Before telling you what this article is, let me tell you what it’s not.
It’s not a list of tips for making friends. I’m not going to tell you to join clubs, take classes, say yes to every invitation, or smile more. If you searched for “why do I have no friends” and landed here, you’ve probably already read those articles. It’s not bad advice, but there’s no guarantee it will work (not quickly, at least). Tons of people more competent than me are able to help you much better in that regard.
I want to help you understand the situation while it’s not solved yet. How was this problem born? What are the reasons behind it? Why do I still have it?
I know quite a bit about this topic. I spent most of my adolescence and a significant part of my adult life without close friendships. Not dramatically alone (I’ve always had people around me, classmates, colleagues, acquaintances), just lonely enough to affect the development of my self-esteem. As it turns out, self-esteem plays a huge role in the way we carry on our social life. Even if you can hold a conversation, make people laugh, be pleasant company for an evening, it doesn’t mean you will reliably be part of other people’s plans. If you don’t assert yourself enough, others won’t think you are worth remembering.
This fuels a cycle of negativity that is really hard to break. It took me years and therapy to understand what had happened, but what I found was considerably more complicated — and more forgiving — than what I expected.
Table of Contents
Understanding our feeling
Despite all the evolution, the technology and the results accomplished by humanity, we are still animals, we will always be. Our brains are not very different from the monkey brains they evolved from, therefore we are bound to the same desires.
A very basic one is to be part of a group: ten monkeys together are stronger than one monkey, and they are better at warning off predators. We are hardwired to desire to be part of a group because it gives us a better chance at survival. The overwhelming sense of loneliness we feel the Friday evening when we know we have nothing scheduled for the weekend is actually our brain telling us “those lions are pretty scary, better find some backup”.
The wrong explanations first
When you don’t have friends, your mind offers you explanations. Some of them are cruel, some are self-protective, and almost all of them miss the point.
The cruel version: there’s something broken about me. I’m fundamentally unlovable, uninteresting, too much, not enough. This story usually comes from someone who meant to hurt you at some point — a bully, a dismissive parent, a group that excluded you. Let me reassure you: it’s not true, nobody is broken, nobody is fundamentally undesirable. We all have flaws, and they don’t disqualify you from connection. I can guarantee there are people with much worse flaws than you who have plenty of friends.
This is the route my mind went for; I’ve been told several times that my lack of connection was entirely my fault, my personality was wrong and I had to be different because I was not enough. Of course, I believed it. The small truth is that I was definitely way too shy, but shy people have friends, too. There must be something more going on it that’s the issue.
The self-protective version: it’s everyone else. I’m perfectly fine and the people around me are the problem. I’m not going to sugarcoat this one: nobody is perfect; not me, not you, not your parents/significant other/whoever else. If this is your only explanation, you need to take a cold, hard look at yourself in the mirror and find a better one, because none of us have been bestowed with the gift of immaculate perfection upon birth. If you’re not aware of your flaws, a honest therapist can surely help you.
With all that being said, you might actually be a fine and likable person, just bear in mind that no one has a duty towards you to be the kind of person you can be friends with. There is no wrong person, at best they’re wrong for you.
The half-point version: I just haven’t met the right people yet. Also sometimes true. But if years pass and the pattern repeats across different environments, different cities, different phases of life, then the common denominator – you – deserves examination. This, I believe, is the real answer to my problems, and I’m still working on it.
What was actually happening to me
In my case, it was a combination of things operating simultaneously.
I was not unfriendly, I could engage with people easily enough, but, at the end of the day, my character was very shy. I kept myself behind a wall, never fully showing who I was, never risking the exposure that real connection requires. The wall was there for good reasons: I had learned early that showing weakness invited attack. So I became skilled at being pleasant without being present.
This created an insanely weird situation: nobody held a bad opinion of me, but, at the same time, nobody included me in their lives either (or was particularly eager to be included in mine).
The environment mattered, too. When I eventually changed contexts — new city, new people — my social life expanded significantly with the same closed character. Which confirmed something I already suspected: it wasn’t only me. Despite having been told that what I was didn’t matter, that I had to be the kind of person other people would have wanted to be around (disregarding my right to self-determination), I finally knew that it was just bad luck. When you are not in the right environment, all of this can really destroy your opinion of yourself.
What is happening to you
You can understand on your own what is the root cause of your lack of a social life, but it won’t come easy. Many people don’t know how to analyze the problem properly, especially when it comes to recognizing one’s character flaws. Yes, you might be part of the problem; no, it’s unlikely that you are the only part of the problem.
At first, you need to understand what is the kind of person you would like to be friends with. After that, ask yourself a simple question: “if I was this kind of person, would I be my friend?”. If the answer is yes and you know that there are people like this in your life, you got something wrong. I’m sorry, buddy, but if you know them and they are not your friends it means you are not the person you think you are. Therapy will help you just as it helped me, if you take it on with complete and absolute honesty and are ready to accept constructive criticism.
You might also find that you are just in the wrong environment, the people currently in your life are not compatible with you. There’s nothing wrong with that, no one owes you their compatibility, just as you owe no one yours, but you will need to change your surroundings if that’s the case.
This is where people usually spit the most common pieces of advice on this matter: join a club, practice a sport, talk to people. As I said before, all of that is correct, but it’s going to take a lot of work on yourself, which you shouldn’t shy away from. Why, do you ask? Simple: if you are not used to be around people who can be your friends, how can you approach them with friendly intentions? It’s going to be embarrassing at first; let me reassure you: this is completely normal, you are not crazy and it’s not too hard. You just have to overcome the wall of insecurities. It’s going to take time, but it can be done.
A broken person?
If you’re anything like me, you have found yourself wondering if you lack something inside of you, something is missing preventing you from making friends. Maybe you are unable to form a bond, or stuff like that. Far from the truth, I’ll tell you that.
Not having friends is often circumstantial. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong phase of life. It can happen to anyone and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about you. Even the most extroverted people can be without friends for a period of time, when life really gets mad at them.
Not being able to form deep connections is a basically a skill gap, and skills can be developed. It’s one of the hardest, sure, especially if you are not a teenager anymore. It requires being willing to show yourself, flaws included, without knowing in advance how it will be received. It requires a foundation of self-respect, because if you’re not willing to be a friend to yourself, it’s hard to offer that to someone else. With that being said, it’s very important that you do learn how to do it, emotional intelligence cannot be neglected.
I had both problems for a long time. The circumstantial one resolved when my circumstances changed. The skill one took longer: it required the slow, uncomfortable work of learning to show up as my real self instead of as a carefully crafted version of myself.
What I’d tell someone in the situation I was in
Without false optimism, without promises that everything resolves itself, but also without resignation.
You are not broken. The absence of close friendships is painful and real, and it’s allowed to hurt — we are social animals, and isolation costs something. But it is not a verdict on your worth as a person.
Some of it may be circumstance, some of it may be patterns worth examining, probably both. A good therapist can help with the second part in ways that articles and advice cannot.
And here is the part that took me longest to accept: you can build a full life in the absence of deep friendships. Not as a consolation prize, as an actual life, with meaning and direction and things worth getting up for. The friendships, if they come, will arrive into a life that is already real. This is giving yourself what you deserve.
I still haven’t fully made peace with this.
I’ll be honest: it still stings, sometimes, to see other people out together when I’m walking or driving, sitting in a bar, sipping, talking and laughing. I don’t think that feeling will ever go entirely away, and I’m suspicious of anyone who tells you it does.
But I won’t let it stop me. I’m building something, slowly, in my own direction, and the loneliness is only a condition of the construction — not the definition of my life.
If you’re in that place, I see you. It’s harder than people who haven’t lived it can understand.
Keep going anyway.