It seems that we each have the amount of humans in our lives that we decide we want . Otherwise we go seek more - or dump a few !

Mine changes in that regard when I move to new places, too. For the first 25 years of my life, I was very isolated. I wasn't allowed to leave the house on my own save for school or work. I could go places with my brother, but he was always a severe introvert and thus never wanted to go anywhere. The house was in an exceedingly difficult to find location, and in the days before GPS it was more trouble than it was worth for anyone to drive there. I scarcely had any social contact and, as an extrovert that nearly drove me mad. When I moved to Minnesota I scarcely knew anyone and had to go through what was essentially a second adolescence, learning a lot of things I had no opportunity to learn before, in a short period of time. I lived there for 15 years and gathered quite a circle of friends, but I had to leave Minnesota as I knew one more 70-below winter would land me in a psych ward. I'm in Washington state, now, and have been for three years. I'm starting over again with expanding my social circle, and it's been difficult, but at least it's going a lot more quickly this time.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than to share my story. ?

I find my life goes in cycles. I have periods of time where I have contact with a good size circle of friends as well as stretches where I don't communicate with other people outside of work all that much.

Usually my more solitary stretches are associated with a move to a different location. It takes awhile to acclimate to a new environment and to have the locals get used to your presence amongst them.

Introvert that I am, I never sought out a life surrounded by people. However, it's all relative. When my 2nd wife died I had been preoccupied as her sole caregiver for a number of years and what little other relationships I had, had fallen away due to neglect. Fortunately before her death my wife had, wisely, pushed me out of the house each morning to go get some coffee and clear my head, and I was invited to join a group of men who met for coffee every morning, that turned out to be a good fit for me. It was a fluid group, not everyone was there every day, but it was always there for me and I found after my wife died that just having direct human contact sometime during the day was very helpful and probably all I really needed. That might consist only of sitting with them, or it might be superficial or occasionally lively conversation ... but mostly just the in-person contact seemed to scratch the itch for me.

In general I find that casual, simple, unambitious relationships tend to work out the best. I don't know what having a BFF is even like. It's never happened apart from my marriages. Marriage is high-maintenance enough, and at least you have some incentive to put in the effort. When it comes to buddies, especially guy friends ... anything beyond water cooler talk tends to run into a brick wall anyway. At least the way most of us are socialized in the West.

Exactly the same, happened overnight for me. Its takene a long time to recover. Nothing can replace the mostly destroyed relationship, I formally had with my children but I am trying. Gin helps

Yup, and fairly recent.. But nature abhors a vacuum ..and voids are soon filled. Not all, but enough to allow me to recover from a major life change. Care for yourself, be true to yourself, and others will notice, again

Similar experience here. Married, had 2 children, divorced and then the mother of my children committed suicide. I'm stuck in the same town wanting to leave all the baggage of this area behind, glad to have no contacts and start anew. I just don't want to uproot my kids from their friends, but in the long-run I feel like they'd appreciate living in a better area.

What happened?

I have what one person called a 'high burn rate' in my life, basically I burn the candle at both ends and in the middle too. So I outgrew all of my friends from high school and university a long time ago; tried hooking up with a few of them a few decades ago and it was a disaster. You do the whole how are things going? Q&A and while my life had changed several times theirs was just the same as when I last saw them, after 10 minutes you could hear the crickets chirping.
Most of my relationships with people were task based because as the boss you have to have a certain level of isolation in order to be objective but it also means you interact with a lot of people every day. Since I retired 9 years ago that social interaction is gone but I did pick up a lot of new friends in our travels, the only problem is that they are scattered all over the world so we stay in touch via social media. Locally, we have met few people that are interesting enough to make us want to become close friends with them, once again, crickets. You just have to be comfortable in your own skin as a lot of people are stuck in a rut and aren't going to let new people into their lives.

I know exactly how you feel. Had lots of friends when I was younger, but now it's just family, Friends all drifted away, never to be seen again. Very odd, as I see and hear people talk about friends they still have from GRADE school! Seriously!? But I still have my books, my guitars, and my motorcycle. And my wife, who has her own bike and rides with me. No more big rides with "friends." Oh well.

My life has mostly gone in teh other direction, was alone so much in my younger years, more recently it goes from insanely busy with people, too many people and not at my reuest, to a few weeks at a time when I see noone, can go a week without speaking to a person verbally at all.

Know this one well. Between divorce, son leaving home, retrenchment and living in a small country town I have seen my life carved away until it is virtual solitary confinement. Drives me nuts.

The first couple I adjusted to fairly well, went to uni, did honours, got a job doing community development, a couple of failed relationships, lots of social contact, not too bad. I'd go out and see a band by myself, quiz nights, pool comps, all the rest, I am by nature social.

Things started going really pear shaped about the time I got retrenched, that is isolating in itself and the small town factor started coming heavily into play, and blown head gaskets and other unrelated disasters involving unexpected expenditure saw me trapped here because at least I own the house. The pub that used to have the live music and pool comp got sold then closed for renovations one and a half years ago and hasn't reopened since. The friends I used to go out with had their own upheavals and the part-time job I do have is over the internet.

Personally it sucks. My current goal is to find a job somewhere where the prime social activity is not getting drunk, take it, sell up and move. Can't really move first because when I sell I have to buy or the taxman will crucify me, so currently stuck in limbo.