice to meet you guys. Hey! Hi! What's your name? David. Yes. I think you can just, because you can do more stuff without interacting with people, like I can like order stuff online or whatever, then you get less of those like little moments,

right? That's what I like about this. It's like, it's basically like ordering a hangout online, right? It's true, yeah. It's what I do. like about this it's like it's basically like ordering a hangout online right so yeah it's very it kind of it doesn't make you automatically make friends but it kind of levels the playing field with like how things have changed I came to my first time left because it had been two years since I had moved to Toronto and I felt like I still didn't have a social circle. My social circle consisted of my boyfriend and my brother essentially.

And people are very busy in Toronto and I am an introvert so I enjoy my time alone. But there are times where you get a little bit restless, and if you live downtown, you can hear people outside in the summer enjoying their time with their friends and you kind of think, I need to get out, I need to meet people, I wanna be social. So I moved from Ireland by myself, and three days after I moved, I did my first time left and

I've made lifelong friends through time left. At this age, I'm 27, some of your friends are going off to get married, some are having kids, some are emigrating, so I can see how friendship groups kind of fade. I also don't work in a corporate job or anything like that. My team, like there's one young guy on my team, but the rest are all like, you know, seasoned. They're certainly not going to be looking for friends to go out with. Apps like Time Left aren't the only way to make new friends. You could try to organize your own opportunities. And that is what Gabrielle Lagasse and Frank Wynn have done. Gabrielle lives in Toronto and founded Bon Vivon.

It's an organization that hosts dinner parties for groups of strangers. She's with me in our studio in Toronto. And Frank is the founder of the Soul Run Club. He is in our Calgary studio. Morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning. Gabrielle, what was going through your mind?

You listened to strangers there getting together at dinner. I think that's very much so what we're trying to do too, right? These people are meeting. Others are around the dinner table, which is what the concept of Balvi Vaughn started from for those conversations. So, I have yet to try time left, but I'd love to. Pete Slauson Frank, it was interesting in hearing those people. They talked about how they had moved to new communities and just found it difficult to break in to the larger social scene.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah, I mean, coming from Toronto, it's a place where there's so many people, right? And then you kind of look around and you're seeing all these people have fun out and about, and then you might look at yourself and think, why isn't that me? Before you start, I wanna talk about

what you've done with this, but before you started Bon Vivant, what was your own situation like Gabrielle, in terms of trying to make friends? What was going on? So, a few years ago after I graduated school, I moved to London in the UK, and I found myself in a similar position where I, of the people we're targeting, where I knew absolutely no one, and I was looking for those types of organized events that brought expats together or other people trying to meet others so that you didn't just go up to someone, you know, at a gym trying to make friends and then you realize they don't really want to be friends with you, they already have their own group. And I found that super successful in lending

those organized activities. And when I moved to Toronto, I had a group of friends, but I realized that I was still craving those organized activities. And I saw kind of a gap in the market for the mid-20s to mid-30s demographic that's straight out of school and finding it hard to make new friends outside of those environments where you're so collaborating with others or at work. So that's kind of where I started from. Why do you think it was difficult to make friends? I mean, part of it is, as you said, you're in London, you don't want to just be some rando who's talking to somebody in a gym. In a big city like that or in a big city like the one you're in right now, why was

it hard to break in? I wonder if people have stopped going up to people as organically as much. We're so online now when you get so much interaction too from online, but it isn't as fulfilling. And I find people stay in their own circles, maybe they're not as, you know, wanting to put themselves out there and get out of their comfort zones to meet others, because I don't think it's as the norm anymore. So it's a bit scary maybe for a age group to just go up to someone and want to be friends with them.

So that's why we kind of organize these events, that people know that everyone around them is in the same boat, that they're willing to meet others. But yeah. Pete Slauson What about for you, Frank? I mean, what was it like for you? How were you trying to make new friends and what were you up against? Frank Curzio Yeah, so I moved to Calgary the first time around during the pandemic in 2020. And I felt like I was dealt with a bad hand since everything was closed. I actually inevitably – part of the reason why I moved back to Toronto at the time was because I didn't have any friends.

So I made the decision to move back to Toronto for a time period and only recently moved back to Calgary where I am right now. This time around, I want to do something different. And I found that the running community, and it did help that I was already very well doing marathons in the past and stuff. But I decided to kind of just say, hey, like, I think run clubs are a great way to connect with others. People at the end of the day go into these spaces,

whether to run, meet new people. But at the end of the day, it's just creating a third space for people. And I think that's what's missing in our society. I'm Sarah Trelevin. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started warning everybody. Every doula that I out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service,

The Con, Caitlin's baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. What did you feel like you were missing out on? You said you didn't have friends. It sounds like an obvious question, but what did you feel like you were missing out on in that time? Probably just genuine connections at the end of it.

So I started the Seoul Run Club with a couple of my friends and it stemmed from not having any friends in the first place, right? So I felt that I had such a good experience going to other run clubs that I said, hey, why not create another run club, so to say, in Calgary and allow more people to have more options to come to these run clubs and see what it's like. And it's amazing to see all these newcomers come to these run clubs, never ran their life and they're just like, hey, we had such a fun experience and we want to come back again. I'll talk more about that.

Gabrielle, tell me a little bit about starting Bon Vivant and what, I mean, again, you've talked a bit about the circumstances that you were in. Why did you think getting people around a dinner table, strangers around a dinner table would be a good idea? For me, food has always been a big part of my life. It's a big part of my family's life as well. And every time I thought about when I had the best chats is when I hosted dinner parties or attended dinner parties.

And it's when you meet everyone and there's groups of different people around the dinner table that a friend brought together and you end up having, you're not constricted on time, you're sat at the table for somewhere up to like two to four hours and you end up having such deep, meaningful connections. I don't know what it is about the dinner table, but I feel like it strips back people's kind of like barriers and walls and they just feel like sharing and you're around candles and you're sharing food and you're sharing stories. And I've always had my most meaningful conversations I found around the dinner table. So to me, that was the most organic way to bring that third space to people, to make people be able to share

and make those connections that will last beyond the evening. Usually you don't go to a dinner party and know nobody at the table. Usually you go to a dinner, you know, a handful of people, maybe there's different people in different social circumstances, but you have some allies. Yeah. This is like all strangers? All strangers. Sometimes they'll have a duo or two that come together, but most of them are completely strangers, yeah. Who cooks?

Me. You cook all the food? Our last one, we hired chefs because it was a 24 person dinner, but the other ones, yeah, it was me. And who shows up? You have people from Toronto who are, a lot of them are either straight out of school and looking to build more community because their friends left, or you have people in their early 30s who have just moved to the city from other countries or their cities

and are looking to make those connections and those social groups. Do they tell you about why they show up? Yeah, we ask a few of them. A lot of them are, they've seen our videos online. It seems like it was a great environment. They love dinner parties. They love how we create a theme. And then others are just like, yeah, like I'm just looking

really to meet other people. So for some people it's an experience. And for others, it's really like they're looking for that third space where they can get out of their homes and meet others. So a lot of them, it's really like they're looking for that third space where they can get out of their homes and meet others. So, a lot of them it's to meet people and others for an experience. Does it ever get weird? Like, and strange and awkward and conversation is going and then it just grinds to a halt? You would think so, and that was my biggest fear. What we do is we start the events with a sort of mingling session at the start. So you have like a half hour to 45 minutes of everyone gets a drink and you start talking.

And we, like, I'm in there also, like, getting conversation going, asking questions. And it seems to kind of like make everyone just a bit more at ease. So by the time they get to the table, they've probably talked to who they're sat next to already. And we have some conversation cards on the table as well. There are more conversation starters rather than icebreakers, real topics. Like what are the questions? One thing would be like,

what is your biggest struggle you find in a big city like Toronto? Or if money wasn't something you cared about, what would be your job tomorrow? Or if you can move anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Things that are really big conversation starters that people can all jump into. When people leave, have you seen people talking to each other? And have you heard of friendships

that have developed outside of the dinner table and outside of the dining room, that people actually hang out, that this is something that has created a larger connection? Yeah, this is actually my favourite part of it. And we've had groups of friends who send us photos after being like, hey, now we have a monthly reoccurring friend date that we go out to restaurants and we try different ones and we call them the Balvivar reunions because they met at one of our dinners. We have people that created group chats after

and then go to workout classes on weekend mornings. And yeah, so it's been really, really great, super rewarding to see that it's working and that people are forming groups from there. Frank, what about for you? I mean, you talked about fitness being a way in and the thing with the run club is you spend time running obviously, but you'll hang out before and you'll hang out after. Why is that a good way to bring people together, people who might not know each other but who are looking for some sort of connection? Yeah, because I think the entry to just meeting up at a run club is just you're meeting at a public space, right?

So oftentimes, you're just that before period, before you actually do the activity, you're just standing around. And I think there's kind of like that period activity you're just standing around and I think there's kind of like that that Period where you're just standing around not sure what to do Where you interact with the people beside you right and then you have periods of like The before where you talk a little bit the actual run So people at the end of it get a run into it and then afterwards It's that post coffee or post or post-cool-down area.

And I think there's something to be said that how friendships are formed, it's the amount of like unplanned, frequency of unplanned interactions of seeing the person over and over again, right? It's a little bit more organic where you see the person one week, right? And then, you know, you might just have a quick dialogue of saying, hello, how are you? And then you may see them again the following week, right? And the thing is you're not planning. I guess we plan to come every Saturday morning, 9 a.m., Bridge Line in Calgary. But it's coming week after week where you see the same people that build that familiarity and that's where I think organic friendships are more formed easier in that sense.

Have you seen the payoff from that a bit of what we heard earlier from Gabrielle that people outside of the Run Club will tell you that they met somebody who ended up becoming a friend because of the Run Club? Oh absolutely I'm literally a I I guess, proof of concept myself. I moved here in September and within the month I kind of had friends that I, I wouldn't say they were like close friends at the time, I didn't know, but that's how it starts, right? It starts with just these unplanned interactions of coming repeatedly week after week. And I also kind of noticed that it takes kind of like two interests.

So like if you meet them at a common place, whether that's through Gabrielle's like dinner event or a run club, for example, it's not until you actually have – like you learn that that person also have a second interest. So like let's just say hypothetically that you learn that they also play volleyball or basketball that kind of like that friendship is strengthened. If somebody is listening to this and they feel those pressures about how difficult it is to meet somebody new, to make new friends, what would you say to them? What's a word of advice that you would give them? I always tell, like when I meet up at my run club in the morning,

I always address the people who are the first timer because I totally understand how scary it is to come alone, right? And even when I try to go to like these other run clubs and I like say my friends aren't available that day, even myself who's like one of the coordinators of a run club, even I feel a little bit anxious going to these things alone. So I can only imagine what it's like going there for the first time. So I think just addressing and understanding it will be scary, it will be awkward.

It gives you a little peace of mind in your brain before going into the event. Gabrielle, any words of wisdom for people who are listening? I think just don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Like he said, there's going to be that moment of uncertainty and of nervousness at the beginning, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is so scary. But if you lean into it and you also know that everyone around you at these events are doing the exact same thing and feeling the exact same thing, it's a lot

more appeasing and kind of removes those nerves a little bit to know you're not the only one that's feeling that way. So lean into that, right? That's great. Thank you both for being here. Of course. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us, Matt. This has been The Current Podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones.

You can also listen online at cbc.ca slash The Current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.