A lot of it is down to your own personality and how you handle other people. A friendly smile and obvious willingness to communicate with people can only act as encouragement to them. If they don?t respond to that then perhaps they just aren?t interested and are better left alone, but there will be plenty of others that are interested. If you skulk around in dark corners you?re going to be overlooked, so if it?s new friends you want, the best way is to go out and mingle with potential ?candidates?. It would keep the whole thing on a lighter note if you first set out purely to get to know people and embrace them more as acquaintances rather than grabbing onto them desperately as your new best friends.

People take time to take the next step up from being an acquaintance to being a friend, so let them have some space to consider whether they want to take that step. If you?re a genuinely nice person and let it show, people will be attracted to you whether you have a disability or not. There will always be some who don?t want to know but, as you say Tottefan, it will be the same wherever you are. If you have to start looking for new friends I?d say, from what I?ve experienced down under, NZ is a great place to begin looking. I don?t get the impression that they would look down on you as a lesser person and, if you can be honest with them in explaining in a lighthearted way that you sometimes have problems mixing socially, at least they know what they?re dealing with and it?s not just you being difficult. True friends will see through your difficulties and accept you as one of their own.

Dlmckay, hi and welcome to our happy band. [img:979e5057d6]http://www.invision.smileyville.net/smilies/greets%20(15).gif[/img:979e5057d6]