Why Do I Fail at Making Friends As An Adult?

As a 30M, I’m embarrassed I’ve never learned how to do this, but I don’t know how to make friends.

For context: I lived in the same town growing up and had a solid group of friends. I left for college and lived in several places for work but never made friends in these situations. Eventually, I moved to where my old high school friends were. It felt good to have a support network around me again – but also dispiriting that I had made such little progress as an adult.

It has been exhausting – our first year is wrapping up and it has been really difficult to form friendships, regardless of gender. I try to invite guys in my class to hangout but I am always told everyone is too busy, even though I know they are going to parties or on weekend trips. It’s like I skipped out on a lot of exclusionary high school BS, but it is circling back now in my 30s.

Last week, I was blocked by two female acquaintances – up until that point, I thought I was getting along really well with both of them. Something similar happened with another classmate back in January, so there is clearly a pattern here.

I find it frustrating that I think I have made a (friendly/platonic) connection and am suddenly cut off. I understand part of the problem is that women are socialized to be friendly and not just tell guys to ‘fuck off’ when they get annoyed/bored/upset/uncomfortable with their interlocutor. I want to be respectful and supportive but am apparently being off-putting.

I seem to be especially bad at making friends of the opposite sex

I didn’t notice any telltale signs of discomfort when interacting with them – I tried to ensure I wasn’t physically blocking their exit, steered towards appropriate conversation topics about class, hobbies, and work, as well as tried to pay attention to signs of boredom or agitation.

As much as possible, I try to let women initiate conversations. Only when these conversations end on a seeming high note (“Let’s get lunch some time!”) do I try and follow up with them https://brightwomen.net/es/mujeres-israelies-calientes/ over text. This is where everything seems to fall apart and I get blocked. Now I’m worried that I’m on some “Creepy Guy” list – and I honestly have no clue what I’m doing wrong.

This entire process has left me feeling lonely and miserable. Since I’m in this program for the next few years, I want to make friends or at least have some people with whom I feel comfortable hanging out. At some point, I’d even like to date. However, all of this appears to be a long, long, long way off. I literally cried myself to sleep last night.

Is there any hope of repairing any of these relationships and getting a second chance?

I’m not sure how to even begin to improve my social calibration since it seems so misaligned at the moment. Any tips to find out what I’m doing wrong? When do I just take the ‘L’ and move on?

OK, NETFZ, I think we need to take the friends issue and women blocking you issues separately. I suspect that there’s some overlap going on that’s leading to this, but these are going to require different approaches to help address things.

Let’s start with just trying to make friends as an adult, especially when everyone’s busy. The first thing I would point out is that having your high-school friends back as part of your social circle isn’t a bad thing.