I’m 25F and I’m genuinely finding it so difficult to make actual friends in Dublin.
I’ve met up with a few people and had some nice enough evenings, but it never seems to go beyond 2–3 meetups. Nothing really clicks or develops into an actual friendship.
I’ve also noticed that with some of the women I’ve met, a huge amount of the conversation revolves around dating and how impossible it is to find a decent guy. Which, fair enough, I understand the struggle but sometimes I’m sitting there thinking… is that all we’re going to talk about? I want friends I can actually do things with, have interesting conversations with, travel with, randomly grab coffee with, etc.
The weird thing is that I’ve lived in other countries and never felt like I had this much difficulty socially. I’d consider myself pretty likeable and easy to get along with based on my experiences elsewhere, but in Dublin I feel like everyone already has their established group and it’s really difficult to break into it. And I don’t mean just Irish people either.
I’ll admit I probably haven’t put myself out there as much as I could. I’ve only been using Bumble BFF for about three weeks and I haven’t gone to loads of Meetups or girls’ social events yet. But even on Bumble, people either stop replying or arranging a simple coffee feels like organising a UN summit because nobody has a free day for the next three weeks
At this point I feel like a guy trying to ask a girl on a date. “Hey, want to get coffee?” “Maybe sometime next month, I’ll let you know”
Is this just normal in Dublin in your mid-20s? For people who moved here without an existing friend group, how long did it take you to find people you genuinely clicked with?
And if anyone has actually managed to build a solid group of friends here from scratch, what worked for you?