Comment by cko

This may not make you feel better, but I was lonely until maybe age 25. That was the year I graduated and started my first job and made my first two real friends. Before that I sat alone in the back of the lecture hall in University and hated on all the fun-having classmates.

Age 25 was also when I met my first girlfriend that lasted less than a year. Age 34 was when I met my second girlfriend, who became my wife, and how we are separated. Long story short, I'm pretty content with my life now. You can say I'm a bit of a late bloomer.

I thought I would be alone forever too, so much so that in college I aspired to be a Buddhist monk.

What helped me was learning how to be less socially awkward through work interactions. When I was 32 I solo backpacked Europe which made me seem like a more interesting person. Also I'm a bit of a people pleaser and I was helpful to some key people in my life and they are now my good friends. Also I saved and invested a good chunk of my income which kind of helps overall with confidence.

> People find me funny and when I do talk to people we have decent conversations (though small talk tends to bore me). However that doesn’t lead anywhere and doesn’t bring me any kind of comfort or fulfillment. I’ve attributed my lack of friends to something that places all the blame on me. Maybe I’m ugly, maybe I’m not funny enough, maybe I’m dumb.

I've felt all those things at some point. You don't have to be attractive or funny or a genius. I've always walked around with these recurring fantasies of being some secretly impressive superhero that saved the day publicly or had all these amazing talents and everyone would realize my worth. I realize now that everyone is too into their own lives to care, and even if they seem to admire something about you, they see it from the perspective of how it benefits themselves. This is absolutely fine, and human.

I guess what I'm saying is that you'll grow out of this phase. Right now I have all the friends I could ever want, ironically at a phase I'm my life I want to be more solitary.