I have the same issue. Somehow I was never able to make friends, which I guess stems from being on the receiving end of ridicule and being slightly ostracized growing up, in school, for being overweight and very boyish and a bit introverted. So, I didn't come out of school and university with a group of friends and entered adulthood with that deficit of a social circle and of the experience that comes with having a social circle/friends growing up.

In the past few years I've tried a little bit to make more friends, actual friends, meet people. It hasn't really worked for some reason. I made 2 good friends but not very good and now one lives abroad and the other got pregnant and is getting married, we don't have much in common anymore. Other than that....nothing.

Last year I started going to amateur theater classes, for people who just want to do this as a small hobby. It's been great, the people in the 2 courses I took were super nice, especially in the one that just finished. As a group we've hung out a lot, went to a restaurant every week after class and always after performances, one of the guys invited us all to his place to have drinks and pizza and play games and I went to the theater with a few of them once. I wish I could make some of these people into regular, close friends but honestly I don't see how. I mean, they have their own circles of close friends already(they're all 25+ in age) and I found that after your mid 20s it's really hard to penetrate that circle and make a close friend, especially as someone introverted and anxious about people. Now, without these classes, I literally have no one to hang out with.

Also, one needs close friends, it's not enough to just have acquaintances, because there's that special intimacy and camaraderie between friends that we all need. So yeah, it's an issue for me as well.