Potential friendships in the making, do you capitalize......

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Title: Potential friendships in the making, do you capitalize on them or let them slip away?

I'm a person who has terrible friendship making skills and I've had a lot of friendship failures in the past that's led to that. However, I've found that many times in my life, I've had chances to make friends with people and never bothered to try. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I've got a fear of it either failing or it never happening at all. The reason I bring this up is because I have a chance to be friends with a girl I highly respect. We are co-workers (yup, the same cliche friendship making areas) but nevertheless, she's really showed an effort to want to become my friend(that's what I'm guessing) and I for one am surprised(in a good way). However at the same time I've never hung out with her before, don't have her phone number(I don't have a cellphone anyways) so I don't even know if we are actually friends yet. Nevertheless, when I was talking about going to a Red Sox game and said I took my sister because I had no one else, she immediately said she'd like to go with me sometime. So does that mean she likes me as a friend or is she just trying to be nice, because I don't have anyone (except family). Again, with my screwed up social skills, I can't even tell. If she does like me (and this is just as friends, I have no plans on dating her because she's already taken) should I capitalize on this? I mean I'll admit, I am attracted to her so I hope that doesn't get in the way. Should I take her next time or just forget about this?

To keep this topic not only about my dilemma has anyone else had situations like these before and what did you guys do about them?

I can relate to what's going on here. I also have, historically speaking, an annoying tendency to overlook potentially fulfilling friendships and relationships. My advice is, take her apparent interest in friendship on good faith. Like you, I sometimes wonder if people are being nice to me simply for the sake of being nice, or if they're genuinely interested in friendship. I often cynically think that people are being nice for the sake of it, and that attitude has gained me little worth talking about. If I were you, I'd invite her to the next game. You've got nothing to lose, right?

Hmm, sometimes people being very friendly has the opposite effect on me; I shrink away from them, as if knowing the real me would scare them off or something. I tend to be drawn to people whom I have to work a bit myself to get to know; gives me time to suss them out and know the real them, not the friendly image they are trying to project.

Weird, I wouldn't expect someone who had a bf to volunteer to go to a game with another guy, but that's just me; different people, different rules. Watch she's not trying to use you to make her bf jealous or trying to prop up her own ego (sorry, I'm in a paranoid mood at the moment; she's probably just being friendly).

I think she genuinely likes you. I'm well aware that someone being 'nice' doesn't guarantee that, but from my experience people don't suggest meeting up and socializing outside of work if they're just being nice to you because they feel they have to be.

After much consideration, I've decided to do it. If I can actually get a friend out of this, I should capitalize because making friends is always hard to come by and this is a person I do respect.