Why do you find it hard to make and keep friends

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I fantasise about having a group of close mates. People I see regularly down the pub and at bbq's etc. In reality I have 2 friends both of which I rarely see and I chat to on text mostly. Saw 1 before Christmas, saw the other 3 months back. I have just gradually isolated myself over years. Just a case of never living in the moment and heading out for a drink, always getting anxious and panicking myself into staying in the safety of my house. After about 10 years I realised I hadn't spoken with anyone in a very long time.

Well at some point I always find myself avoiding people even if they clearly like me. Making/being friends with people puts me in situations that i don't feel comfortable in and it can be hard to say no most of the time, so i just try to avoid it. It's a constant effort and I do not have the energy or patience for it, but I sometimes force myself to join in on activities or else I would just drift further away from them.
It's also a matter of knowing how to converse, and it can be hard knowing what to say. You usually hear of aspies talking nonstop and not letting the other person speak, but I am rather the kind that barely talks because I don't know how to contribute. Before I'm finally able to form a sentence they have already changed the subject. This makes it hard for me to bond with people because no progression is really being made.
Also, I am pressured with phrases such as "Talk to you later!" What if I do not want to talk later? There's no way out of it. I can just hope that they forget to.

I find it hard to keep friends, my last friend I stopped doing things with because they would cancel dates at the last minute. I don't like this and they expected me to understand they had a change in plans due to illness or family. I'm an aspie and I'm always on time and do not cancel without plenty of notice. At least 24hrs prior is my rule. So far. in life no one has been able to understand my rule so I have no friends.

Keeping friends is difficult for me, since many who I called my friends did not act that way towards me, declining to walk around with me, when they did with others, and constantly kept chatting to others. Some people I liked turned to people I disliked when they constantly annoyed the hell out of me in class, which is why from my later years in school I was mostly alone and not interacting a lot other than my youth group.

This does not include my closest friends though, because they are friendly, and actually care about me and helped me out often. Many of them are not going to my college though, although some are, which is great for me

I want friends so badly! I just want to be able to be my weird self in front of others without too much pressure on conversation. I like quirky people who are accepting and kind. I want to have positive social experiences playing games, video games, sports, going to movies, playing chess and tennis. At the moment I’m pretty lonely and suffer from too much anxiety. Real friends who don’t expect too much would be fantastic. I would be friendly and loyal too.

I didn't notice any difficulty during my childhood, but after that we went to far-flung schools all over the city, and the local scene of "instant friends" broke up and I had no clue how to make up the defecit. As puberty approached, the rules of engagement became complicated, back in the day I'd just knock on a kid's door and ask "are you playing?" but now that was somehow not the right way. I was very lonely for a few years, wandering about lost in a youth club where I hardly knew anybody. Then I got obsessional about finding a girlfriend, and my desperation was obvious so I got nowhere, and my status was very low, I just didn't get how to do normal NT social interactions.

I pulled out of the tailspin, but mostly that was down to luck and the actions of others - an old school chum called on me one day and introduced me to his mates. They were different from the herd, friendlier. They called themselves "freaks," and a couple of them invited me to join their rock band. I found a girlfriend, and found I got on well with her friends too.

I think for me, a lot of it is about confidence - both in myself and the people I interact with. I still have little idea how to socialise with mainstream society, and even if I did, I'd just find it unrewarding and stressful. So I confine myself to people who are different from the norm. It's almost like choosing a partner - they really have to match up with me very well or it won't work. So I think that's the main reason why I find it hard to make friends, I'm just very picky. Luckily such people tend to occur in clusters, they're usually left-wing, polite, respectful, soft-spoken, empathic, kind, intelligent and honest. But they're quite rare, so if I lose touch with any, I might not find more for a long time.

I find it hard to keep friends because we physically move away from each other and then we tend not to keep in touch. One overarching reason why I'm slow to make and hang onto friends is that I'm not outgoing, I can't seem to initiate anything, I wait to be invited, and if we seem to grow apart, I don't try to stop it happening.

I'm too random for their tastes. I say things out of the blue, and I guess it's something that pushes them away. *shrug*

I'm not good at making conversation and actually connecting with someone. I don't know how to turn an acquaintance into a friend. And a lot of the time I just don't want to be with people.

Several reasons, but the biggest one is that a friendship really means something to me and seems like most people don't take it to heart as much as I do.

I have trouble figuring out how much someone likes me - IF they like me or not - and how much or how often to contact them. I can go overboard and do too much - OR underestimate greatly to the point where the other person assumes I'm not that interested in them.

I have a lot of difficulty going to restaurants or doing the kinds of things other people might want to do. I don't go out much and I feel too embarrassed to ask anyone to come to my home because it's such a disaster.

And I struggle to converse with people for lots of reasons. I have auditory processing disorder and it's like I have a delay in understanding what people say. And sometimes I just flat out don't know what to say. I can either lapse into really awkward silences or I can just go on and on babbling about the same thing. The best friendships for me are with people who like to babble about the same stuff I babble about. lol

I don't know what to say to them.