Me [60 M] with my daughter [19 F], she hasn’t had a single friend since middle school and I am starting to get worried

A concerned 60-year-old father shares the story of his 19-year-old daughter, Mia, who has struggled with loneliness since middle school. Despite being intelligent, kind, and trying to put herself out there, Mia hasn’t made any friends and feels excluded in college and at work. Her father is deeply worried about her happiness and future, especially as he ages. Read the full story below.

‘ Me [60 M] with my daughter [19 F], she hasn’t had a single friend since middle school and I am starting to get worried’

I’ll get right to the point: my daughter “Mia” has not made a single friend since middle school, and she is now entering her sophomore year of college. Before you ask, no it is not by choice. but I’ll talk about that later.

“Mia” was very popular in middle school, she went out with friends every other day and attended a lot of parties. Ultimately, it got out of hand. Mia was drinking a lot, and while I drank a little underage, she was out of control. She never did hard drugs, but some of her friends did.

When one of them OD’d, it was a wake up call for Mia and she got her act together. Unfortunately, this meant cutting out all of her former friends, and she entered high school alone.

Now I don’t know what went on in high school, if she was bullied or just ignored, but she came home almost every day because she had to eat lunch and do projects by herself. This broke my heart. Mia is a very sweet girl, but she can come off as shy and perhaps a little odd at times.

She claims she put herself out there a lot, but still, no friends to speak of. No birthday parties, no after school hangouts, no facebook friends. I was convinced that when she entered college things would change, but when we talk, she still cries and says she is alone, and that her coworkers exclude her whenever they go out after work.

I am worried for my daughter. She is very intelligent, pretty, and kind, but obviously something is going wrong here? She has a therapist already but what she needs is a friend and I don’t know what I can do as her father. I am her only family, and I’m getting old now. What happens when I’m gone?

**tl;dr**: My daughter has no friends (I’m not sure why), it is upsetting her but I don’t know what I can do to help

Edit: thank you all for your responses, advice, and kind words. I am reading every comment but I do not have time to reply to all of them.

Here’s what people had to say to OP:

[Reddit User] −  Damn. That’s heartbreaking. The best thing I think you can do for her is to keep encouraging her therapy and joining social activities or even online communities and putting herself out there. And just keep loving her and being a listening ear. She doesn’t have to be the belle of the ball, even one friend can be the One who changes everything, and that could happen at any time.

[Reddit User] −  This is not meant to make your daughter out to be unusual. I have always had some friends, but I am socially awkward and at 19 had a lot of people shun me because I don’t drink. A lot of socializing went on at parties where drugs and alcohol were present.

It is very likely that Mia doesn’t do those things because of what happened to her friends. If she is uncomfortable/unwilling to be part of those groups, then she is going to be excluded from going out with co-workers.

I don’t drink or do drugs. So I went through HS not going to parties because of how things were. It will get better as people age, but 19 to 21 tend to be the “party ages” for a lot of teens. What I did was find friends who agreed with my lifestyle choices.

If she is in college, then she should look for clubs that allow her to meet with people who share her interests (christian groups are sometimes good for this.) She just needs to look for people who share her interests, not expect everyone else to just like her. Which sucks.

bellapaix −  If Mia was popular during her party years, perhaps she didn’t learn how to make/keep friends without the social lubricant of alcohol. As someone else suggested, joining clubs is great for meeting new people.

I also wanted to add that it might help her if she could practice her social skills and connecting with other people in a low pressure situation. Volunteering at a retirement center can be great for this. You meet interesting people who are usually eager to have someone to talk to.

[Reddit User] −  Group hobbies. Suggest that she get involved with some form of group activity that appeals to her. Be it hiking, cycling, chess or underwater basket weaving. She won’t necessarily have interests in common with colleagues, but if she starts a hobby then she has something to talk to the rest of the group about baked in.

paper_paws −  Is it possible that your daughter is on the autistic spectrum? It’s much harder to diagnose in women. You say she is shy but a little bit odd. Pretty and intelligent aren’t always going to be enough to overlook some social inadequacies. The fact that you are a slightly older parent as well increases the chance. She could be depressed or suffering from social anxiety but something about your post made me think autistic or aspergers.

nkbee −  I have a really hard time making friends. I have a handful, now, that are good, close friends…*buuut* they all live on the other side of the country. I was moving for grad school, though, and everybody told me I was so lucky, I’d be surrounded by all of these like-minded people and I’d make tons of friends.. lol.

I ended up using Bumble BFF to try and at least get chatting with a few girls in the area, and I ended up making two friends. One of them I see sporadically because she’s really busy (but I’m seeing her today!). The other one knits once a week with a handful of different girls, and now I’m one of them.

So I know that once a week, I get to see a group of girls, and I’m working on befriending more than just the original girl. It’s hard, though. I have a hard time building up the individual relationships and making them actual friends instead of just my knitting group, but so far it’s going okay.

Is your daughter artsy or craftsy at all? I find those communities of women are usually really awesome/welcoming/inviting and tend to be super friendly and encouraging with new people.

It takes a while of just going to the craft days or whatever before you actually start to form the individual relationships, but it comes with time. Does your daughter have realistic expectations about how relationships are formed?

I don’t really drink, either, and it’s *hard* to pace a relationship when you’re only meeting up sober vs. when you’re all drunk and giggling and spilling stories and doing “exciting” things.

[Reddit User] −  Hello, I’m 23F and diagnosed with Aspergers. I know you said your daughter isn’t an Aspie and you know best, but for what it’s worth we do share two pertinent difficulties: being seen as “odd” and difficulty making friends.

But if she has special interests like obscure music and movies, she can find other oddballs. What is her major? I’ve never made better and truer friends until I became a math major. In the hard sciences lots of people are a bit odd. Chances are they’re even more odd than she is! The point I’m trying to make is that there *are* other oddballs out there and we tend to accept each other.

So maybe you can encourage her to check out these fields and see if she likes anybody there? Not saying she has to go into these fields but it does tend to attract some odd characters so even taking a few classes in math or physics can get her involved in this group.

You say she dresses a little differently. In my department there is a straight guy who wears a skirt and nobody *ever* says anything. It’s totally unimportant to us. That’s how tolerant we are. And most of us have some *really* strange interests that will cause most people to roll their eyes.

Maybe you can also encourage her to look into small liberal arts schools? Even at my LAC I felt a bit isolated but nothing compared to high school. At some LACs like Reed, St. John’s and Carleton, weird is cool. I used to want to be normal. Want normal people to like me. Want what normal people have.

But lately I realized I just don’t care anymore. Again, math and science might not be for her and this totally might not work. But the principle is that she should try to build her circle around people like her- nobody is so strange that no one is like them! And unfortunately that means really looking at yourself and figuring and accepting that you might never fit into the mainstream. I know at 19 I still wanted to fit into the mainstream, so it might just take time.

[Reddit User] −  College can be tough if you don’t drink and party. I suggest that she seek out some hobbies (hobbies, not friends) that appeal to her, find some groups that engage in those hobbies, and keep at them for a good long time. You have to show up regularly, but eventually you can make connections that way.

Possibilities include social dancing, Toastmasters, or young adult groups at churches. My husband and I have done will with our local Unitarian Universalist’s young adult group, because we are not religious and UU allows for that, but the people who are active in a church young adult group of any kind tend to be interested in reaching out, being good people, etc.

Usrname52 −  How does she “put herself out there?”

macimom −  Will she let you talk to her therapist?. Is she painfully shy? Unfortunately a lot of kids her age WAIT for someone else to do the work of starting a friendship-so it just never happens.

Does she do anything besides go to classes-yoga/volunteering/anything? would she be willing to ask one or a few other group members to go for coffee after? She is going to need to start doing this if she wants friends.

Is she in any study groups-ask her group to go out for pizza after an exam. If she is not in a group had her start one-she can ask the people who sit next to her or on a fb page if the class has a fb page.

SO may kids wait for someone else to take th initiative-their reasoning is ‘if they were interested THEY would ask me’ so they are afraid of r**ection if they reach out. Result-a bunch of lonely kids all wishing someone else would see if they want to get coffee

How would you support someone in Mia’s situation? Do you have advice for her father to help her build meaningful connections? Share your insights and encouragement in the comments.