Struggling to turn potential new friends into actual friends

[Philosopher]

Over the past couple of years I have made a concerted effort to try and make new friends. The main reason for this is due to gradually losing existing friends due to the two of us either gradually drifting apart or moving away.

 

The main issue I am having is that whenever I meet someone who seems interested in friendship, as soon as meeting up is suggested, they make excuses to postpone or cancel actually meeting up. This occurs even when they are the one whom suggested meeting up initially. This sort of thing has not generally been an issue in the past.

 

A recent example of this is with someone I met up on a hiking meetup a couple of months ago. At the meetup she suggested I go with her and some of her friends to the Royal Wedding a week later. I refused as I am not a big fan of those sort events, particularly when there are large crowds. In the end she never went to this anyway. She did suggest meeting up a week later which I agreed. A few days later she said she had to cancel this due to a month long religious festival which she had initially forgotten about.

 

We subsequently rearranged to meet this weekend. I asked her to push the meetup an hour and half earlier as I wanted to watch the England World Cup football match. She replied saying it would be better if we met another time as meeting up would be too rushed. I then said it would best to meet soon as I knew neither of us were available until the end of July. Therefore I suggested either Friday and Sunday on this weekend. She said had prior commitments on both those days and did not offer an alternative.

 

It has been a very similar story with two other people I attempted to make friends with recently .

 

There was another person who I met on a hiking Meetup whom I did successfully meet up three times, the last one being a weekend away. During the weekend, she was very critical of British people, calling them lazy and racist and blamed Britain for many of the world's problems such as a financial crisis in her country over 20 years ago (she is not from Britain). A lot of what she said sounded very much like a conspiracy theory. For example I searched the internet regarding her country's financial crisis and could not find any evidence to support that British caused it.

 

Given I was born in Britain and most of my friends are from Britain these views did make me uncomfortable and so I told her that I would prefer her to air those views to someone else. She did not take this very well, she said she was being direct and seemed annoyed that I told her stop. I suspect it is unlikely I will see her again as a result.

 

My questions are, is there something I am doing wrong in my attempts to make new friends or is this sort of flaky stuff to be expected? With the last person, was I right to tell her that I did not like her saying what she was saying or did I overreact and lose a potential friend as a result?

[darkmoon]

A) try to make friends with lonely people, they will not be so busy

B) drop her, she sounds hostile

[preraph]

You're not trying very hard to be friends if you refuse invitations to stuff because there's something else you'd rather do or because of your crowd phobia. You should have accepted the invitation to the Royal Wedding. Maybe she didn't go because you didn't go. If you want to be friends, you can't just do things YOU want to do WHEN you want to do them. If you want to make friends, accept the invitation as-is and show you are cooperative and easy to get along with. You sound very picky as if you only want a friend who does everything your way. You're too controlling and sounds like it might be because you have some anxiety you need to deal with. Someone invites you, go and don't complain about it and try to have fun. Then you invite them to something you'd like to do that hopefully they would also enjoy.

[snowboy91]

In some ways making friends is a little like dating. Your personalities need to be compatible so you can have a connection with that person. When you're starting out making new friends, it can be a bit daunting because you'll meet people where you have differences in opinion (the person putting down Britain), or your schedules don't match (the first person you described), or they just don't invest in it the same way you do.

 

Keep persisting, and try to be flexible with the activities you do. I find it only takes one friendship to create another 5, 10 or even more.