I Met My Bff On A Dating App

LET’S FACE IT: ONCE YOU’VE TRADED IN COLLEGE QUADS FOR OFFICE CUBICLES, CREATING NEW, MEANINGFUL, LASTING ADULT FRIENDSHIPS SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS ONLY IN ’90S SITCOMS. BUT MAKING FRIENDS CAN BE EASIER THAN YOU THINK—LIKE, RIGHT-SWIPE EASY .

- Liz Presson

Not that life ever feels like you think it should at a certain age, but at 30, I felt as if things were going pretty well. I was running my own digital-strategy consultancy and it was actually making money, I had learned that two cocktails were more than enough on a date, and I was finally living in an apartment—in Brooklyn— furnished with more than just a blow-up mattress. But something was missing. Most of my friends were coupled up, and I wasn’t. We were in different places in life. I didn’t have a group of friends, or even a few, who were free to spend time with me, to Netflix and chill in the most literal sense of the phrase.

Enter Bumble BFF, the supposedly squad-building feature on the same dating app I’d been using for the previous six months to meet men. I was curious albeit skeptical. Online dating, or employing a website or app to find a potential partner, has lost much of its stigma; there are 40 million Americans using dating websites, as reported by eHarmony, and 20 percent of relationships today started online. Still, there was just something that felt taboo in utilizing that same technology to meet friends.

Anyone who has to use technology to make friends must not be able to make them in real life, right? Then again, when was the last time, post-college or grad school, you actually made a new, lasting friendship? Not a coworker you only gossip with during coffee breaks. Or someone you always exchange a smile with at Saturday morning yoga.