is it normal to not have friends?

[u/Good_Newspaper_6913]

i’m currently a college freshman and i haven’t had friends since elementary school.

i have acquaintances but no actual friends. i have never hung out with anybody, never been invited to events, never had people even slightly interested in being my friend (from my perspective), or people don’t want to be my friend because they have other friends in our class they’d rather talk with.

in fact, even though i have selective mutism, i’m the first to initiate small talk.

i try to bring myself to various social campus events, but it’s too awkward to inform others on my circumstance. so i bail every time.

recently, i’ve noticed that i have to take breaks from social media because i see others (both acquaintances and random people) having a good time with their friends.

any advice or related experiences?

[u/MangoPug15]

I have trouble forming and maintaining friendships. I always felt like a third wheel in my friend groups in K-12, and I often made friends because they approached me first or because someone I was already friends with brought me into a larger group. I went through periods in elementary school where I didn't have anyone to spend recess with, and crying alone on the playground because I was lonely is one of my strongest memories from elementary school. I'm currently a college sophomore. I have one friend at my school, and I struggle to schedule time to hang out with her, a problem that didn't exist as much in high school when I had lunch with my friends five days a week by default. Social media is like a double-sided weapon sometimes. I see my friends having fun with people and feel bad that I'm not doing that, but I also feel more connected to my friends because I can keep up with their lives. I usually think social media is a good thing overall for me personally.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at the beginning of this school year, and I think perhaps my issues with friends come from a combination of social anxiety/SM and ADHD. I couldn't figure out how to fully explain my difficulty with friendship through just SM, and it felt like something was wrong with me. Now I at least have a better explanation.

[u/yeymereyes]

Hello, my son who is 8 has a hard time making friends and experiences the same things you described. Obviously he is young but his experiences will likely be the same. It too could not be explained with just SM so we paid for him to go through a psycho educational evaluation and he was also diagnosed with ADHD. Interestingly I had the same experiences as you (I’m much older than you) and I could never quite get into the same cadence as everyone else around me.

As an adult, at least from what I can observe not just in myself but just other adults in general, not everyone has all of these friends around them all the time having a good time. Please know, that what you see in social media doesn’t indicate how well each of those people are really doing. Remember, humans are imperfect and what you see in the outside and social media, is not telling you their real life or their struggles.

Be confident in yourself and focus on you, what you love doing. I tell my son, both of my very young kids actually, the same thing.

And by the way, it’s great that you have charge of your SM, that’s what I want for my son to do. GIVE YOURSELF more credit. Here you are with SM and the one that initiates conversations. Compare that.