Dealing with friendships

[iamanders]

How do you deal with friendships?
It's really hard for me. Somehow I'm really bad at it. Sometimes I see people walking in gangs and I say to myself that I just don't want that. That kinda social jungle is not for me. I still want friendship, though! I could say that philosophically I have people who are my friends but I still feel lonely (often around other people).
How do you deal with this issue? What did and didn't work for you?

 

[Cerulean]

I used to be married to a really social person and he was kind of my social life- like we would go out and he would be the intermediary between my introvert self and all the other people. Now that we're not together I'm having a hard time keeping friendships. Aside from the ones I lost in the divorce I just don't know how to maintain them. I feel weird asking my single male friends to hang out, I don't have single female friends (they've all moved), and the couples I know, the dynamic is just off since we always double-dated. I don't really want to meet new people, I feel like I have enough people in my life as it is.\

I get what you're saying though, I don't ever want a group of people either, just one or two at a time. Whenever I'm in a group and feel lonely I rely on my sensory stuff, but that just makes me look strange because they'll all be chatting and I'm sitting there examining the wallpaper for patterns or perfectly lining up items. I don't know, I guess I haven't found what works for me either.