When the Ground Keeps Shifting
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living through uncertain times. Not the tiredness of a long day at work or a bad night's sleep. Something deeper. The feeling that the ground beneath your feet has not stopped moving for years, and you are not entirely sure when — or whether — it will settle.
You know the list. A pandemic that rewired daily life. A cost of living crisis that made ordinary things feel like luxuries. Political turbulence that turned the news into something you dread checking. War on the European continent. Climate anxiety that hums in the background of every hot summer and every flooded winter. The housing market. The job market. The sense that the systems you were told would hold you up are buckling under the weight.
And through all of it, a quieter crisis that rarely makes the headlines but shapes your daily experience more than any of those things: the slow erosion of the social connections that help you cope. We explored this shift in detail in our piece on how global uncertainty is reshaping British social life.
Instability Makes You Crave Belonging
This is not just a feeling. It is a well-documented psychological response. When the external world becomes unpredictable, human beings instinctively seek out belonging. We look for our people — the group, the community, the circle — that makes us feel grounded when everything else is moving.
Psychologists call this the need-to-belong hypothesis: the fundamental human drive to form and maintain lasting, meaningful interpersonal connections. It is one of the most powerful motivators of human behaviour, and it intensifies under stress. When life feels uncertain, the desire for stable social bonds does not diminish. It sharpens.
The problem is that the very forces creating instability are also making belonging harder to find. For many, the answer lies in turning worry into community action — channelling that anxious energy into something constructive.
The Mental Health Foundation found that 78% of Britons said their mental health was affected by the cost of living crisis, with the figure rising to 94% among those with existing mental health conditions. Almost a third of adults reported feeling anxious in the past month because of their financial situation. And the consequences extend beyond anxiety — people under financial pressure are more likely to cancel social plans, avoid going out, and withdraw from the activities that connect them to others.
More than two in five Britons now report that money worries are significantly damaging their mental wellbeing. The cost of living crisis does not just affect what people can afford — it affects who they see, where they go, and whether they feel able to participate in community life at all.
The Loneliness Beneath the Anxiety
Britain has been tracking loneliness as a national concern since 2018, when it became the first country in the world to appoint a Minister for Loneliness. The data since then tells a story of slow, steady disconnection.
The Community Life Survey 2024/25 found that 7% of adults in England feel lonely often or always — roughly 3 million people. But that headline figure masks the concentrations. In the most deprived areas of the country, chronic loneliness rises to 11%. Among disabled adults, it reaches 14%. Among younger adults aged 16 to 24, 9% report frequent loneliness despite being the most digitally connected generation in history.
What the statistics reveal is that loneliness is not random. It clusters around disadvantage, around disruption, and around the absence of the structures that used to hold communities together. The people most affected by instability — financial, physical, social — are the people most likely to be lonely.
And loneliness, in turn, makes everything harder. It amplifies anxiety, worsens depression, damages physical health, and reduces the capacity to cope with exactly the kind of sustained uncertainty that characterises life in Britain right now.
The Concept of Chosen Family
There is a phrase that has moved from the margins to the mainstream in recent years: chosen family. Originally used within LGBTQ+ communities to describe the close bonds formed outside biological family structures, it has become a broader way of talking about something millions of people are doing — building intentional relationships with people who share your values, your outlook, or simply your need for connection.
Chosen family is not about replacing your existing relationships. It is about recognising that in an era of geographic mobility, changing family structures, and declining institutional belonging, many of us need to actively create the social bonds that previous generations inherited more easily.
Your grandparents probably lived in the same area for decades. They went to the same church, the same pub, the same shops. They knew their neighbours because they had known them for thirty years. The social fabric was woven into the structure of daily life.
That fabric has thinned. People move more often. Families are smaller and more dispersed. Your neighbourhood matters more than your network, yet neighbourly connection is exactly what many communities have lost. Religious attendance has declined. High streets have been hollowed out. The automatic social infrastructure of previous generations — the things that connected you to people without you having to think about it — has largely disappeared.
What remains is choice. And that is both the challenge and the opportunity.
Building Intentional Community
If belonging no longer comes automatically, it has to be built deliberately. That sounds like hard work, and honestly, it can be. But the evidence from across the UK suggests that people are doing it — and that the results are worth the effort.
The Rise of the Supper Club
Supper clubs have experienced a genuine resurgence across Britain, particularly among younger adults looking for social experiences that feel more personal than a restaurant and more structured than a house party. They offer exactly what the research says friendships need: a shared activity, a regular rhythm, and a setting that encourages real conversation.
The appeal is not just the food. It is the format. Sitting down with a group of people you may not know, sharing dishes, talking without the option of scrolling your phone — this creates the conditions for connection in a way that few other social formats manage.
Community Groups Are Adapting
Britain still has around 2,000 social clubs, from miners' welfare halls to working men's clubs, though half of those that once existed have now disappeared. The ones that survive are increasingly reinventing themselves for a new generation — opening their doors wider, hosting new kinds of events, and positioning themselves as spaces for community rather than relics of a previous era.
Beyond traditional clubs, grassroots community groups are proliferating. Running clubs, wild swimming groups, community gardens, repair cafes, and neighbourhood cooking collectives have all seen growth. What they share is a structure that creates regular, repeated contact between the same people — the pattern that research consistently identifies as the foundation of lasting social bonds.
The Together Coalition launched an Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion to address growing social disconnection in the UK. Their work highlights a central paradox: at the moment when community matters most, the infrastructure that supports it — from local funding to physical spaces — is under the greatest strain.
Faith and Secular Spaces Are Converging
One of the more interesting developments in British community life is the blurring of lines between religious and secular gathering. Churches, temples, and mosques are increasingly opening their doors to people of all faiths and none, hosting community meals, coffee mornings, and social events. At the same time, secular organisations are adopting some of the structures that made religious communities so effective at fostering belonging — regular gatherings, shared rituals, a sense of purpose beyond the individual.
The Sunday Assembly movement, sometimes called "atheist church," is one example. Parkrun — free, weekly, and open to everyone — is another. These are not religious organisations, but they tap into the same human need for routine, community, and a reason to show up.
How to Find Your People
If you are reading this and thinking "that all sounds lovely, but where do I actually start," you are asking the right question. Here is what the evidence and the experience of thousands of community-builders across the UK suggests.
Start with your values, not your interests
The strongest communities are built around shared values, not just shared hobbies. A running club works not because everyone loves running but because the people in it value showing up, supporting each other, and being part of something. When you are looking for your people, ask yourself what matters to you — connection, creativity, kindness, honesty, adventure — and look for groups where those values are evident.
Look for regularity over intensity
A single brilliant event does not build community. Regular, repeated contact does. The University of Kansas research on friendship formation found it takes roughly 50 hours of shared time to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and over 200 hours to develop a close friendship. You need to see the same people, in the same context, over and over. Weekly beats monthly. Monthly beats quarterly. Consistency is everything.
Be willing to be the new person
This is the hard part. Walking into a room where everyone already knows each other, introducing yourself, making small talk with strangers — it feels vulnerable because it is vulnerable. But every single person in that room was once the new person too. And the discomfort of the first few times is the price of admission to the community you are looking for.
Create what is missing
If you cannot find the community you need, consider building it. This does not require a venue, a budget, or a committee. It requires one person willing to say "I am going to do this thing regularly, and anyone who wants to join is welcome." A monthly supper at your kitchen table. A Saturday morning walk. A book group. A craft evening. Some of the strongest communities in Britain started with one person and one invitation. If you are not sure where to begin, building a support network rather than just a social circle is a useful way to think about it.
Let it be imperfect
Intentional community does not mean curated community. The people who become your chosen family will probably not look like you, think exactly like you, or tick every box on some imaginary checklist. The beauty of chosen family is that it is chosen — and sometimes the best choices are the unexpected ones.
Why This Matters Now
We are living through a period that historians will probably describe as one of sustained disruption. The economy, the climate, the political landscape, the way we work and live — all of it is in flux. And while we cannot individually control any of those forces, we can control one thing: whether we face them alone or together.
The research is unambiguous. People with strong social connections are more resilient in the face of adversity. They cope better with stress, recover faster from setbacks, and report higher levels of wellbeing even when objective circumstances are difficult. Community is not a luxury. It is a buffer.
And the good news is that community is not something you have to wait for someone else to build. It is something you can start, join, or strengthen right now. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But one dinner, one conversation, one regular commitment at a time.
You do not need to have everything figured out before you seek connection. In fact, the moments when life feels most uncertain are exactly the moments when showing up matters most. Your people are not waiting for you to be sorted. They are waiting for you to arrive.
At Dinners With Friends, we believe that some of the most meaningful connections begin over a shared meal. Not because there is anything magical about food — although good food certainly helps — but because sitting down together, regularly, with intention, creates the conditions for the kind of belonging that no amount of scrolling, networking, or wishful thinking can replicate. If you are curious, here is how it works — and you can find an upcoming event near you.
The world might feel unstable. But a table is steady. And the people around it might just turn out to be yours.