How to make friends as an adult: beating loneliness and building real connections when you're single

How to make friends as an adult: beating loneliness and building real connections when you're single

One of the hardest and least talked-about parts of being single (especially after a breakup) is loneliness. Not missing one person. Missing a whole world of connection. This episode gives you a practical plan to fix it.


Anna Goldfarb (New York Times friendship journalist) and Demi Kotsoris, founder of Millennial Crisis, share the exact strategies that work for making new friends as an adult, and why so many of the standard pieces of advice completely miss the mark.


Bree brings her own story: arriving in Mumbai as a solo female traveller knowing no one, and building a community from scratch in one of the world's most densely populated cities.


In this episode you'll learn:

• Why making friends as an adult is so much harder than it was when you were younger (the real reasons)

• How to turn an acquaintance into an actual friend

• Where single women are actually meeting new friends in 2026, beyond the apps

• How to overcome the fear of putting yourself out there when you're already lonely

• Why loneliness after a breakup feels different from ordinary loneliness and how to address both

• How to build a social life that makes being single genuinely enjoyable rather than isolating


Bree is in Mumbai, India.


Anna Goldfarb's book 'Modern Friendship'


Follow Demi Kotsoris on Instagram


Millennial Crisis website


Subscribe to Last Year of Single Substack here


Follow Bree Steele on Instagram


Join the Last Year of Single community


Email Bree Steele: lastyearofsingle@gmail.com


Host, Executive Producer & Editor: Bree Steele

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Episoder(25)

How to enjoy doing things alone - solo concerts, talking to strangers & why relationship expectations impact single life enjoyment

How to enjoy doing things alone - solo concerts, talking to strangers & why relationship expectations impact single life enjoyment

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Rom-coms & Disney Princess films: how our comfort movies have impacted how we date and enjoy single life

Rom-coms & Disney Princess films: how our comfort movies have impacted how we date and enjoy single life

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4 Aug 21min

Chosen Family: how to create a close community & what straight people can learn from the LGBTQIA+ community

Chosen Family: how to create a close community & what straight people can learn from the LGBTQIA+ community

Chosen family isn't a backup plan — for queer and trans communities, it's been survival and a radical way to build love, care, and belonging outside blood and marriage. This episode asks why the rest ...

28 Jul 20min

My Last Year of Single List: the 5 goals I set myself (and the 2 I'm keeping secret)

My Last Year of Single List: the 5 goals I set myself (and the 2 I'm keeping secret)

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7 Jul 11min

Dating app biases: the least swiped group on dating apps is Asian men & how to challenge our own dating biases

Dating app biases: the least swiped group on dating apps is Asian men & how to challenge our own dating biases

Asian men are twice as likely as Asian women to be single. Black women face the same exclusion from the other direction. This is not a coincidence and it is not about attraction - it is about bias, an...

30 Jun 18min

Going to a wedding alone: the single woman's guide to surviving wedding season

Going to a wedding alone: the single woman's guide to surviving wedding season

Going to a wedding alone when everyone else has a plus one is one of the most quietly expensive, emotionally exhausting and occasionally humiliating experiences of being single. This episode is the bi...

23 Jun 18min

Dating with a disability: ableism, sex, dating apps and learning to love single life (Peta Hooke)

Dating with a disability: ableism, sex, dating apps and learning to love single life (Peta Hooke)

It's the end of monsoon season in Mumbai. Bree went to the premiere of Call Me Bae last night. And she's been thinking about a question that's been sitting with her: what is it like when you have neve...

16 Jun 24min

Hate being single? Can't find love? - our self-esteem is affecting our ability to enjoy single life & have fulfilling relationships. How to build unbreakable self-worth

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I used to say I loved myself. I also used to people-please, stay in situationships that made me feel worthless, and spend every night alone wondering what was wrong with me. Those two things cannot bo...

9 Jun 21min

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