Hi Too_much
It can definitely be a major challenge, making friends. As a 54yo gal, I'm currently trying to figure it out myself. I've found there's never really a need to make friends until I feel the need. At the moment I'm really feeling it, based on a number of reasons.
I think it's about gaining a feel for a connection with people. While I feel a basic and good connection to a number of people I work with, I only feel a deeper connection to 2 of them. So, I suppose that deeper connection is suggesting a greater friendship that requires me to put more effort in. While I've done a number of short courses over the years, I admit to not accepting invites for coffee or such after the courses were over. So, lost opportunities partly due to social anxiety and fear of small talk. I hate small talk and I'm a shocker at it. I suppose finding groups of people with similar interests can be key. Being a bit of a 'woo woo' gal, into some of the soulful stuff, self development courses in that area could be a go, for me personally. A lot of the people into that stuff are pretty sensitive (they can sense more easily than most). What a number of sensitive people have in common, I've found, is they admit to not being fans of small talk, they can feel social stressors, they tend to be introverts, they like to wonder and imagine, they like to consider different philosophies and the list of things like that goes on. Searching for people we can relate to can make the search a little easier in some cases.
While my son struggled at primary and secondary school with bullying and a sense of isolation for a number of years, he found his good friends towards the end of secondary school. They labelled themselves as 'the odd bunch'. They were a mix of people who faced the challenges that can come with social anxiety, the autism spectrum, ADHD, the LGBTQ+ spectrum etc. All were and still are sensitive in a number of positive ways to different degrees. It's amazing how some of the best of friends can be sensitive, as opposed to insensitive 😁. Plenty of insensitive people out there, that's for sure.
Gaining a sense of who we are and therefor who our people are (potential friends) can be a good start. People of a similar nature tend to naturally gravitate towards each other. I really do think finding friends can be a bit of a Goldilocks kind of experiment (too hard/too soft/just right, too hot/too cold/just right etc). Would be so much easier if we knew who was just right to begin with.
