I just wanted to post this to see if anyone can relate or has any insight or advice. I always had a close, small group of friends and was well-liked at school. I was quite quiet though so I usually would usually gravitate towards louder people and have a main best friend and then a smaller circle of friends. This pattern replicated itself a lot - I would have a best friend for a few years and then we'd just drift apart and the cycle would repeat. I have no contact with any of my childhood/teenage year best friends. None of them. I find it kind of weird because there's no reason for us to not be friends anymore or why we drifted apart. Most of them still live in our hometown. Maybe they all just got bored of me? I live a 5-minute walk away from the girl who was my best friend throughout secondary school. We'd spend every minute together and was inseparable. We've bumped into each other a few times in the shops and we seem to just click and I always hope she'll message me asking to meet up again.
Since around 16 I've had no friends. I'm now 31. I made no friends in college. I did have some school friends go to college with me (all three who I would class as being some of my best friends) and they all left me for new friends, quite unkindly too. Two of them were my best friends from separate areas of my life and didn't previously know each other except through me, and they became friends instead. I commuted to university and made no friends. I remember every week I'd be standing in our lab class on my own waiting for some poor person in a group of three to get paired up with me as I had no friend to pair up with. At work I've never bonded or gelled with anyone. I'm quiet but kind. I've never been bullied. Colleagues have always had nice things to say about me (even behind my back, I've been told), yet no friends.
I find Monday meetings hard because I have nothing to say on how I spent my weekend. I work with women all around my age and every week they'll have had hen weekends, baby showers, bridesmaid duties, friends' birthdays, etc. It feels like a different world from mine to have friends in this season of life.
I'm not even that bothered about not having friends as I've gotten used to it; but I just don't understand how I've ended up here. I wonder about autism, as I've heard that women and girls do start to struggle in their teens with socialising as the dynamics get more complex? Maybe my coping mechanism of clinging to a best friend and being the quiet one no longer suffices once you get to around that age? Idk