[andrew]

Well yeah, if you have friends, then of course you have your own thing to do on the weekends. If you don't have any, mostly you won't have stuff to do, unless it's by yourself.

This is the SINGLE biggest issue of my life. Friends. Not health, not, jobs, not drugs, etc. But my social life. Some say my priorities are backwards, but I say they're most important to me, not you. I have most everything else handled in my life, besides socialy. I grew up and moved around a lot, 7 or so times before I was 12 between CA and NY. So this has prevented me from making and lasting friends until gradeschool. And even then I rarely had any. Why? I had warts on my hands. Genetic. They weren't contagious or anything like that, but it was something. And ever since like 2nd grade people made fun of me for it, and I just wussied out. And for the next 10 years, my confidence was so low, I had 5% social life, sat alone in lunch, no sports, etc.

I got the warts removed back in like 3rd grade, but people were just so used to picking on me it continued. My parents were no help, they just told me to walk away and/or tell. That may work in the corporate real world, but not in school. So, anyways, in high school I made one friend who was popular. We were best friends, and he so to say, "showed me the way". I slowly dressed better, better haircut (which btw was one of THE most important things I could have done), etc. So I thank him for that, albeit we've had a falling out since then.

So I tell you my whole story in your thread why? I want to tell you something. After all of that, would I change it? Never. It made me who I am today, and I love who I am. So I have moved far away and started fresh. I've been here for 2 YEARS and am just starting to make friends. It takes a LONG time. I wanted to make friends the first month and do things all the time. Didn't happen, and still isn't.

You're going to find out that time = friendship. The more time you're with somebody, the closer you'll be. That should be obvious, but to me it wasn't because I was so desperate. Like they say, the hungry don't get fed. You can't rush this, it takes a long time, esp if you're new and aren't in a social environment. You'll aslo find that most people won't take any initiative to get together, and when they do, don't POUNCE on it. Just be cool about it, but DO IT. But 95% of the time, you'll have to do all the work for a LONG TIME.

My opinion is, it should be 50/50. You call up sometimes, and they call you up sometimes to do something. I expect that right away, but that doesn't appear to be the case. If you want t do something, you're going to have to be 100/0 for a while in the begining. It sucks, I know, esp because it feels like they don't want to do anythng with you. But you have to remember they already have their friends and are doing things with them, and may already have way too many friends to even keep track of you.

One last thing to remember is to not take any of it personally. People aren't going to call back, they're going to flake, and they may not even like you! It's not you, it's them. And hell, even if it is you, it's going to happen. The best thing is to not get worked up over it, and realize you don't make friends over night.

Now I know you're like "that's well and good and all, but that doesn't help making them!". Okay, well one of the biggest things is counter intuitive, and it's to not go out 'friend hunting'. Don't force it, it happens over time naturaly. Even if that means a month or a few minutes. Some people you get in a conversation and you just hit it off, others you need to progress more slowly, such as in a class room.

But the biggest ways to make friends is to MEET PEOPLE! Go out and join a club, take a class, take up a sport, etc. But when you make friends at these places, some of them will only be friends for those events. It may be akward to goto a club with a guy you met at a baseball game. So you can have event-specific friends as well. Don't try and do everything with everybody.

I hope this (essay) helped you out. I'm not the social guru yet, but I'm learning from the ground up as an adult, and some of my opinions may change the better I get. Some people are even reading this like "you have to WORK to make friends? Come on, they're just people, they should just happen." Those are the lucky people.