Get out, make some new friends and move ahead with your life

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My lifelong friend and I had a falling out. We're both girls in our mid-20s. Through the years, I've been the best, most supportive and reliable friend this girl ever had. She was bisexual, now admits to being a lesbian, and has found some lesbians to date. I was happy for her! She was my only close friend, but now I get the impression she has a new circle of friends, and I don't fit in. It's pathetic how she'd been treating me before the fight. She told me she'd hang out with me on a Friday, but when I told her I was on my way, she said she wasn't at home. We played phone tag until 11 p.m. I showed up at her apartment upset and told her I want things I'd lent to her back. To her surprise, I said, "No, I can't stay and drink, it has gotten too late to hang out." Angrily, she said she wouldn't have left her other friends, had she known I didn't want to hang out. "And thanks a lot, I should have known you would do this to me, you're a real unreliable friend." What a low blow! There must be genuine women out there who'd be happy to have me as a friend. I'm sick of feeling lonely for a female social life with real and genuine girlfriends. -- Old Friend, Winnipeg

Dear Old Friend: The only reason you're obsessing over this friendship, which is way past its due date, is you don't have other girlfriends, or a boyfriend. My wise Aunt Isobel lived to 100 -- and she taught me something invaluable: You must consciously keep on making friends every year of your life. Take on new people, be friendly, get to know then, invite them to your house for dinner and out for activities. So dub Spring 2012 your first of many friend-making campaigns. Join a sport like Ultimate Frisbee, full of people your age of both sexes and very social. Call Habitat for Humanity and see if you can get involved. Invite people from work or your classes to go for a coffee or a bite to eat after class. Have a dinner party at your house. Call your cousins, brothers and sisters for Sunday dinners. Join artsy classes or a running club, learn to kayak, windsurf -- just get out there and keep adding new friends. Then have a party and introduce everybody to each other, and do everyone a favour.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I met a young guy when I was out drinking one night, took him home and "had my way with him." Now I can't get rid of him. He's in love, or so he tells me. He says it was "love at first sight." I just laugh at him. He phones me every day, and we talk for hours. I don't have anybody right now, so I chat, but I never accept his offers to go out. What would you do to get rid of him? I can't find the words. -- Too Kind For My Own Good, St. James

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I just ran into the short-haired girl I was crazy in love with back in high school. She wore all black clothes, kind of looked like a guy, but used dark lipstick and dyed her hair different weird colours. She always looked like a scary, powerful woman and she loved to tease me, because I was shy back then.

She was standing there in the sun, and I liked her new look — blue-black hair, dressed in a black suit, hot-looking and powerful as ever! But after we started talking, she suggested we go catch up over a drink and lunch.

After eating and drinking a lot on my tab, she was a bit tipsy and confessed she already has a boyfriend she quite likes, because he doesn’t bow down to her.

To get even, I told her I had a girlfriend, “but that could change.” Then I paid the tab. She finally liked something about me!