Mid 20's and still feel terrible about my lack of friends

LegacyUser

I'm 25 now and still feel crap about my unpopularity as a person. I have always suffered with shyness which has hampered my ability to make lots of friends. I thought as I got older though I would learn to get better with people or just accept my unpopularity but it still gets me down.

The main way I beat myself up about it is comparison to other people. I always see group photos online of people from school/college on nights out with huge groups of mates. I even felt slightly envious of my girlfriend at her recent birthday dinner. She is a few years older than me but she had 9 or 10 people come to eat with her and had her friends give her money and a cake. I'd be lucky to get a pint of beer off the 3 friends I do have when its my birthday!

I also reminisce about a life that has been unfulfilled. A life of hiding away from people. A wasted life. I'm probably being negatively biased because I feel bad but I feel sometimes like my lack of connections with other people has made my existence irrelevant. I don't even post to Facebook because I know nobody cares about what I'm doing or what I have to say.

On the positive side, I've had 2 long-term relationships and seen a lot of the world (although I had to do it alone because of the lack of friends!)

It's not that I don't have any friends at all, but I don't have many. And I don't see the ones that I do have very often. And even when I do see them, it always revolves around drinking.

I am by my nature quite introverted and prefer to keep to myself unless I have a few drinks on me when I suddenly become chatty as hell. I don't know if this introverted nature is because of my shyness or because it is who I am, but it's been that way since I was about 16 years old.

I have traveled a lot and even when I was doing that I kept mostly to myself. I've had the anti-social label thrown at me loads of times which doesn't help. I'm actually currently living in a new country and city (where my girlfriend lives), and I've noticed that in the three weeks I have stayed here I haven't done one pro-social activity on my own in that entire time.

The only communication I am having with people other than my girlfriend (and her friends when we drink together) is brief messages to my 2 or 3 friends on facebook. I work alone on my laptop so again I have no social outlet there.

I guess I'm just wondering how it is possible to ever live a happy life knowing that I don't and most likely never will have a huge group of friends? A group of people to go to dinner with when its my birthday. Anything like that, I can't see it happening. It's such a complicated issue because being introverted means I apparently prefer alone time, yet I can't shake the feeling that I am missing out on life. Any advice at all would be nice.

LegacyUser

I totally get where you are coming from. I have a very small group of friends compared to when I was a teenager.
Being honest,I do wish I had more friends. However looking back to when I had a big group of friends there was nothing but drama(I'm female) and I absolutely hate drama so I have become accustomed to spending a good chunk of time alone.
Why don't you try meet up? It's an app where you can meet like minded people. If you are living abroad you have nothing to lose as chances are you won't bump into people you know( can be awkward) I'm still trying to get to courage to do it! Good luck hope this helps

intheclouds

The thing it, these large groups of friends, theyre not real friends, theyre just acquaintances, fair weather friends my mother used to call them - they will drift off over time.

Most people have small groups of real friends and as people get older and settle down with families and responsibilities, such groups shrink even more and people dont have time to be socialising in large groups.

Sometimes there is a resurgence later, I know one friends mum now has a large group of buddies who all started socialising together in their 50s.

Its never too late to make friends, but I think you need to like yourself more before you start expecting other people to like you.