Throwaway account as I don’t want any mutuals to find this
I’m a 22y/o female and I’ve been struggling recently with how to create and keep meaningful connections with people – I look at the people my age and everyone seems to have all of these meaningful connections with people, being able to chat and joke and both people enjoy the interaction if you know what I mean. I find quite a lot of the time (not always) when I’m chatting with people I tend to give off a bad vibe? I don’t know if I just try too hard or my RBF makes me seem unapproachable or mean but I’m really trying my best to make more meaningful friendships with people but I just find that the conversation is so stiff and the other person just isn’t interested and it’s really disheartening honestly.
I moved away from where the majority of my friends are at Uni (about 1.5 hours) with my partner and as hard as I have tried I havent been able to hold onto the friendships I used to have and only see them maybe once a year for birthdays and it’s just become really lonely if im honest! I know this post seems a bit dramatic but I honestly would appreciate some advice from people who might have felt this way and realized what they were doing wrong? I genuinely feel like there’s one thing I have to tweak and then it’ll click and I’ll be able to have deeper friendships 🙂
Appreciate yall reading this ✌️
(For a bit of context I was very shy growing up and only kept a handful of friends, and didnt talk very much until going into high school so maybe I just didn’t develop the skill? My parents immigrated to Canada from England and found it hard to connect with people when we arrived as well so didn’t have many family friends around either)