Meetup experiences – good, bad, indifferent?

[MidlifeBookworm]

My guess would be that single people are more likely to use Meetup.com as a way to have a social life, that’s certainly been the case for me. In some ways it has been really useful and in others quite frustrating, so I’d love to compare experiences with people here. I have tried a whole range of groups – ones for mainstream and arthouse cinema, two live music ones, a mental health support group, one which visits cafes and tearooms, and others which I tried but then gave up on. The good thing is that most of the meets have been hosted well and people have been mainly friendly with me at them. It has also been a plus trying out movies that I wouldn’t have gone to by myself, and broadening my tastes. Likewise the music hosts are more into their music than me and have hosted meets for bands I’ve never heard of before but have enjoyed seeing live. Some challenging things for me :- each meet can vary so much depending on who turns up (sometimes there’s good chemistry and other times I feel socially anxious and wish I’d stayed at home that night), it can get expensive buying concerts tickets when I’m not working, I’ve only made one friend close enough to see me outside of the meets (despite having attending really quite a few meets). And yet I think if I had a better approach Meetup could yield me more friendships than doing something like evening classes or volunteering, two other things which are often recommended to those wanting more friends. I am just not sure what that better approach might be! Does anyone have tips or things which helped them get the most from Meetup, or alternatively other places they have found friendship? I know the main theme of this forum is about the search for a partner but for me at this point in my life I would prefer to take the baby steps of making friends in order to be more comfortable around others. Thanks in advance for any advice or sharing! :)

[mariposa]

Hi CameraObscuraFan,

I haven’t used Meetup.com (so take this for whatever it’s worth!), alhough I’ve considered it as an alternative to online dating, but I can see how it would be a good way to find new friendships too. One thing that might be helpful is to try to find something else in common with someone from one of your groups (beyond whatever shared interest brought the two of you to the meetup group in the first place), because that then gives you an avenue to move that friendship forward into other areas of your life. An example from my own life – I have a fairly new friend who I have known for several years through work. We have the same job, but in different locations, and would see each other maybe four times a year at various work events. We always got along well when we saw each other through work, but up until about a year ago I would have considered her more of an acquaintence than a friend. What changed was that we were chatting at one of those work events and realized we shared a common family experience – her mom had the same type of cancer that my mom has. From there we made plans to go for coffee to talk more about that, and now we see each other outside of work on a pretty regular basis. I’m happy she’s come into my life, but it took finding that additonal connection to really start building that friendship, and I think the same principle might apply for things like Meetup groups/courses/volunteer work or any other experiences where you see the same people regularly but for a particular purpose. I truly have no idea if that’s the right approach (or if there even IS a “right” approach!) but that’s something that’s worked for me in the past. Is there someone from one of your movie groups who might like to go with you to one of the music meetups, for example?

[courtney550]

I’ve never tried a meetup, BUT something came to mind that I thought I’d share. I also want to expand my social circle and make new meaningful friendships. I don’t know if you’re into these type of activities, but I noticed a lot of people I meet have developed friendships from weekly classes they go to. Typically, this is: yoga, spin classes at a local gym, indoor rock climbing, etc…

I think this is easy for some people because 1) You feel obligated to go if you paid for a membership (and vice versa) so you’ll see these people more frequently. 2) It’s a great opportunity to strike up conversations, but it’s also nice to go about the class independently on days when you’re not feeling the crowd. 3) I’m pretty awful at sticking to a workout plan, but I do think it does the mind and body good.

I know not everyone is into these types of activities, but it’s something interesting I’ve noticed outside of meetup groups :).

[MidlifeBookworm]

Thanks both for your input. My feeling at the moment is that I’m spreading myself too thin being a part of lots of groups, I can totally see the point of people becoming friends with people they see weekly, so my next step is to focus on the groups where people seem friendliest towards me and see if I can develop those further by attending more regularly. I will also try to bring up other topics at the meets to see if there’s anyone who shares a second interest, that seems a good idea too. Thanks again!

[mamey2422]

I have been on Meetup and have made a few good friends from there that I see outside of Meetup regularly. I think your approach is a good one – pick one or two groups and then from within those try to build just one or two friendships from the people you feel you have most in common with or seem to connect to. Let us know how it works out!

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