The settings and knowing what do do would be like: Church- Most churches u introduce yourself, read church info. Just kinda do what the other people do that u see have a lot of friends. That means u will have a lot of friends too. A Grocery store is always a good place. This man asked me once "if I wanted to taste his sausage"? I told him know, only because I thought he was too old for me. You can go to the produce section, and pay attention to how they squeeze the produce. That right there can tell u a lot about a man. Lets see,,, u can always go to the museum, even if u dont like paintings. That's a good place to strike up a conversation with cute men. I've done that before. You just let the guy talk really, and look impressed when he shows u he knows so much about Pacaso. Let's see what else,,, um,,, I guess that's it for now.

To add to what khrysalis said, people can have lots of acquaintances, but very few close friends. The close friends are the ones that you can tell the most confidential info to and stay around through the worst of times.

When I became disabled in an instant and was in the hospital, the acquaintances were gone in a heartbeat--but the real close friend was there to stay. That's the difference.

Agreed with Astimegoesby. I have a lot of acquaintances, but only one or two close friends I think I could count on. Socially, I'm busy, but I'm not necessarily popular, if that makes sense. I put a lot of work into my social life, but I have recently been re-evaluating, thinking I need to focus on the areas that make the most sense, and carefully choosing the friends I spend my time with, friends do take time to nurture and grow. If I spend too much time with acquaintances and busy work, I have not as much time for quality time with friends. Being surrounded by people I have found was a way for me to feel validated, but it's not healthy and I need to refocus....think about the big picture as you work on making more friends...

I love people, and I think it would be awesome to have a ton of "friends"--may be more like acquaintance 'level' or whatever, or "buddies" is the way I might prefer to phrase what I'm talking about. I fully understand it is usually only possible to have a few close friends at a time, and the value of that! It's certainly better to have a couple or few close friends you can trust and count on than many non-close friends, but I would like to have both. It would be awesome to have a wide network like that.

I get so tired and that really messes with my social life.

On some level, I can understand where hopeinjoy is coming from.

For me, I've never had the luxury of having a large network of friends. I'm fortunate to even have the very few friends that I do, and even so, it's extremely difficult for me at times to get terribly close to them because of my social anxiety and yes, practical limitations / location issues.

It would be nice to have lots of friends you could trust and get close to. It can also be overwhelming sometimes, I hear.