Verify I'm Not Robot

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About eight months ago, I was sitting in my apartment in Lisbon on a Sunday afternoon with absolutely nowhere to be and no one to call. I'd relocated there for work six months earlier, told myself I'd "figure out the social side later," and then let "later" stretch into half a year of eating dinner alone and spending weekends doing solo museum visits that felt sadder with every one. The loneliness wasn't dramatic — it was quiet and slow, like a leak you don't notice until the ceiling caves in.

I didn't know anyone in the city except two work colleagues I saw during office hours. My friends from home were in different time zones. My weekends were genuinely empty in a way I hadn't experienced since my first week of university.

What I did next felt strange at the time. It made complete sense in hindsight.

TL;DR — What This Experiment Actually Produced

• Moved to Lisbon knowing almost nobody; used dating apps intentionally to meet people.
• Was upfront from the start that I was open to friendship, not just romance.
• Made 8 genuine friends over three months — including a group I now travel with.
• Had one awkward early experience that taught me exactly how to set expectations properly.
• The best platforms for friendship-oriented connection: Bumble BFF, Hinge, and OkCupid.

The Kind of Loneliness Nobody Talks About Honestly

Adult loneliness after relocation is genuinely different from other kinds of loneliness.

You're not sad in an obvious way. You're functional. You go to work, you eat well, you exercise. But there's this low-level background hum of isolation that doesn't go away — the feeling of having experiences with no one to share them with. I'd find a great restaurant in Lisbon's Alfama neighborhood and feel a weird deflation because eating there alone felt like half an experience.

Here's what made it worse:

I kept waiting for friendships to form organically. Someone at work would invite me somewhere, or I'd start a hobby class and meet people naturally. That's how it's supposed to work, right? Except work colleagues stayed polite and professional, the one yoga class I tried had zero social component, and "organic" kept producing nothing.

The waiting was its own kind of exhausting. I needed to do something intentional.

The Awkward First Attempt I'd Rather Forget

My first instinct was to download Tinder and just... be honest in my bio that I was primarily looking for friends and social connection.

This was not my finest strategic moment.

Here's what happened: I matched with someone, had a lovely text conversation, met them for coffee near Praça do Comércio, and about twenty minutes in realized they absolutely thought this was a date. I hadn't been clear enough in conversation about my intentions, despite what my bio said. They were lovely about it when I clarified, but the whole interaction had that particular awkwardness of two people realizing they came to the same meeting with completely different expectations.

I went home, sat with the discomfort for a day, and thought properly about how to approach this differently.

The lesson was simple but important:

A bio disclaimer isn't enough. You need to set expectations in the actual conversation, early, warmly, and without making it weird. Something like: "Just so you know — I'm relatively new to Lisbon and honestly just looking to build my social circle here. No pressure either way, happy to just meet interesting people." That one sentence, delivered naturally in early conversation, changed everything about how subsequent meetings went.

The Platforms That Actually Worked for Making Friends

Bumble BFF — The Obvious Starting Point

Cost:

Free tier available; Bumble Premium at $16.99/month.

Bumble has a dedicated friendship mode called Bumble BFF, and it's exactly what it sounds like — a separate profile mode specifically for finding platonic connections. There's no romantic framing whatsoever; everyone using BFF is explicitly there to make friends.

I found Bumble BFF genuinely useful in Lisbon. The matches tended to be other people who'd relocated, expats, or locals who'd moved back after time abroad and were rebuilding their social circle. In other words: people who understood exactly what I was looking for because they were looking for the same thing.

The free tier works well enough. Premium adds unlimited swiping and better visibility, but I found the free tier sufficient for consistent matches.

Hinge — Surprisingly Good for Friendship-Oriented Connections

Cost:

Free tier available; Hinge+ at $19.99/month.

Hinge is technically a romantic dating app, but its prompt-based profile structure makes it far easier to signal personality and values than most platforms. When I was transparent in my prompts about being new to Lisbon and interested in finding people to explore the city with, it attracted matches who responded to that energy specifically.

Several of my closest friendships from this whole experiment started on Hinge — including the group I ended up traveling with. The people who matched with me after reading a prompt about wanting hiking partners or restaurant recommendations weren't confused about intentions; they were self-selected for exactly that.

OkCupid — Best for Finding People With Shared Interests

Cost:

Free tier is generous; Premium at $14.99/month.

OkCupid's compatibility questionnaire covers everything from personality to lifestyle to hobbies. That depth made it the best platform for finding people I genuinely had things in common with before we'd exchanged a single message.

I matched with people who'd answered questions the same way I had about travel, music, food, and values. Even when romantic chemistry wasn't there, shared interests provided an immediate and natural foundation for friendship.

Meetup (Bonus — Not a Dating App, But Worth Mentioning)

Cost:

Free to attend events; some events have small fees.

Meetup isn't a dating app, but I'd be doing you a disservice not to mention it here. Once I had the confidence from my dating app friend-making experience, I started attending Meetup events in Lisbon — language exchanges, hiking groups, photography walks.

The combination of dating apps for one-on-one initial connections and Meetup for group social situations created a complete social infrastructure from scratch.

How I Stayed Safe While Meeting Strangers

I want to be direct about this because it's the part people are most nervous about — and reasonably so.

Meeting people from apps is not inherently dangerous, but it does require the same basic awareness you'd apply to any new social situation with someone you don't know yet. Here's exactly what I did:

• First meetings always in public — Coffee shops, busy parks, popular restaurant areas. Never someone's apartment, never somewhere isolated, at least for the first one or two meetings.
• Tell someone where you're going — I texted a friend back home with the person's name, what platform we'd connected on, and where I was meeting them. Takes 30 seconds and creates accountability.
• Trust the pace of the relationship — Real friendships develop gradually. Anyone who pushes for intense personal closeness, financial conversations, or unusual requests very quickly gets a polite exit.
• Video call before meeting — For anyone I felt uncertain about, I suggested a quick video call before meeting in person. Genuine people have no problem with this. It also removes any lingering ambiguity about who you're actually talking to.
• Verify what you can — A quick LinkedIn or Instagram cross-reference on someone's name doesn't take long and provides basic confirmation that they are who they say they are.
• Listen to your gut — If something in a conversation feels off — inconsistencies, pressure, unusual questions — I trusted that feeling and didn't pursue it further.

None of these precautions made the experience fearful or exhausting. They just became habits, like looking both ways before crossing a road. Background safety thinking that let me relax and actually enjoy meeting new people.

What My Social Life Looked Like Three Months Later

By month three in Lisbon, I had a regular Thursday evening group — five people I'd met through various app connections — who met for dinner somewhere different in the city each week. I had a hiking partner I'd found through Hinge who knew every trail within two hours of Lisbon. I had a friend from Bumble BFF who'd introduced me to her existing friend group, which doubled my social circle overnight.

Eight people I genuinely considered friends, built from scratch in a city where I'd known almost no one.

Here's the moment that made all of it feel completely real:

Four of us — all originally connected through apps, all relatively new to Lisbon — took a long weekend trip to the Algarve together about four months after I'd started this whole experiment. We rented a small house near Sagres, cooked together, spent two days hiking coastal cliffs, stayed up too late talking about everything and nothing, and drove back to Lisbon sunburned and slightly exhausted in the best possible way.

Sitting in that car, somewhere on the A2 heading back north, I thought about the Sunday afternoon eight months earlier when I'd had nowhere to be and no one to call. The distance between those two moments felt enormous.

It was just apps. And a bit of courage to use them in an unconventional way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn't it weird to use dating apps specifically to find friends?

Less weird than it used to be. Bumble BFF was built explicitly for this. And on romantic dating apps, being upfront about wanting social connection first attracts people who respect that honesty — and often share the same need, especially among people who've relocated.

How do I bring up wanting friendship without making it awkward?

Be warm and casual about it early: "I'm relatively new here and honestly just trying to build my social circle — no pressure on what this turns into." Most people respond positively because it removes ambiguity and makes the meeting feel lower stakes.

Do I need to pay for premium to make this work?

Not necessarily. I made most of my closest connections through free tiers. Premium features like unlimited likes and better visibility help, but genuine conversation and a clear, honest profile matter far more than algorithmic boosts.

What's the fastest way to go from app conversation to actual friendship?

Suggest a specific, low-pressure activity rather than just "coffee sometime." "There's a market near Alfama on Saturday morning — want to check it out?" is more likely to happen than a vague future plan. Specificity signals genuine interest and makes it easy to say yes.

Is Bumble BFF available everywhere?

Bumble BFF is available in most countries where Bumble operates, which includes most of Europe, North America, Australia, and many parts of Asia and Latin America. Availability and user density vary by city — larger metropolitan areas have significantly more active users.