People sharing lunch bothers me.

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I see everyone asking each other to lunch, and sharing lunch together, but noone has ever bothered to ask me. I know they probably feel I am not approachable, but it does feel to me like social exclusion and it really gets me down.

Is this at work or at school (I'll assume it's at work)? You have to make an effort to reach out to people. Find a group of people that you think you would like and ask "mind if I sit here" and try to be one of the group. Granted, it's easier before groups solidify.

I made friends in school by doing just that--sitting down with people and talking with them. Now, for the first time in my life I have a group of close friends and we are all good friends with one another. We eat lunch together almost every day. So give that a try. It takes courage for people like us to just walk over , sit down, and talk to people but, had I not done that, I may not have friends. I can't imagine that.

When I was a grad student in Math in the late 1970s, several of us started going out to eat supper together on Sundays about 6 pm. After a semester or two, we often had at least two or three cars of people going and many started showing up to the Math Department on Sundays just to go eat supper with the group.

These suppers were always open to everyone who wanted to come, but some people felt that they needed an invitation. One fellow from Bolivia mentioned to me that he felt a bit left out because he had not been invited. I made it a point from then on to stop by his office on Sunday nights to invite him along. We weren't trying to exclude him at all -- he just never seemed interested before that.

It's now 33 years later and I still miss those Sunday night suppers.