Hi. I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, had difficulty forming romantic relationships. For most of my life, I also had a lot of trouble forming close friends

Hi. I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, had difficulty forming romantic relationships. For most of my life, I also had a lot of trouble forming close friendships. So this is a topic that is very personal for me, and please listen carefully to what I have to say. First: close friendships are not a substitute for romantic relationships. Friendship and romance are two distinct needs. Not every human is wired to need romance, but _many_ people are. At this point in my life, I'm fortunate enough to have a circle of close platonic friends, but I'm still single, and I'm acutely feeling the lack of romance. That being said, you have a valid point that romantic relationships are not a substitute for close friendships. Some incels want to get a girlfriend as a substitute for making friends, and I agree that's a bad idea. But telling them "make strong friendships" is not helpful! Most people in this situation will struggle to form to close friendships for the same reasons that they struggle to form romantic relationships. So how _should_ the problem be fixed? There are no easy solutions. And there especially aren't easy solutions that the sufferers can implement on their own; if there was an easy way out, they would have done it already. I believe this problem will continue until _society_ changes how it treats socially awkward people. Society needs to be more sensitive towards people who lack social skills, and stop demonizing them. For example, there's a tendency to conflate "incels" in the sense of "misogynistic assholes who use terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid", with "incels" in the sense of "any man who's lonely and complains about it". The former group is a tiny fraction of the latter group, and conflating them is very unfair to the latter group. This needs to stop.