| The most important insights I have to offer is this: Ask for help. Offer it as well, but you _must_ ask for it. Do you want to be friends with invincible people who never need your assistance? Probably not if you are anything like me. Giving to other people makes us like them more, and this goes both ways. This is the Benjamin Franklin effect[1] You have called out a desire to have more meaningful relationships, so I am not going to focus on meeting people, though the more people you meet the more you will find people with things in common. Instead think about what makes deep connections? Shared experiences. Fellow feeling. Giving and accepting affection. I am Australian and I am lucky enough to have moved to New York for work. I met some friends through Australian connections but the deepest connections I have made are through a random conversation at a networking event that led to some drinks, and then to an introduction to a group of like minded poets, artists and technologists. But even then I felt on the outside. The thing that changed that has been going to them for help with things in my life (support as I struggled with relationship trouble, homesickness, stress from work) as well as spending time in their company individually and as a group in both casual and more intense settings (camping). Part of the help I asked for I guess was their acceptance and approval of some poetry I was writing, which I performed for them. I guess that my thesis is shallow experiences make for shallow friendships and deep experiences (which by their nature require you to have your guard down) make deep friendships. "Breaking into a clique" is a bad paradigm I think, you don't want to break in, you want to be brought in. The only other thing I would say is seek people who are also seeking. They will be the ones who have arrived from elsewhere, the ones who are perhaps on the edges of the society that you are in. They want what you want. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect |