Hi there, 22M doing an internship in Japan for 5 months. I got out of a couple of pretty hard months in my own country, and I hoped this would be the occasion to improve my social skills (which are really low) with less pressure.
I've gone a lot out of my comfort zone, going regularly to a lot of events and stuff. In them I can hold my own on 1-on-1 or group conversations, get people contacts and stuff. But here's the stitch : I never actually make friends and I don't know why.
All of them I've tried texting to stay in contact, they just stop coming to common events, they already have their friend groups from their shared houses or courses, and given I don't have a similar situation I'm left alone. I've tried every approach I could think of, staying passive or being really pro-active.
I've tried gauging if I could get closer to one of these groups, to no avail. People flat out ignore me. And it's not over-insistence on my part: people actually ask for my contact, and ghost me after a couple of texts. I genuinely have no idea what I'm doing wrong and why it's so generalized.
I've pushed myself so hard to get out there, felt so bad and ashamed while texting people first or proposing plans, while making sure it seemed as natural and non-weighting on them as possible. But with absolutely zero results.
It feels even worse than living recluse, because I now feel like no matter how hard I try it won't matter in the slightest.
Is this supposed to be normal ? Is there a self-fueled loop of loathing to avoid ? I'm genuinely lost when seeing that after three months I've not seen anyone in a semi-regular matter, while it feels so natural for everyone else.