Oh, I think you're allowed to hijack your own post, think of it as a work in progress
Lemmee tellya about the power of pretending. During the worst of my divorce, I was desperately trying to re-train myself to socialize... for the first time since I was about 8. I was 37 at that time. At the time I was really, really introverted. I like people, I'm not totally antisocial, but I find interacting with live human beings to be pretty exhausting... and on top of that I was at the personal low point of my adult life to date due to the end of my marriage.
I had absolutely nothing to offer anyone as a friend.
However, did the rest of the world know that? No, they did not. I joined online social groups and forced myself to go places and do things that I would have been too intimidated to do until then. There is a great freedom that comes when the worst thing has happened... you're at liberty not to be scared anymore. I'm a dreadful dancer and I was clueless about making conversation at the time, so signed up for dinners and dances and I pretended to be a happy, outgoing person for a couple of hours. What difference did it make if I looked foolish on the dance floor? My husband was having a relationship with someone else, and a little embarrassment about a dumb dance wasn't going to hurt me much after that.
Amazingly, this experiment worked beyond all my expectations. I ended up with a circle of friends, and even a boyfriend. I started all this in about October of 2005. I made six New Year's resolutions regarding my social life for 2006, and by April I'd kept five of them. I still have a solitary streak but I did substantially change the way I view myself, and I repaired a serious problem in my life (lack of social support) by pretending to be something I wasn't, but wanted to be.