Making friends

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any tips on making friends?

Funny... I came here to ask the same question. I'm 38 and have lived in a new city for almost four years and have had a terrible time trying to make new friends... all the friends I had back in the town where I am from have known me for years and years and I guess I took them for granted because now I'm finding it really hard to make new friends. I either come on too strong and scare them off or I don't appear interested enough... I know that my lack of eye contact is really bad sometimes and I often catch myself talking too much about myself or about one subject. I think that people just think I'm weird, so they don't want to hang out with me. I feel like there should be a rule book for making friends... like when to call and how often and how long to wait before returning a call, text or email and then when to make plans to hang out with someone again, etc... are there any guidelines about this? I read somewhere that less is more, but I have also annoyed some people right out of my life because I wasn't available ENOUGH, so where is the happy medium where I develop friendships that last for a long time? Or am I just too old for that now?

I think their should be a book for this kind of thing

I made all my friends by dumb luck, but it's been almost 5 years now. It's a lot easier in a controlled environment like high school.

I guess the best course of action would be to go to places where you'd find like-minded people, and hope for the best.

From personal experience, it comes down to finding someplace you feel comfortable enough not to be on constant guard. Once you can relax enough to not become overwhelmed you can start to look around and see some of the little ques that would tell an non-ads this person wants to be your friend.

My one and only real friend put up with a year and a half of my extreme shyness and socially awkward interactions. Finally he just asked me to be his friend, lol. It's been seven years and we still talk almost every day. A lot of that comes down to being interested in what each other think and do. I've tied to make friends with just friendly people and mostly I find them annoying, intrusive or boring.

But now that I think about it the same thing happened to me in high school. There was a girl who I would chat with and we always got along and one day she just asked me to be her friend and we were, though out high school. Maybe that's the answer? Just ask people who you like "would you like to be my friend"?