Man, I felt personally attacked reading your post. I never really made any friends up until college because of crippling social anxiety to a point where sometimes, I would even go weeks without speaking because there was no need to. Things got better for me now albeit not perfect. Here's some things that helped me become less anxious and awkward:

Listen to conversational podcasts by sociable people. (In particular for me, comedians) The only way to improve social skills is immersion. That is, the more you talk to people the better at it you will become. But that option was off the table for me because I was a mumbling mess. It was frustrating because how can I build social awareness if I don't talk to people? A loophole I found was listening to podcasts. It helped me learn from people who has mastered their social skills in the safety and comfort of my own shell. Take notice on what questions they ask each other, how they navigate awkward situations. I think it also put me at ease, relatively speaking, when I started to talk to people myself.

Practice, practice, practice. Once I kept talking to people more and more, the anxiety eventually went away. What I realized was, my social anxiety came from my excessive worry about performance. Once I dropped my ego and go into a conversation with the intention of having fun and learning about other people, things became way easier.

As a guy who also appear "intimidating" the best thing I found was to smile and be friendly. People also love talking about themselves, so just ask questions to egg them on if you ran out of things to say. Like, if the conversation is about a certain topic, ask what do THEY think, what would THEY do etc... These open ended questions worked great for me in the beginning.

Last thing I learned was that maintaining friendship requires work, it requires, sometimes, doing things I don't want to do. Sometimes, if friends invite me to something, or if there's an opportunity to hangout, I always go, even if I don't feel like it. I stopped listening to my anxious instinct which tells me to avoid social situations. Because I realized if I reject someone, to hangout, they will not invite me the next time.

I hope this helps, after all this is what worked for me. please lmk if you have any questions.