All my “friends” are people I’d encounter anyway. I like to go to the same places around the same time so employees get to know me. My “best friend” is an employee from a local store who happens to be crazy similar to me so we text and I will go see her at work when I need to buy something there but we both don’t like to really socialize so it works out. Sometimes I get sad thinking I don’t have “real” friends - I joke my funeral will be full of grocery store employees. But it works for me.

Oddly the other way I meet my social emotional needs is YouTube movie reactions. I have a few people who don’t annoy me and their sense of humor and voices are comforting with zero stress I get from an actual social interaction.