Struggling with finding friends. Please help! (Religious orthodox)

Hello,

So I’ve always had trouble with making and finding friends. Throughout school, and now. I’m 20, and I pretty much don’t talk to anyone from high school, or anyone really. I go to work, come home, use my computer until late at night, rinse and repeat. Weekends are just full days of being on my computer. Been that way for many years.

In high school, for whatever reason I just never felt I made a close friend that I could feel was a friend back. If I felt I had a friend, I was still always the one reaching out, which was hard in itself due to being shy in these situations. And they never were the ones to reach out to me.

And it’s been that way all this time since high school. I tried to call 1 or 2 friends that I felt was a friend, but they don’t offer up anything in terms of making plans to do anything, or they say they’re busy. It just leaves me to either get stalkative and keep reaching out and not take the hint, which is a feeling that I hate. And I’m not gonna do.

Anyway, I do want to move past high school friends and start over. But I simply never found people who just understood me for who I am, was interested in my hobbies and interests, etc. to be close friends with.

I’m quite a unique person (at least in this community). I love computers, gaming, board and TCG card games (which I can’t play with friends because I don’t have any!), I would probably like DnD and all that. I like talking to random people online in Discord etc. I’m not scared to try any weird and wacky hobby. I’ve tried so many. But I just don’t have friends to do any of them with, so I can never enjoy the social ones. I like collecting toys and cards, and other collectible items, yada yada. But I have no one to share that with.

The thing is, no one in my community that I came across is anywhere near interested in the things I’m interested in.

The times that I have met people, such as in high school, where some kids liked video games too, it still just never worked out. They were way more casual about it. They played on Xbox, and I didn’t have one, I had a PC. They wouldn’t consider anything other than call of duty, or Fortnite when that came out. Me, I enjoyed playing any type of game really. But no one in high school was going to be interested in the “new game I tried last night”. It wasn’t a hobby for any of them, it was more of something they did with their friends when they came over to each other’s houses or whatever, or as a quick pastime.

I just feel very alone. As a kippah wearing Jew it’s going to be real difficult to make non Jewish friends, which I guess I’m not against at this point, but it looks to be an even harder ladder to climb anyway, however being easier to find and meet them.

People I can meet in my community, say if I go to a class or something in our shul, which has classes all the time, I know wouldn’t be interested in these hobbies and interests. There’s just a stereotype you end up with if you have these kinds of interests, and apparently I’m the only person who could care less about ending up in this stereotype. That’s what happened in high school. I’m not even in the “weird crowd”, I’m way past that in my own corner with no one else in it! Everyone else talks down to the idea of loving video games or to respect the concept of something unique like DnD, or any other internet culture hobbies and interests. They’d make fun of me and think of me as a weirdo. I can’t even bring up these other hobbies or interests because any chance of making that potential friend I’m talking to is over. It sucks.

I just don’t have the hobbies and interests of the people around me. Whether it’s going to the gym, or learning in a class (which I’m just not interested doing right now, but if it’s a last resort I might just go eventually so I can actually meet some new people and see some old ones as well), or going to parties and raves, smoking vapes, and any of that “cool kid” hobbies, etc. I don’t like any of these hobbies personally, so I don’t meet anyone at any of these locations or to start a conversation with someone.

Again, I just feel alone. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to meet other people in my community that would love to share the hobbies and interests that I have, and/or to partake in any of them.

From what I can see, the only answer to just make a friend in general is to go to a class. That’s the only thing people my age do that’s open to everybody to join as far as I know. But again I’d probably not meet anyone with my interests. I don’t know where to go to meet people who’d respect my interests and would share in them as well.

I thought I’d just share this here to see if anyone has any ideas about what I can do. Right now I’m just very alone and I really want to have real friends for once. Appreciate any responses and thanks for reading. Let me know if you have any questions I’ll do my best to answer 🙂