Hi All, I thought it would be good to post this in the youth forum, although it could be any age I guess...

For me I am a bit socially awkward, and I moved here a few years ago, so I'm not in my hometown.
Do you have trouble making friends?
What do you do?

Edit: Also, my faith often times makes people not be able to relate to me.

I'm 40...but yes, I find it VERY difficult to make friends. I have made some friends over the years, but as we move quite a lot (every 5 years or so) most of them now live abroad or in different parts of the country. Here, I have 1 good friend and about 3 or 4 acquaintances...but if/when we move again, I'll have to start again, which is both nice and daunting...

I don't have close friends, IRL, either. The few Catholic women I know think that I'm too Traddy, and the Protestants think I'm not a Christian. They don't ostracize me, we get along, but that's it. I concentrate on my family and DCF friends, so I don't think I'm missing out on much by not having close friends IRL.

In her Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux said that every friend she ever had, either abandoned her, or betrayed her. Ask her to intercede for you.

Been here. It is hard.
I find that religion is less of a glue than I thought, but I have found that people struggling for the same things I am. Mommyhood, love or art, shared hardships I am able to make friends with easier because there are practical ways in which to demonstrate good will and to demonstrate gratefulness..... Many hugsss.....

Note you, we have not many friends. The older we grow and the better we can sift mankind, the fewer friends we count, although man lives by friendship. But a great wind is every man's fiend, and its strength is the strength of good-fellowship; and even doing battle with it is something worthy and well chosen.- Hilaire Belloc

I have always been terrible at making new connections and worse retaining old ones over distance. It is not only hard to find those worthy of true friendship, which is based on the love of the other because he is good, but it is also difficult to find one not only good but who is truly another self. I find one of the most frustrating things is that while I am friendly to everyone I meet, yet I find those whom I have come to love as friends or with whom I would have true friendship pull away from me, and yet those whom I find annoying and bothersome seem to want all the more to have friendship with me. There are a few people in the world that I would do anything I could for, but they want nothing of me, and there are several that seem always to be asking me favors whom I would wish to be rid of. Not that I think they are bad, but they do not mesh with me.

God has a strange way in that. He often wills that we should be separated from the love of those whom we will to love, and, though we love them, given little or no opportunity to do anything externally on that and would place others in out path whom we are not so inclined to love, but whom He would have us love.

I think the best thing we can do, when disconnected, is to take account of those whom God has already placed in our paths and love them.

Thanks everyone. I do read the responses. I'm glad I'm not alone in my difficulty making friends. I am engaged to be married next year, so I have my fiance, who is the sunshine in my life. We don't get to see each other often, so it's lonely at times.

I try to think of it like this, that God provides everyone that I need in my life. End of story.
Friends are nice to have, but not essential.

Very true!!! Friends are kinda like the family you can pick!