Many of my neighbors are older and have lived in the homes since they were built. Mostly they just gripe that I don't behave the same way as the last guy.

Others are parents around my age who I don't have much common ground with because their kids are their whole lives basically, and I don't have kids and don't want them.

I think there's more to friendship than just proximity.

From someone who has been in a similar situation, drop that attitude before it poisons all of your non-serious relationships with other people. There are more categories than “friends who will drop their life for you” and “everyone else”.

You choose your friends, not your family. So unless you're not discriminating who your friends are, I don't see how it's similar to family at all.

I'm not so sure. My set of friends have been friends for over 35 years. We're as much family as our blood relations, in pretty much every way I can think of.

They're people in my community. I like to be friendly with my neighbors, if not actual friends.

And our families are, cross-culturally, unusually small. I talk to my parents every few weeks. Not so much my aunts and uncles. I have a few cousins who I see every fifth Christmas or so, and anyone more distant than that may as well be unrelated. This seems to be common within American culture, but it leads to weak social networks - unless you go to the right college and can network there.

Blood is certainly thicker than water as they say, for good and for evil. I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach.

This describes my parents' situation perfectly. We are a family of migrants, my parents were very social and had a big network of friends back in their home country. Even since we moved here, they became insular, and never made many long term friends. In fact, they are pretty much alone and not very happy in their older age.

I can't relate.

I treasure friendships, but I disdain familial ties enough that I have no intentions of making a family. Enough bullshit comes flying my way from the familial ties that predate my existence, I don't need nor want more.

When did I ever say this? People are talking about loneliness. I don't know about you but the "We only hang at neighborhood barbecues" makes me feel more lonely not less.

I want to make friends. Real friends, not fluffy workplace style acquaintances where we only talk about superficial stuff over a beer once in a while

I even straight up said. I don't hate my neighbors. We get along fine. They are just also very different than me and it contributes to my feelings of loneliness. I don't think I'm the only one in the world that feels like that

Not many.

>I’m the only one of my siblings who has consistently been on speaking terms with either of my divorced parents.

A large number of people (over 3/4 - perhaps close to 95 %) are dysfunctional or immature in a major way. The are pawns in the game of evolution.

>Even given all I’ve said so far, I hope I can build one someday.

It boils down to numbers really, so good luck. For functional people to bump into each other, it's is an needle in a haystack chance.

Strongly disagree. I've been lonely for long periods of time in small apartments, detached houses, and large farms where your neighbor usually can't be seen. The small apartment situation is the worst. If anything living in a dense crowd makes me feel even more socially hopeless, since they're right there and I can't manage to interact meaningfully with them. TBH I got more social interaction out in the country where people need to depend on each other occasionally and therefore literally stop their in the middle of the dirt roads to chat.

many such cases

While this lifestyle is not for me, i tend to concur on the statement. I personally pick my houses as distant from people as possible. People don’t need people. Sure it gets lonely sometimes but let me ask you if you enjoying the company you have all the time.

People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related

Some people? There is a thin line between cutting out people who step onto you, and becoming misanthropic/associal. Since lockdowns I went from 60 friends to ~4, because I can’t stand them and I’ve come to realize their politics directly harm me. But now I’m alone. Working on this, but it is a very thin line.

I guess some people have all the luck. By the time I graduated:

- my family was across the country

- neighbors have never been really friends

- close friends mostly went to San Fransico. No one was in my town.

- Meetups didn't form any relationships.

If there was no work I'd just be lonely, and not for the lack of trying.

That's the key to happy life. Don't have expectations even towards people close to you. Appreciate good things you get. Ignore bad. If there's too much bad, move. Also seek people who don't expect things from you.

Really? I always know someone a fair bit before they're welcome in my home. I'd invite some of my co-workers here, people I go to clubs with and the like. There are some local community projects that are effectively run from my home, since that's where we have all our meetings. But even then, the idea of picking a random stranger off the street is a bit... no.

When people complain about social isolation, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to interact with their neighbours. It could just mean that they want to be able to interact with people who, they know for sure, share the same hobbies and interests and (in polarized countries) the same political and social views.

One of the supposed upsides of urban modernity is the ability to choose one’s acquaintances at will, which is potentially liberating from the gossip and judgement of small-town and neighbourly communities, especially for sexual or other minorities.