When I moved up to Cheshire I’d got in contact with some friends I’d previously known from my brief year of school up here, but I guess we kind of grew apart, as people do when they lead busy lives. I went out with the very few friends I had now and again but I just felt like there were so many girls out there that had to be in the same position as me, friendless, lonely and in a new environment without all those home comforts and best friends. I’d spoken to Max about it and he suggested trying to find an app that was for meeting new people – I mean there are apps for everything these days. I’d heard of Meetup and had tried it in Aus before so I knew there was at least that one to try, so I got my phone out and started looking it up on google ‘making new friends app’, ‘app for friends’, ‘meeting new people app’ and I came across a few different apps.
I can handle my own in big crows and I’m not too shy when it comes to meeting new people, but after downloading Meetup again I found it quite overwhelming – there were so many people in so many groups, where to even start!
All the groups I wanted to be in that had a smaller amount of people, I had to pay to join. Like I get it, Meetup charge the owner of the group something like £75 a month, or maybe it’s per year.. anyway the point was that I wasn’t about to join a group of 2000 people where an actual meet up would seem just too impossible, and that my pathetic attempt at posting on it to make new friends would just be overlooked. I also found the groups I did join had really pushy admins, like I understand you don’t want people to join if they’re not going to participate in anything, but is it really the end of the world if they just wanna be in the group for the hell of it? I’d made my mind up on Meetup pretty quickly and, well – nah.
So with my Meetup app being deleted as quickly as it got downloaded I tried another app I’d stumbled across on the big wide web called Hey Vina! I liked the layout of the app but it seemed that it was maybe more of an American app as there was literally no one on it, apart from me ofc. So after a little tumble weed crossed my screen I downloaded my final app – Bumble.
Now Bumble itself is actually a dating app but there is a setting at the top of the app to change it to Bumble BFF (I had to show Max so he didn’t freak) which matches you to other people of the same sex. FINALLY I had found an app with actual real people who wanted to be friends! It works very similar to a dating app, you put how many miles you’re willing to search, swipe left or right and match if the other person likes you too, and well, since I wasn’t looking for someone I was attracted too, I started swiping right on everyone I came across. It probably took an hour until I got my first match, a girl called Becky who didn’t live too far away from my house in Cheshire but because of work and life in general we never managed to meet and then I ended up moving into Manchester city centre.
Using bumble in the city was a completely different ball game, there were LOADS of other girls looking to start a girl gang and hang out with wine and ugly cry at the notebook. I matched with this girl called Paige who I seemed to get along quite well with and she said she lived literally round the corner from me, so we decided to meet at the corner of our road and go for afternoon tea (civilised right!?). We went to Victoria Tea Rooms and got along great, the conversation seemed to flow and we had quite a bit in common, yay my first city friend! Since this was on a Sunday I asked what plans she had for the next Saturday and if she’d be up for casual drinks, she said she was keen so we arranged to meet at the closest student pub near us. As we’d arranged to meet I realised I had about 15 more girls on my app that I’d spoken too and figured I’d invite them all along too, at least 1 of them should be free. I sent out a message to all the girls saying about where I was meeting Paige and at what time and within a few minutes, Jess and Rebecca had replied saying they were free and wanted to come along. I met with Paige first and told her about the other girls who were coming as we walked into the student pub, she said she had invited someone else too, a girl called Ellen who she’d met once before, great! the more the merrier. We walked up to the bar and I ordered a pitcher (go hard or go home lol) and she ordered one too – my kinda girl! We sat down and picked up where we’d left off on the Sunday, then Ellen arrived, then Rebecca, then Jess. We all had a few drinks then left to go to the brewery pub round the corner which seemed like somewhere we could actually hear each other talk, we had all got on so well we decided to make a whatsapp group. After we’d had one or two at the brewery we went to Revs De Cuba in town and well.. apart from the insane shapes Jess was throwing, the rest is history. I didn’t get home until 2am and had one of the craziest and most spontaneous nights out I think I’ve ever had.
After that night I carried on matching with new girls on the app and adding them into the group allowing everyone to get to know each other and be able to make new friends with me. Before I knew it, we’d arranged another night out for Paiges’ birthday and everyone was going to her flat to pre drink! There was now 7 girls and we were still growing as a group! I don’t remember too much from this night as it was another fairly messy one, but it was so nice having a good group of females coming together.
More and more girls got added to the group, and more and more meet ups were happening and we’re now a group of 12, we speak every day and meet up as often as we can, so yeah I ended up meeting some really great girls who are into exactly the same things as me and were also in the exact same position! It’s the story of, get cushty with your bf and grow apart from old friends and not feeling comfortable enough to ask the cool drunk girl in the girls toilets for her number, since you don’t wanna risk looking like a complete weirdo. So yeah, I would urge anyone who has found themselves friendless, or even wanting to just expand your friendship circle to download it and at least give it a try, the girls have changed my life for the better and I’ve enjoyed living in Manchester a hell of a lot more since they’ve become my friends!
Try it out here – Bumble
SIMPLEOCEANSOUL 