Anyway, as it stands, I think the best option is to try to work at a place with other young, career-oriented (as opposed to family-oriented) people. I've tried young professionals associations and athletic teams, but they didn't work. The young professional stuff seemed too forced -- like singles dating -- and you don't get enough "talk time" with sports teams: you're too busy playing the game.
Truthfully, most of my friends in this city have come from playing Magic the Gathering. There were a few semi-normal, hygiene-conscious guys in the crowd and we get together on a semi-regular basis. We're not as close as my college buddies and I can't get them to go out doing the fun stuff I used to do, but it's good enough.
If you live in small town america, making friends might be difficult or impossible. I actually went to a therapist when I was really depressed and told him how much I hate this city. I told him I thought it was very cliquish (exclusive to newcomers like myself), that every girl worth having is married at 25 and that every guy friend I make gets stolen away by marriage.
I expected him to say "Suck it up. Go meet people." His response was actually "Ok so maybe you need to move to a place with more independent, career-minded folks like yourself." In other words, sometimes circumstances really are the problem, not you.
I want to reiterate my original point: I'm as white and normal as it gets. I can't blame any personality-related, aesthetic, racial or economic disadvantage, and yet I'm still a sometimes-depressed-and-unhappy loner.
The only thing left to blame is my introversion.
One last point: I, like many millennials, was raised by my parents and the media to believe I am the center of the universe. Accordingly, my empathy quotient has historically been crappy. Then I had some life events a few years ago that jarringly recalibrated my ego. As painful as these events were, I'm not as full of myself nor as big an asshole as I used to be and I'm finding it easier to relate to other people as well as make and keep friends.
Read articles and writings by David Wong (aka Jason Pargin). He's the patron saint of self-righteous millennial deprogramming.
I've thought about it a lot. In the end I think your therapist got it right. It's all about circumstance. You have to live in a place that promotes daily interaction with people. Dorms and fraternities promote that sort of thing not just by being in the right location but the physical geometry of dorms and frat houses encourages people to meet and hangout. The rooms in dorms and frat houses are so small that people just end up using the larger shared lounges for dinner, studying, and chilling in general. It forces and promotes daily interaction with large groups that you'll never experience in any other setting.
I think the reason why the sports thing or the young professional stuff didn't work out was because it needs to be a daily thing. Connections will always feel awkward especially for introverts because it's just not happening often enough.
Anyway back to my point of the living space. Outside of colleges I've seen this type of living space in just two places. The first place is called Cooperatives. People in coops live in the same building, do shared chores and have communal dinner. Like frat houses these places tend to be pretty ghetto but it's never lonely. The other place is a retirement home. If you've never been to one, retirement homes actually have shared spaces and dining halls where you can literally observe older people having the same kind of social interaction and politics you experienced in college living spaces. The irony of it all is the same social experience young people get living in dorms near the beginning of their lives, they'll get to experience the same thing when they near the end.
So I guess the solution is to either live in a coop, wait until your old enough to be placed in a retirement home, or get married. Unless anyone has any other suggestions?
Why do you need my contact info? I don't really care about keeping it private, I just never posted it.
edit: I just checked. My email has always been in my profile....
I'm a massive introvert who spends most of his time coding, playing video games or Magic the Gathering, and my life has devolved 3 times into full-blown WoW addiction -- the fool's gold life people take on when they feel their real one sucks.
I have almost no friends, hate making plans and, generally, would rather be alone. "Hell is other people" is my motto.
And of course, this lack of relationships makes me very sad sometimes. The short term desire to be alone leads to long term sadness.
But here's where our stories diverge: I'm a tall, likeable (when I want to be), charismatic, good-looking, athletic white guy and can pick up women at will.
And yet, even though I can turn on the charm at will and get what I want (coincidentally, I'm a sales engineer), I'm still totally alone most of the time. This makes me feel like an outsider, an outcast, a loner, etc and the sadness can get uncomfortably dark.
So here's my point: As someone said earlier it's our desire to be alone that's the real problem, not what you look like or what your accent sounds like.
Introversion is a constant sabotage of happiness. If you don't maintain and work at friendships consistently over a long period of time, they will deteriorate. And doing that is nearly impossible for a "hell is other people" introvert.
The best solution, I've found, is to take the plunge and join a structured organization or group that you can't easily get out of. Being in college, specifically a fraternity, was the best time of my life. It forced me to be social and interact with other people, even when I didn't really want to. I think a healthy work environment with other people your age can help, too. It did for me.
One other note: I felt the same "Why is everyone else out having fun and I'm not?" feeling very profoundly in my mid-to-late 20s. It was a consuming, jealous, rage-inducing feeling. But now I'm 33 and I haven't felt that in years now. I don't even know why. Did I stop thinking that was a desirable thing? Or did I just give up?
TL;DR
1. Don't blame your appearance or awkwardness. The real problem is your short term desire to be alone. 2. Join a social or work structure that forces you to interact with others. 3. The jealousy of others' social activity should dissipate with age. Mine did.
p.s. Also, get off of Facebook. People are only posting pictures of their happy times, so all you get is an artificial stream of happy happy happy. This will inevitably make you feel worse. Facebook image crafters are probably just as unhappy as everyone else. They're working awfully hard to prove otherwise, aren't they?