A Recipe For Making A New Best Friend

Add in two cups of no expectations. Be off the market for a new best friend. You’re in your mid-twenties and satisfied with your social life. Feel like you don’t need to meet anyone new.

Stir in one fateful meeting. Meet someone at a party or at a bar or at a dinner. They’ll probably be a friend of a friend, which gives them immediate context. Smile politely and introduce yourself. Think nothing of them at first. In your eyes, they’re just another person in a crowded room, another person you’ll meet for a moment and watch disappear. Maybe you’ll run into them again somewhere and have a vague recollection of meeting them. You won’t be able to place them though and you’ll fret over whether to say hello or keep walking. You always keep walking.

But as fate would have it, this person won’t disappear like the others. This person is yours and you just don’t know it yet. Six months from now, you’ll have seen them laugh, cry, and confide in you. You won’t be able to remember a time when they didn’t mean something to you. You’ll say things like, “I can’t believe I’ve only known you for only a little while. It feels like forever.” And you’ll mean it.

Sizzle in six comments that stop you in your tracks. The night you meet them, you begin to overhear the things that are coming out of their mouth, and you begin to realize, “Hey. They’re saying some funny thoughtful shit. I like them!” As the night goes on, you listen attentively to their conversations and begin to engage. When you exchange words, both of you have this moment of, “Wait. I’m obsessed with you. We’re on the same wavelength. Welcome to my life. Can you be a major part of it?’ We’ve heard about the concept of love at first sight and it may not even be a real thing. Friendship at first sight, however, does happen and when it does, it’s very special.

Spend one amazing day together. Getting to know them is so exciting. In a matter of hours, you cover family, friends and lovers, and you discover that you’ve had similar experiences. It’s like you were both on the same life train, but hanging out in different cars. You obsessed over the same books, records, and moments in pop culture before you ever met. This makes it destiny. Feel supremely lucky to have found someone else who gets it, who gets you.

Garnish with one epiphany. You’re never too old to meet a new best friend. Your social life is never full enough. As you get older, you’ll see your friends dwindle down to a select few, and realize how rare it is to actually find lifelong friends. In high school, friendships were so ephemeral. In college, bonds were nurtured by the tight-knit environment created by school. When you graduate and are released into “the real world”, you no longer have any ties to anyone. You make the time for the people you genuinely care about. You say to the friends who matter,”Okay, things are no longer circumstantial. For us to remain close, we’ll actually have to put the work and time into it. I want to know you forever.” If you are still meeting people you want to know forever when you’re forty, consider yourself very lucky.