I'm accepted, yet I have no friiends.

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I know many people from my church and other places, and I'm accepted by everybody. They seem to enjoy talking to me, but no one is really interested in me enough to start a friendship. I've never been invited to parties or to anyone's house in like six years, and that's pretty pathetic in my opinion. I haven't had any close friendships in a long time.

I'm sorry to hear that. How old are you? Your description of your situation sounds like an exact description of me in high school But once I got older it got better when people became more mature. I know its easy to say but hard to do, but ask someone to do something. Something specific though. "I'm planning on seeing such and such movie on tuesday, have you seen it? No? You wanna go with me?". Doing that during high school for me would have been the last thing I ever would have done, but it seriously is not a big deal, as long as you don't make it into a big deal.

Do you show interest in other people? I generally do not and do not have a whole pile of friends. However, I'm at a stage where I don't care, myself.

So you're suggesting that I make some overtures. I know that's the socially appropriate, but I have no idea how people are going to respond to something like, "Hey, do you want to go see a movie"? I guess I'm just going to have to get over my anxiety, but that's easier said than done.

Hi new_guy ... I feel the same. I speak to people at work and wherever and like you say they seem to enjoy talking to me, but no-one calls me up. They seem to call each other up - what am I doing wrong. I try to be friendly and take a deep breath and walk up to someone and start being friendly and yeah like I have nice conversations ... but then what ... no-one calls me up. I don't know if other people even feel like I do about friends - maybe they feel completely different to me.

It was easier back at university or at school with lots of people living in the same university digs it was hard not to have friends and go out - it was all organised for you. But now I am out of that into real life I don't know how to do anything. What am I doing wrong. I am really lonely and I really ache for companionship sometimes but someone tell me what I go to do and I'll do it. I just don't know what to do. Then I get upset and feel rubbish and convince myself that people don't even like talking to me, but they do really. s**t, I am lonely and I don't know how to get out of it.

I am in a similar situation - however in my case I think they simply think i'm not interested (they mistake my inability to socialise normally with lack of interest).

that's how it is for me at school. i don't know the people well enough to go out with them or get their phone number.

There are some wonderful people in the world, who are NT, socially capable, yet attracted to our kind (not necessarily romantically). They can enjoy the same things that you do, and effectively introduce you to others who are also too shy. I wish that I could find some again.

15 is the time to really start putting yourself out there. It is good that people accept you already, now you need to start pushing. I don't want to put a negative spin on this, but if you don't start now, high school will soon be over and you will be sad you didn't do anything, like I am. You will get older and realize that people can be nice, they want you to do well socially, because as you said, they accept you, so they are not going to root for you to fail.

Socialize at every moment possible. It may be a lot of work, but once you start making friends it won't be work anymore. 15 is also an important time to start getting social because pretty soon you're gonna have opportunities for dating and if you have a social group it will be possible. Without one, its hard for us to go and purposefully flirt with girls.

I never dated until one year ago, when I was twenty, but looking back I realize that if my parents had given me opportunities to make friends, I could have dated much more and had many friends, because now I realize that people do like me and girls find me attractive. Its just that they never had the opportunity to realize that 5 years ago because no one knew me. I don't regret my actions, as I was genuinely extremely shy, but if I could go back I would have made a much bigger effort to spend time with people.

You mentioned church. What about school? Are you homeschooled?

[quote="new_guy_64]How did they prevent you from making friends?[/quote]

My Dad micromanaged my life, as he views his children (there are 9 of us) as projects more than anything. So simply sending me to school wasn't good enough for him. He put me in part time and picked and chose classes he wanted me to take rather than sticking me in classes everyone else in my grade were in. So I was there, and everyone saw me at school, but I never got a chance to be 'the new kid' as I was just sort of there and sort of not. I was a kid everyone had seen around, but I was in classes from all different levels. The other half of my school was community college and a correspondence course called American School where I got my degree from.

Because my Dad was a hard man, teaching us that success matters and relationships do not, I was terrified of challenging his "logical" system. I told him I wanted to go to school full time and take normal classes. But I wasn't allowed to so I stopped pushing it, I was scared of what they thought of me, and to make a big deal out of friends was shameful to me. I realize now that this is wrong and it came from what my dad taught me. I was embarassed to ask them to go to social functions and things because I could picture them saying "why do you want to do that?" and then telling them just because I want to hang out. And then them having to make a big ordeal of driving me there and picking me up, and coordinating the cars and who watches the younger kids when my mom was away (I didn't get my license til my senior year). Because I was taught that friendships don't matter, having to make a big ordeal and inconveniencing them just so I could do that was a shameful thing to me. But either way, I never really got to be part of a social group because of my isolation anyway, so I don't mean taking me to things just to hang out, but stuff where friendships could occur (sports games, high school social events)

After high school I wanted to go live at school so I could make friends. My Dads response was, "why would you want to do that? everyone in the dorms hates them. Why do you think students always are trying to get out of the dorms to get their own apartmen?". So I believed him. He picked a school for me that was close enough to commute to. What I didn't realize in following his advice is that students get out of the dorms because they now have a social group and know people they want to live with. And I wanted so bad to just be with people, and it was the same story in college as high school. And when I said I just wanted to live with people in the dorms so I could have friends, the response I got from my dad and my brothers was that I was turning "The college experience" into some glorious thing that would feel special and wonderful, and that I would hate my fellow residents because college kids are a bunch of jerks and that I should just make friends in class. The epitome of bad advice my Dad gave me was (paraprhased), "son, the college experience thing is a load of crap. School is just a rut to get through". (he did use the rut analogy). But then I realized that all of my life had been a rut!! I had been taught that life was about getting to the next stage, and I was forced to sacrificed the things that really matter, friends, for this.

I never wanted to feel special and wonderful!! ! I wanted to feel normal!! ! and I never got that. And when I finally said I wanted it instead of worrying about what people thought, I got mocked for thinking friendship was something grand. It's not. I finally got friendship and you know what? Its not some special thing like when you love a girl. The great thing about it is that you are just sitting there talking and hanging out, and you think, "gosh, this feels NORMAL". If it was something grand there would be no reason to pine for it, just be happy where you are.

I don't know what your relationship with your parents is or what they are like, but from my own experience, the advice I would give is: adults and peers can have great advice, but don't let anyone tell what is important. You must decide whats important to you. And something that is important to ALL of us is that we want friends. You must make a decision to go out and make them. Don't be afraid of telling people you want friends. Don't be afraid of opening up to your peers. They want friends as much as you do, and many of them want to be your friend, even if they don't know it. Believe me, there are people that LIKE you. Unless you are a total loser, which it sounds like your not, since people accept you, there are people that want to be your friend. Even if they don't know it. So go out there and give them the opportunity.

For motivation, don't view it as, "I'm going to go out there and see if they will accept me". View it as "Hey, they have a great opportunity to meet a great friend but they don't know it. I'm going to do them a favor and let them know who I am so THEY have the opportunity"

Start viewing it as doing a favor for them and it will be less intimidating. Also, compliment people. No one is going to think, "gosh, he told me he liked my shirt, what a loser". They are going to think, "wow, he really made me feel good about my choice in shirts today, he was a nice guy to do me that favor".