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Sounds like you treat friendships as monogamous love relationships - would be nice to rethink that approach and maybe convince yourself that something less committed friendships are fulfilling too.

This is something my pre-teen son had as a requirement for friendship. The best advice I could give him was those sorts of relationships take time to foster; they generally don’t happen instantaneously. Have plain old friends and see if they grow into best friends.

Or I think to be more helpful to the GP: collect acquaintances and some might turn into friendships.

It's important to point out that the starting point is a very shallow relationship that actually has no depth to it. Over time, these shallow relationships may gain depth. Much like a river carving through stone. If you have no patience you are not likely to get to the point if getting deep relationships, and if you do, you'll probably be overwhelming the other person with eagerness and/or desperation and/or being out of touch with social norms. Likewise, the best way to find love is to date lots and get dumped lots that it's no longer a major event and you just move on.

The difference is that to find love relationship people generally openly look for one, and no one does that for friendships. Hence the need to treat casual friendships seriously if you're looking for serious ones.

Out of curiosity, do you have a partner/girlfriend/wife?

Because much like you, I haven't really kept good friends along in life. I've had periods in my life when I had a "good" friend, that I could talk a lot of stuff with, share my problems, and generally do activities in common, but I moved around, I haven't really kept in touch.

Problem is, without a social circle, it's much more difficult to find a partner, and I'm at an age now where that's the main thing I think I'm missing.

But I understand the issue very well from a theoretical standpoint. At its core, it's about a disordered attachment style, a sort of fear of attachment, or a failure of the brain to regulate the affect resulting from interactions. A result of early developmental trauma. I'm also familiar with some techniques that are supposed to fix the problem (I was building a neurofeedback system based on ADS1299 at one point), but life got in the way. Which is ironic, since I think this is the most important aspect of any life, social functioning.

> Out of curiosity, do you have a partner/girlfriend/wife?

No, not at the moment.

I've been through several long-term relationships, and I think I'm too emotionally fucked up to actually be in one for real. There's a whole array of issues, and I don't even know how to sum them up. In a nutshell, I don't really like being myself.

Find a good therapist / counselor, which may take more than one attempt. The first counselor I had, for maybe 3 sessions, was terrible. The 4th session was with his boss, she asked me how it was going, I said I didn't really click with the guy, and she took over my case. She was great.

It's well worth it to learn how to accept and like yourself. After all, the one person you can count on having the rest of your life, is you! Good luck!

What do you recommend as a good alternative for people who can't afford therapy?

There are places that have fees based on income, or their used to be when I was in counseling. The place I went had that, I think mostly for drug and alcohol abuse, but maybe just for everyday counseling too. I wasn't using it so don't know much about it, but it is/was a thing.

> I don't really have many friends. For someone to be my "friend" they'd have to be a person I'd spend time with when I'm bored, and who I could reasonably count on to have my back when I need it.

A friend friend of mine with very similar thoughts as me (and, it sounds like, you) recently put it very well. The "workplace proximity associate" kind of friends, while kind of destined to remain shallow and not as deep a connection as any of us might want, are not unimportant. They ground us in a way and help us keep a connection to the world, but maybe not so much individuals.

Interesting description! I can identify with your perspective with the main difference that I consider anyone who isn't an enemy a friend. I just don't have many close friends. I think part of it is that the things that I find interesting most people in my circles find incredibly boring or don't understand. Actually, I find people fascinating and take interest in helping them out where I can. But I tend to be fine doing something by myself. I learned to accept myself and once that happened I spend most of my time pretty much enjoying life and all the stupid things that happen!

"they'd have to be a person I'd spend time with when I'm bored" - I don't think this is fair to expect from anybody. It has a similar vibe as expecting from a relationship to pull you out of sadness. You have to be able to enjoy yourself and your time, if you can share that with anybody and elevate it, that's just an extra.