Lost in the City, Found in a Group Chat
Or: Can You Really Make New Friends Between Earl’s Court and Ealing Broadway?
I couldn’t help but wonder... In a world full of people (eight billion and counting), how many friends is enough?
When you grow up in a small town or village — where friendships form between shared school buses, questionable local pubs, and neighbourhood gossip that spreads faster than fibre broadband — friendship is kind of... automatic. It just happens. Your friends are the ones who are simply there. At school. At the youth club. Down the road. They become your people, for better or for worse. No pottery class required.
But then you move to the big city. And suddenly, friendship isn’t handed to you. It’s a quest. A side mission. Another thing to schedule between Zoom calls and adulting fatigue.
We're told: “You have to put yourself out there.” Join a queer climbing club. Take a three-week sourdough workshop. Enrol in pottery for beginners. And sure, I love the idea of crafting a little clay plant pot while finding my next best mate, but do I love it at 7:30pm on a Tuesday night after a full day of work and a soul-draining commute on the District line?
No. No, I do not.
Because real talk? The 9–5 (or 6) doesn’t end when you close your laptop — it ends when you get home, mentally disassociate in the Blank Street queue, and then collapse into your sheets wondering how it’s only Wednesday.
And yet — we need connection. We’re human. Queer ones at that. We’re told to build chosen family, create community, nurture bonds, be social. But it’s hard. Making friends as an adult is like dating without the flirting — it’s awkward, slow, and sometimes feels like everyone else already found their friend group during fresher’s week and you just... missed it.
It’s not that I don’t have friends — I have the best of them. The ones that don’t drain you. That don’t require a weekly check-in to stay close. The ones you can FaceTime out of the blue, two weeks deep in burnout, and within seconds you’re laughing, venting, living — like no time passed at all.
They live across counties. And keeping in touch takes effort — with every train delay, every bus trip, every “what’s everyone doing this weekend, shall we...?” Honestly, at this point, getting five people in one room feels like trying to book Glastonbury tickets through a group chat.
Then there are the ones you didn’t expect — the work friends. The colleagues you swore you’d never emotionally overshare with... and then day two hits and you're trauma-dumping on Helen from People (read: HR) like she’s your therapist. You wouldn't travel to Ibiza with them, but you’d send them memes at 11pm and debrief your entire life over one too many office coffees. They're weekday constants — oddly comforting, surprisingly supportive, and just unproblematic enough to survive group lunch chats.
So again I ask: How many friends do we actually need? Two? Four? More? Or are we mistaking proximity for connection? Do the people with huge social calendars feel seen and held — or just stretched thin?
Maybe friendship — real friendship — isn’t about the number of people in your circle. Maybe it’s the depth. The calm. The sigh of relief when you realise you can take off the mask (not the PPE kind, the social one) and just exist, weird and wonderful and tired and all.
Because maybe, in a world full of curated forum chats, awkward encounters, forced workshops and networking tags on apps — the best friendships aren’t loud or showy or need to be hashtagged all the time. They’re constant. Quiet. And kind of perfect.