Great explanation on why we should simply treat loneliness like a symptom of being hungry. As you form healthier habits in general around socializing, the person becomes more whole and in doing so you grant yourself additional opportunities to meet people, engage in conversation, and increase the probability of friendships and relationships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA
The other thought process I've been subscribing to lately is the idea that you have to actually become the kind of person that "can socialize" or that "can be friendly" before you suddenly find yourself in: a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a solid social network. None of these things come over night and they certainly don't come easy for people who are stricken with the habit of isolation. Once you make decisions and form actual habits around trying to be friendly to other people:
- put yourself in a situation where you have the opportunity at all to socialize (a store, a coffeeshop, a restaurant, a club, a meetup). Socializing doesn't mean you have to be friends with the person, it seems to be about just being the kind of person who is even able at all to be friendly
- make an observation (the weather, the environment around you, the place you're at, something someone is wearing, a pin, a shoe, an outfit, a drink, a dog... whatever - just make any observation at all and comment on it)
- listen (observe how the other person make the same or differing observations; listen to any other observation other people make, internalize and actually listen - don't be thinking of the next thing to say after they are done talking. Listen so you can understand them in some way and what they are actually saying)
- ask questions (if you discovered something work asking, or maybe the observation involved a question like "where did you get those cool shoes?" "what do you recommend here?" "what is your favorite item?" "can you help explain something to me?"). It's great to ask questions that involve help because it invites the other person into a social situation where you can trust them to give you advice or knowledge. People try this with neighbors for instance, such as borrowing a tool or something like this.
- receive feedback, or give feedback based on the questions
- it is usually the case that questions lead to other questions, you can develop a conversation from here most of the time
- repeat observation, listen, ask questions, feedback, communicate something you enjoy/relevant to conversation
Once you've internalize a process for being friendly and you take action to actually make it a habit, you become the kind of person that can be friendly. It doesn't actually matter if you don't necessarily know whether you will want to be friends with a person, it's that you are showing yourself that you can be friendly. Most importantly, you are practicing and making it a habit.
Once it is a habit, it becomes natural. Being friendly turns into developing actual friendships and opening yourself up to the world to trying new experiences. Some of those experiences may lead to forming friendships and those friendships may end up being relationships.
It also seems to me that you must understand that social networks are precisely that. you don't know whether one person might invite you to something where you meet another person. The same is true the other way around, inviting a neighbor, or other people over creates the possibility that you might extend, reinforce or cause you to re-evaluate your social network. By allowing yourself the time to be uncomfortable with this sort of unpredictability you can avoid remaining stagnant.