I feel like my only friend betrayed me and I don’t know what to do…

I moved to a new country in a different continent to study and I haven’t been able to make friends. At all. I mean, there’s a handful of people I very seldom hang out with, but I haven’t found a proper group of people with whom I can share the experiences you live when living abroad. I’m saddened by this but not entirely shocked; I am very, very bad at making friends (hence me posting here).

The one exception is this one guy who lives in my same building, let’s call him John. So John and I have done a lot of things together, like trying out new restaurants, cooking, movies, etc. He’s really the only person I’ve ever made proper plans with. He’s also a foreign student.

John is christian, and he’s part of this Christian group of people who gather every Sunday. They don’t really preach with the Bible, they mostly have discussions about life and spirituality. He’d been pestering me to join them since like, October, but I only plucked up the courage to do so until last Friday. So I went.

And it was absolutely lovely. I met a group of entirely lovely people and we engaged in an extremely fascinating discussion about a variety of topics. It was fantastic, and not to brag, but I got great feedback – everyone later told John that they loved me, they found me super clever, and that I was welcome to join them again whenever. I was beyond feeling excited. I’m not religious, at all, but these discussions were not about christian faith – they were about literature, culture, philosophy, feelings… I LOVE reading, and I was showing off all the books I’ve read, people were laughing with me, nodding, agreeing, embracing me. I felt at home.

Today was their second weekly meeting. I had already said I’d go, but I stupidly did not take anyone’s number last Friday. In my defense, no one really pulled out the phones during the meetings cause it’s pretty rude/seen as a distraction. So I depended entirely on John for the details of today’s meeting.

John told me in the morning that today’s meeting was at 4. He told me he’d text me his location later in the day so that I could drop by.

I went about my day and about at 2, I texted him asking him for the address. Nothing. 2:30 rolls by. Nothing. There’s still time though, this is a tiny city, I could’ve left my place at 3:45 and made it on time. 3 comes. I text him again. Nothing, nada. I see he’s online, but he’s not answering me. 3:30. 3:50. I’ve given up hope. I took off my make up, the outfit I had so meticulously planned, and go back to doing my assignments for next week.

5 pm. John finally texts me. He sends me the address knowing well it’s over an hour late. The discussions last maybe 1:30 mins tops. It was already too late.

I was extremely excited for today and John knew that. But I didn’t want to make a big spectacle of how sad I was feeling. So I calmly asked him why he hadn’t texted me on time. He started sending me random emojis and random songs, telling me to listen to them (we exchange music a lot), and completely ignoring my messages. I finally text him like, please be serious, I’m honestly upset. He then finally says he “forgot” to text me because he was busy. I know that’s a lie, because he was online when I was texting him. He also *knew* how excited I was. He *knows* how hard it is for me to make friends whereas he’s a social butterfly. And he’s always hyping me up telling me I’m amazing, and I shouldn’t be shy, and that I’m charming, and people like me and like spending time with me… Well, apparently not…

Anyway, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I did. I thought things had gone great last meeting, but maybe people were just lying. Or maybe he was lying, I don’t know. I feel so sad and miserable and dumb for getting my hopes up for this group of people. The way I see it, there’s two options: a) Friday was a lie and people didn’t actually like me, they all fake-laughed at my jokes, they all thought I was a disgusting, idiot loser with nothing interesting to say or b) John doesn’t want me to keep on going to those meetings but doesn’t have the guts to tell me.

Ultimately I want to know if I should:

1. Accept John’s half-assed apology about “forgetting” and pester him again for details of next meeting.
2. Give up on this whole thing and not go to any more meetings every again. Maybe try to find my own group of friends somehow.

What do you guys think? I’m sorry if I’m being hypersensitive, I know I am, but like… Listen, I’d never connected with anyone so quickly before. I *genuinely* thought these people liked me. I know a lot of you can understand how difficult it can be to bond with people, and I struggle like ***hell*** to do it. Friendships don’t come easy to me. And for once, I thought that they did. But apparently my perception of reality was completely skewed…