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Difficulty making friends

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by Systems, Jul 22, 2015.

  1. Systems

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Dec 23, 2014
    Messages:
    151
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    Location:
    US
    Gender:
    Female (trans*)
    Gender Pronoun:
    She
    Sexual Orientation:
    Lesbian
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    It seems really hard to make friends. Right before summer term, I suddenly felt a strong pull toward 5 people at school. I embraced the desire for the first time I can remember and tried to make friends. Long story short, only one seems like friend material. Well, that’s great, it really is, but it’s still disheartening that two of the people I like now seem uninterested in me. They seemed genuinely interested at first, but I'm seriously doubting that it's still the case.

    All those years with no socializing (darn dysphoria) have made it really hard to make/keep friends. That, or it’s hard for everyone anyway, and I’m just now learning the lesson that few people could make good friends.

    I must be doing something right, since I seem to get numbers easily, but then I'm clueless about what to do next. I'm afraid of smothering people with attention without knowing, or saying something wrong, but also I'm afraid of being too aloof and wasting opportunities. I know I could get better at making friends, but have no idea how. Any advice? And I really mean any- my social skills are very undeveloped.
     
  2. imagine having a restaurant. then on a restaurant social media review site, 2 people rate your restaurant poorly and say they will never come back again. you try and reach out to them to understand what exactly the problem was that they experienced. they do not respond. you message them again to invite them back to try your restaurant again and offer them a $5 gift card. they don't respond. you message them again to beg them to tell you why they are not responding and that if they give you feedback, you'll give them $25 gift card. they dont respond. then imagine, the restaurant owner telling his whole staff to lock the doors to the restaurant and that you were not going to let any new customers come into the restaurant until those 2 people that rated you poorly came back. Also, you were not going to do anymore marketing to reach out to new potential customers. how long do you think that restaurant would stay in business chasing just 2 people that are not responding when there are hundreds of thousands of new customers he/she could be attracting. this is the same thing with making friends. all you can do if offer the best you and some people are going to like you, some are not. it's nothing against you. but if they do not respond, then go out and join groups, meetups, volunteer, get out the house and do other things to make new friends. dont bar the doors to your restaurant.