Throughout all of high-school I’ve always been the guy without friends. Ive never been bullied and people like me, I’m just not really friends with anyone. I hang around with the popular friendgroup during breaks etc. but don’t get invited to parties. People talk to me but will literally abandon the convo mid sentence if someone more interesting comes along.
I don’t really blame them, I’m really introverted in new social situations and I don’t initiate conversations with anyone if I don’t already know them. Also I only get comfortable with people after a long time and don’t become friends with people I’ve seen on the hallway three times like most boys my age seem to. I feel like after almost 4 years I’m actually becoming friends with a few guys and I’ve been invited in private once already. But I’ll finish school in a few months and think that the friendship isn’t strong enough to last when we aren’t in school together anymore.
So I’ll end up with zero friends apart from my best (and then only) friend I’ve known for almost my entire life. Next fall I will do the obligatory social service every man has to do in my country, and I’ll meet a bunch of people my age again. I really want to make good new friends there, but I feel like that’s difficult if you don’t get to know each other rather quickly, because then there will already be friendgroups and people won’t really look for new friends anymore.
How do I do that? And how do I improve my social skills until then?