No friends past resort

[Davewave]

Hi all
My name is David and I am 28 and live in Australia. I just moved up to a new city a year ago with my girlfriend and I am yet to make a single friend. Despite my attempts I have several issues that make it difficult.
1) I work in a medical cente and I am the only male there and I work in my department solo apart from my 45 year old female receptionist.
2) I have never really had good friends or close friends. The ones that I do have are back home in my home city 1800km away with my family.
3) I have never been good at making friends but since I started my profession I have begun to significantly improve how I act and react with people coming closer and closer to social norms. I can walk up to anybody and start a conversation, but then I get too self conscious about wanting a friend and probably send out a desperate vibe.

Anyone I have given my number to or tried to organize things with has fallen thru and it feels as if i jus simply cannot have friends. I am going stir crazy. I have even tried joining meet up groups with people my age but the same story again, it always feels as if it is up to me to push things along and then the whole thing just feels forced.

I'm struggling to stay sane at work and at home, getting more and more aggressive and agitated all the time. I feel if things don't change soon I'm going to start making friends with inmates of a mental institution.

Please help me. My girlfriend is my only friend and we love each other but we need our own friends. She doesn't really have any either so I can't be trends with her friends' partners either.

What do I do? Thanks in advance.

Ps I am. Radiographer And I have several interests including computer gaming and programming, outdoor activities like camping and hiking, music and composition of music, film making and movies and scifi.

[earthmoonchild]

Join a hiking group. Look around for other groups online or at local music stores in your area. Try to connect with others through your interests.

[moonrambler]

Hi David, welcome to the forum

Originally Posted by Davewave

Hi all
My name is David and I am 28 and live in Australia. I just moved up to a new city a year ago with my girlfriend and I am yet to make a single friend. Despite my attempts I have several issues that make it difficult.
1) I work in a medical cente and I am the only male there and I work in my department solo apart from my 45 year old female receptionist.

You can be friends with women, couldn't you? And they have men in their life you could become friends with. Does anyone in the medical center hang out together as friends, do stuff together, get a drink at a pub after work or anything like that? Have you become friends with your receptionist? Does she have anyone in her life you could become friends with?

2) I have never really had good friends or close friends. The ones that I do have are back home in my home city 1800km away with my family.

Which is it -- you never really had good friends, or you do have good friends back home?

I have even tried joining meet up groups with people my age but the same story again, it always feels as if it is up to me to push things along and then the whole thing just feels forced.

These things can feel forced at first, but they get easier with time. If you join up with an established group, there's no need for you to push things along. You like sci-fi -- what about a sci-fi book group? There are groups for everything these days.

Please help me. My girlfriend is my only friend and we love each other but we need our own friends. She doesn't really have any either so I can't be trends with her friends' partners either.

Why doesn't she have any friends? It seems unusual that neither of you do after a year of living in this city. Is there some sort of key there?

[Davewave]

First of all I'd just like to say that I wrote my first post on my iPhone and so I probably didn't paint a complete picture in doing so.

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Hi David, welcome to the forum




You can be friends with women, couldn't you? And they have men in their life you could become friends with. Does anyone in the medical center hang out together as friends, do stuff together, get a drink at a pub after work or anything like that? Have you become friends with your receptionist? Does she have anyone in her life you could become friends with?

Can I be friends with women? I never have in the past. But that hasn't stopped me trying. In fact, I have approached 3 women in my practice( both receptionists) and even though I felt I got a long with them (they don't really work in my department so I shouldn't really be out an about talking with them) and we seemed to have things in common, I always suggest something like "Oh thats something my partner and I like doing, lets all go out and do that". I say this in a way so that I don't seem like I am coming onto them and that they will have their partner and my partner there. But nothing eventuates, and I've done this now 3 times.
The last time I even gave another girl my phone number and facebook and she said "oh I'm sure my partner would like that".
Problem is, the women at work are really cliquey and I am the only "threatening alpha male" there. By that I mean, I think they feel that making a move on their part is giving off the wrong impression. Also I am very excluded when I walk up to the women at work having conversations.

My receptionist, unfortunately, is not someone I wish to hang out with. She doesn't have any friends at all and so not someone I could find friends from.

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Which is it -- you never really had good friends, or you do have good friends back home?

I never really had friends growing up in high school. I thought they were friends, but attempts to keep in contact failed on their behalf. They wouldn't return calls or cancel meet ups. Mostly we only got together to play games.
I never had a friend who was more like me. I don't want to talk about JUST gaming or JUST excersise. There are so many people out there I know that are too focused or too obsessed with the one thing they like to do or are good at and I've been friends with those people before and I just get bored. Not only that, they get frustrated when I want to go out of the house to do something besides games, or equivelant.

Originally Posted by moonrambler

These things can feel forced at first, but they get easier with time. If you join up with an established group, there's no need for you to push things along. You like sci-fi -- what about a sci-fi book group? There are groups for everything these days.

I have joined these groups, the hiking group has people in it 40 years and older and with no interest in communicating. Maybe its just the people in this city, but it feels making friends is very very difficult despite my best intentions and effort. Another thing: this particular meet up group meets up once every 3 weeks, and then every time they want to participate in events that cost $60, $70, $100. Im not that well off and I don't feel I should have to spend so much money everytime just to be with these people.

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Why doesn't she have any friends? It seems unusual that neither of you do after a year of living in this city. Is there some sort of key there?

Key? No. She works at another medical center where there is no one her age and there is a lot of bitchiness going on. She gets along well with people but she finds making friends as tough as I do.

The only thing I can think about is finding a more social job and I have been looking around.
Being surrounded at work by people who don't want to talk to you or, in the most recent incidents, not get invited is very hearthbreaking. Let me elaborate.

There was a receptionist called Liam, who is gay. And all the women at work fawned over him. I would chat to him to when he worked down our end of the center and I felt that we would joke and/or laugh about the same things.
But when the day came when he was having a going away thing, EVERYONE in the whole building was invited but me!

The exact same thing happened with the practice manager (who is 3 years younger than me) when she left 2 day ago. Everyone got invited to her going away, everyone that is but me.

Perhaps it is an odd dynamic that maybe I am the only young male there (apart from the dentist (more on that in a minute)) and so inviting me is simply considered "weird". And to avoid feeling uncomfortable, they simply don't.

Now the dentist is a little younger than me, but he is in the same boat as I am. Just moved up here, no friends, wants to make friends, likes golf.
We talked a few times, nice guy and even traded numbers. So tell me, even after trying to organise a few get togethers is it still up to me to contact and sms and try and try to get them to come to one thing. Why aren't people, who seem to be equally motivated, making the moves towards a common goal?

Well, thats it for now and I feel I am in a unique situation because I moved to a new city where I knew no one, and then I took up a job that places me in near isolation.

Oh yeah, and before I forget, we (myself and partner) both joined a gym in order to improve our social opportunities but once again, people there are all plugged into their iphones and worse still is that women DONT want to talk to me because they think I'm either a) hitting on them or b) checking them out.
Its the snobbery that comes with a Gold Coast gym, everyone here is just too damn vain. I did make a rapport with one chap who gives me tips on weights and the like, but he spends, no kidding, 6 hours in gym a day and runs 5 businesses on the side. Time for friendship?