Updated October 2026 ยท By The Dinner Table Club
The short answer
To make new friends as an adult, put yourself in small groups that meet repeatedly, show up more than once, and be the person who suggests the next plan. Friendship mostly comes from time spent together: one study estimates about 50 hours to make a casual friend and about 90 hours to make a real one.
Why it gets harder after school
School and early jobs handed you the three things friendship needs: being near the same people, seeing them again and again, and time that was not already booked. Adult life removes all three at once. People move, work hours spread out, and free evenings fill with the friends you already have.
You are not alone in feeling it. In 2023 the US Surgeon General issued an advisory on loneliness and isolationreporting that about one in two American adults had experienced loneliness.
How long it takes to make a friend
Research by Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas, published in 2018, estimated about 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to become friends, and more than 200 hours to become close friends.
The takeaway is practical: one great conversation is a start, not a friendship. Choose settings you can return to.
Seven things that actually work
- Join something that repeats. A weekly class, club, league or volunteer shift gives you the hours without having to schedule each one.
- Go to hosted dinners with strangers. A seated dinner with a host compresses the hardest part, starting conversations, into one evening with 10 to 20 people who all came to meet someone.
- Keep groups small. It is hard to get past small talk in a room of 200. Tables of 6 to 20 let you actually learn names.
- Go back. The second time you see someone matters more than the first. Return to the same dinner series, class or spot.
- Follow up within a week. Suggest a specific plan: a time, a place, and who else is coming. Most new connections end because nobody sends the second text.
- Bring people together. Introduce two new acquaintances to each other. Hosting, even a small dinner at home, makes you the center of a new circle.
- Lead with curiosity, not credentials. Ask about what someone loves rather than what they do for work. It moves conversation past the script faster.
How The Dinner Table Club helps
The Dinner Table Club hosts dinner parties for strangers at partner restaurants in New York, DC, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. Each dinner seats 10 to 20 guests, most of whom come alone, with a host who makes the introductions and seat switches between courses so you meet most of the table. Guests swap numbers, start group chats and come back to future dinners together.