Without knowing you personally it's really hard to say. My personal experience with friendships/relationships is that it is a chicken and egg problem. It's a l

Without knowing you personally it's really hard to say. My personal experience with friendships/relationships is that it is a chicken and egg problem. It's a lot lot lot easier to make new friends when you already have many (same goes with romantic/sexual relationships). It probably has to do with social proof dynamics and the fact that you might be unintentionally signalling insecurity through body language and appear to be desperate. It's possible that a lot of the people you talk to think something like "there must be a reason this 29 year old guy doesn't appear to have any friends". One drastic solution would be to move to a new city or country which would make it more socially acceptable for you to openly seek out new friends without appearing to be desperate. Another option would be to join a local sports team or other group activity where socialising isn't the central goal (poker, working out, hackatons, hiking, etc.). Finally, HN is probably the wrong crowd to ask for this kind of advice. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/ http://forum.bodybuilding.com/, http://boards.askmen.com/ http://boards.askmen.com/ and other similar "lifestyle" communities would probably yield more interesting results as a lot of the people on those forums are there specifically because they have gone through similar situations.