How To Get A Best Friend

With Galentine's Day coming up, it is impossible to ignore fellow bloggers and friends on social media planning girls nights and sleepovers. The idea of Galentine's Day is great. Celebrate your friendships. Spread the girl power.

That being said, some of us don't have girlfriends to celebrate with. At one point in my life, I didn't have any best friends. I was a single young mom and a freshman at a local college. My closest girl friends left town to far away universities. Most of the time, I didn't really have anyone to hang out with other than family. Don't get me wrong, family is great but it just isn't the same.

Irish

After Jagger was about a year old or so, things got a bit easier. First off, he was much more portable and there were more things he could do since he was walking. Out of the blue, I texted my friend who I will call Irish for sake of him having no idea I am writing about him right now. We had been pretty close friends in high school and we even went to the same university. However, we both had some pretty substantial life changes in the past year or so which caused us to loose touch. I asked if he wanted to go to lunch or to the park with Jagger and I and surprisingly he agreed. We talked for hours and planned many additional lunch or coffee "dates" (not really dates, friend dates). 

After that, we became closer than ever before. He pretty much came to my house everyday. Now our friendship has cycles of seeing each other once every few weeks to almost living at my house together. The key is to take time to go to lunch and catch up. It is also important to understand that it is okay to not see each other for a while. People have busy lives.

Skylarky

A few months after I started university, one of my friends moved back home to attend the same school as I did. Although we tried to hang out a few times, it just didn't click the same as before. This friend was in a very different point in life than I was at the time. She had a pretty serious boyfriend and I had a very young son. Neither of us knew how to handle each other's situations. We talked on and off but it wasn't really going anywhere. Although I still had Irish and we were really close, I wished that I had a best friend that I could get manicures with and do typical girly things.

After nearly a year after she moved back home, she broke up with her long time boyfriend. It turns out that her relationship had alienated her from other friends. Without going into to much detail about her personal life, we can say that at this point she also needed a best friend. After going to a super late night dinner at a 24 hour hole-in-the-wall cafe the night of Halloween, we started picking up pieces. It was some work to get to where we are today. We had a good handful of times where we wanted to hang out but felt like we didn't really know each other anymore. Luckily, we now are the closest friends we have ever been. 
Bonus: She helped me write this post about hockey for complete newbs like me and we recently made a best friend tag video on my YouTube channel.


If you feel like you have no good friends right now, it is okay. It may take sometime but good friendships aren't made overnight. I don't have a lot of friends but the friends I do have are the best I could ask for.

Here are five tips from my experience

1. Remember.

Think about who your friends used to be and why you aren't friends anymore. Contact them.

2. Make it easy. 

Do lunch dates or coffee so the time is short, the event is cheap, and there's an activity that you both do. It will make it much less awkward. 

3. Be a listener. 

Ask a lot of questions about what they have been up to and make an effort to remember things they say. You are trying to reconnect, not impress them with your life story.

4. Failure happens.

At first, it may be weird and uncomfortable. You may not talk for a few weeks or even months. That's okay! You both might be in different mindsets right now and come back later.

5. Send smoke signals.

If you happen to not click right away, be sure to keep in contact every so often to check up on them. Just a quick text to ask how their week went or remembering a funny story that happened in high school. Letting someone know you are thinking about them is a kind gesture that won't go unnoticed. Although they may be too busy or just in a big change at the moment to truly reconnect, it doesn't mean you have to jump ship.