When and how did you start to gather a social life?

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For a large part of my life, I didn't really have a social life. I'm starting to have one though. It's not terribly vibrant, but it's there. Maybe you still struggle with trying to get one, and I don't mean this thread in any way to be a disrespect to you, but I figure, maybe you could benefit from hearing others examples.

I've actually started to do things outside of school. Recently, I got my license soon after I turned 18. It's later than I'd have liked, but I have it. There's a few things I learned that have helped me to cobble together a modest social life.

1. Most of my life, I talked to kids at school, but they were just acquaintances. I didn't really understand why other people seemed to have such an easier time with actually making people they could call friends. Then I learned that people grow closer through shared experiences. Men especially, but women as well.

2. How do you get these shared experiences? I realized that it wasn't some big secret. Just find someone you're comfortable with, and ask them to do something with you. For instance, just ask "Do you want to hang out soon/this week/etc.?" If you have a place or event in mind, then it makes it more concrete, and harder to say "No." Work out a time, people sometimes have conflicting schedules.

If you'd like, you can try and make it a group thing, because that's not as threatening to some people, especially members of the opposite sex. Just one or two people. But that's not a necessity, you can start small.

One example, among the first forays into extra-school-icular activities, was me asking a girl that I talked to in the library at lunch if she wanted to hang out with me. Not in a date way, just in a totally platonic way. She was sympathetic to me, I thought she was cool enough. So we decided to go clothes shopping for me. Why? Because as an aspie, I know nothing about what is considered stylish or fashionable. Women generally seem to have an intuition for that.

Now I hate buying clothes, but I figured that I needed to make baby steps in changing the way I portray myself to the world. We both drove into town, I left my vehicle in a very public gas station parking lot, and rode shotgun with her. I bought a pair of clothes, with her advice. It was a step in helping me break out of my mold.

3. I eventually learned that you don't even need a place planned, just an activity. Cruise around in your vehicle. Cruising is now an activity I do with my friends, and it's fun. We just drive around with no particular destination. Conversation is easy because you're not in one place, there's a sense of urgency. And there's always a radio, a changing environment to keep things from getting boring.

Maybe you can't talk and drive, that's fine, there's no rule that you have to drive, but I've always been the one driving. We stop at times. Wal-Mart, stores, maybe food, whatever is in your town, but nothing is certain, it's wherever the day takes us. Don't think of a destination, think of the road as the destination, and you're already there.

From these lessons, I've started having an occasional life outside of school and home. It's not much compared to others I'm sure, but it's something I didn't have before.

If you've also been having some success, how did you do it? I think that we focus a lot on what we do wrong, so why not focus on what we get right?

for me, it started when i left home for college.
the college i went to offered two weeks of intensive 'getting to now a group and the location' , and i decided i'd join to the fullest; i dont know anyone here, none knows me, screw anxiety, i integrate into the starter group i'm joined with as the person i really am, the one i've kept hidden all trough highschool.

this strategy worked wonders, i got myself a (small-ish) social group to fall back to and much experience in joining and creating new groups.

Took a very long time for me and it was great and fun and now its shrinking again for reasons I wont go into details about-(work,home life,friends (lack thereof)-but it got better and now its painful again.

For me, I gathered a social life in college, graduated lost it but still kept in contact with like 3 friends. Otherwise since college, I've made some casual friends here and there in scattered places but no real group. And I doubt unless I go back to a college setting I will have a group of friends again. But it really helps to take the social interactions out of the where you met the person. Like outside the classroom, outside the office, outside the club meeting, etc. Cause in the mist of a whole bunch of people I cant really connect well with any individual person. Unless Im in a lab where we come and go and you might just be in there oftens with 1 other person.