Speed dating for friends

Friend speed dating is for awesome women who are interested in platonic friendships with other, similarly badass, ladies! It's a speed-dating.
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Young Kiwis say they struggle to make friends. Afterwards, I catch up with Sarah, an articulate and softly spoken woman in her early 40s, with curly blonde hair and a penetrating gaze. She came up with the idea for The School of Feminine Arts and friendship speed dating while working with women in private practice, she says. Many women feel terribly lonely, and have no idea what to do about it. I thought, let's resolve this.

A report found that Those aged between 15 and 24 were the most lonely at Sarah is choosy about her friends, which is an absolutely okay way to be, she says. When I tell her that, at the event I just attended, I thought about writing down every name to spare others' feelings, she tells me that's a bad idea. It's fine to be selective about who we spend our time with.

Selectiveness, of course, is the basic principle behind friendship speed dating. Participants spend a few minutes with each other, noting down names and other salient information "Cyclist, blue jumper. Afterwards, you write down the names of the women you'd like to see again, and if you match, Sarah passes along your contact details. I tell her that the New Zealand General Social Survey found that 40 percent of women in New Zealand felt lonely to some degree in the four weeks preceding the survey.

The figure for men was a little lower, at 32 percent. Sarah isn't surprised by the figures. Living in nuclear family units in a patriarchal society where women are encouraged to compete against each other means we find it difficult to find connections, she believes. If we feel if we're not sharing our thoughts with other women we feel removed from society.

How to Play Speed Friend-shipping

When I ask if she thinks opening themselves up to rejection might hinder rather than help lonely women, there's a long silence. We're here because we want to make friends. Because we're all a little bit vulnerable that competitive stuff is stripped away and we're just there going, 'I hope you like me'.

She mentions a woman with questionable hygiene who attended one of her events and didn't get a single match. She remembers this because it was one of only two times it's happened.

So that woman might need to come along to 15 gatherings before she finds someone with whom she feels she might resonate. Some of us find it easier to fit in with a crowd, while others are unique and it will take them longer to find their own tribe. If one friend is considered enough, then Nicola from Tauranga hit the jackpot when she attended one of Sarah's events last year, ending up with a small gang of like minded companions.

Nicola and her husband abandoned Auckland's overheated housing market for Tauranga four years ago. For a long time, she thought she'd made a mistake.

Tackling loneliness in women with speed dating for friendship

In Auckland, she'd had plenty of friends she'd made through her children's school, and at work. However, in her late 40s, with grown up children and an illness that left her unable to work, she felt isolated. While her husband is "lovely and supportive," he works away a lot, she tells me on the phone. This took a toll on her mental health, and her marriage.

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I thought about leaving him and going back to Auckland to live with my kids. Last September she signed up for a local speed dating event. She was excited, but when the day came she nearly bailed out. The thought of putting herself out there was terrifying.

Speed Dating For Friends Can Be Just As Awkward And Heartbreaking | DCist

What if nobody writes my name down? What if no one's interested in meeting up with me again? I'll admit it—this was a risky program! The idea of "speed dating" is a scary one to most people, and it can seem very out of place at a library. However, this isn't normal speed dating.

It's Friend Speed Dating. By the end I had 29 attendees in their 20s and 30s at the program!

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It was such an amazing experience—many attendees were extremely grateful and prompted me to run the same type of program on a weekly basis. Most swapped numbers with their new friends and many were already discussing future hangouts. It was a dream! The program was supposed to run from 2: Here's how I did it!

In regular speed dating the men sit on one side of the table and never move, while the women shift over one seat each time. But in that scenario, each person only matches with half of the attendees. I needed everyone to match with each other—regardless of gender! The way to get around this problem is to have one person sit in the same seat for the entire process, while everyone else shifts one seat over and ropes around the tables.

That's why arrows are necessary: You can prepare for an odd number in three ways: I decided option c would be the least awkward and identified the trio spots by placing little stars at the seat.


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Everyone still moved over one seat each round like usual, but they occasionally found themselves in a trio instead of one-on-one. People showing up late: It's going to happen—and it's okay! Have a name tag ready to hand them, and give a quick overview of how it works. They can wait until the next round and jump in. You might have to shuffle the arrows around a bit to make it work, or add a trio station. Thirty adults having exciting, nervous, get-to-know-you conversations is LOUD. For this reason I would advise leaving some room between the tables.