There are few home truths quite as painful as the realisation that you don’t quite have enough friends – something that becomes even more apparent when you move away from the ones you do have. When I left London and moved in with my partner last November, the prospect of navigating my new friendless day-to-day filled me with horror. I’d long grown used to the effortless meet-ups that land in your lap when you have more than 20 years of friendship under your belt – the majority of the strongest connections I’ve made, and still cherish to this day – were established in childhood or the tail end of my teenage years.
When it came to friend dating, I was painfully out of practice. In my new city, I feared that isolation, like 51 per cent of women in the UK who experience loneliness often , would consume me. But I couldn’t solely rely on phone calls and WhatsApp messages for social sustenance.
I needed IRL face time. I took the leap out of London, much as it pains me to admit, for love. My partner’s job meant navigating a long-distance relationship, which was beginning to become expensive.
While he had his own friends, we’d always been independent people. I feared that leeching off his contacts would have compromised that sense of individuality, or worse, got in the way of bonds that were forged long before I came along. Read Next At 65, I'm happy single - especially when I see how miserable married people are I knew I had to go it alone.
I started small: cyber-st.