I’ve lived in more than one country, and I’ve noticed I have a specific friendship style that doesn’t always match what people around me want.
I don’t drink, I don’t club, and I’m not looking for nightlife. I genuinely just want connection: getting dressed, meeting at a coffee shop, walking around, talking, exploring, and actually being out in the world. If we get really close, I love the kind of friendship where we can take a long walk, then come back home and stay up late talking. But early friendships (like the first 3–4 hangouts), I don’t want to invite people to my home. Home feels intimate to me, and I prefer to build trust first.
What I’m struggling with is that a lot of people I meet seem to prefer “just come over and sit inside” from the beginning. I’m not trying to generalize by culture or nationality—I’ve just personally noticed this pattern across different people I’ve met. And I keep wondering: am I the odd one for wanting to go out and treating my home as a private space until the friendship is established or even like we’re super close?
How do you navigate this? Is it normal to keep your home as a boundary early on, and are there better ways to find friends who actually like walking/coffee/third-place hangs?