How would you suggest making friends ?

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I have a really hard time making friends, I am awkward when I meet new people and have so many overloads in my mind anything that could help ?

Chat online to make friends?

● medium.com - An Autistic Social Butterfly’s Guide to Making Friends
● wrongplanet.net - Social Skills and Making Friends - Making Friends With No Friends

In what kinds of contexts have you been trying to make friends? In what kinds of contexts have you been meeting most of the people whom you might consider to be potential friends?

I think of friendships in same way as chemical bonds. Bear with me, this makes sense I'm sure!

To get two chemicals to bond it usually takes a catalyst, pressure or temperature, plus time.

So I could make friends, of a sort, at school because school is a crucible. It forces you together for long periods of time and the pressure comes from shared endeavours - working on the same stuff - and shared adversity - unfair teachers or bullies or exam expectations or just the limits on your freedom.

Working a job can be the same I think, although my experience is that often work 'friends' aren't friends outside of work.

These are environments that are conducive to making friendships. But what happens when you're out of school, can't go to work?

I think the trick is to try to recreate these conditions somehow. If you go 'looking for friends' you don't find them. But can you engineer a situation where you work together with people for a significant portion of time? I think if you can then you have a much better chance of making a friend.

This is why joining groups/clubs that cater to your interests is a good idea. It gives you regular, enforced time with people where the expectation is that you're doing something, not just developing a friendship.

I agree totally. It's much easier to make friends in settings where people are together regularly, for purposes other than just making friends, and where there is a common focus.

In my experience, hobby-oriented groups can be even better than school for this purpose. Even better are (some) groups with a larger purpose, such as (some) charities or political activist groups. Religious groups can be good for this also, if one happens to be religious.

A lot depends, though, on how welcoming to newcomers the group is. In my experience, most groups naturally tend to be cliquish unless they make a specific, deliberate point of being friendly to newcomers.

Also, joining a hobby-oriented group works well only if one actually enjoys the hobby in its own right, not just for its friends-making potential. Likewise, joining a religious group works well only if one actually believes in the religion. If you aren't personally into whatever the group's focus is, then you can't emotionally bond with people over that focus, either.


Problem is, with rare exceptions, it is in general just not safe to be emotionally intimate with work colleagues or customers. People need to maintain professional distance/detachment at work, even while also needing to be (superficially) friendly. It is easier to make friends in settings where people can be more fully themselves.