I've always had difficulty bonding, particularly platonically. I seem to bond ok in romantic relationships, but in platonic relationships I take a long time to "warm up" and I often don't feel properly "friends" with someone for years.

I've looked at everything I can do wrong socially, but they're all things I do with people who are already close friends, not new people, like:
- sometimes I talk too much because I have a lot of stuff in my head and this can be exhausting
- I think I could have better listening skills, but they're not awful
- A couple of times in my life I've been too emotionally needy when I'm going through crisis (but my self soothing skills are better so I should avoid this in future) - at these times I've also lost social judgement through sleep-deprivation and ended up too self-absorbed and too negative.

The only time I've lost friends is when going through crisis (very many years ago now), but I didn't 'lose them' altogether, we had a little break and we're all really close friends again now. It's just the relationship got to one-sided where I needed too much support. I've never had a 'fall out' with someone - you know, like an argument. My life has been basically conflict free, but I did at one point need more support than is reasonable.

I'm working to improve on all that, and don't reach out often now for support, but it doesn't explain why I can't make new friends because like I say these are problems I have with people I'm close to.

I get on with everyone I meet pretty well and I think I can be quite funny in conversation and quite often I can make people laugh, but really it all just stays at the acquaintance level and never blossoms into any kind of friendship. I feel quite disconnected from everyone but I'm not sure why.

An old therapist told me to share myself more, and I took her advice, but then I've thought about it again and thought 'actually, I share too much with my close friends' - like I talk about myself too much - so now I'm not quite sure why she told me to do that.

I basically can't think of anything I'm doing wrong with people I meet. They all seem to like me enough, I think they just have enough friends already maybe? Also, sometimes I'm invited to things and sometimes I go - to be honest, I can't always be bothered, it depends on the crowd. When I do go, I have conversations with people but I don't feel like I'm connecting. Even when we're agreeing on stuff and we seem to like the same TV shows or music etc, I still feel like we're very different people.

I know I've written a lot but I wanted to give you a very clear idea. Can anyone think of what I might be doing/not doing that is different from other people?