“I joined my workplace just over a year ago, but my colleagues still don’t seem to have warmed to me. Beyond pleasantries and good mornings, I feel like they never start conversations with me or include me in their chats. Going to the pub after work with them is even awkward, so I’ve started making excuses to skip out. How do I make better friends with the people I work with?”

I remember feeling exactly like this in one of my first jobs. I joined an office that was extremely tight-knit and sociable. Everyone seemed to connect on a level that somehow felt excluding to me. I loved my job, though, so decided to stick with it. I had plenty of friends elsewhere and chose not to over-focus on being a bit of a loner in the office. Fast forward 18 months after my arrival and everything had changed – especially me. I found myself now socialising with everyone at work and loving my job even more than before.

So what had really happened to cause this difference? I realise now that I was the one putting up all the barriers. If I’m honest, I was slightly judgmental of the communal banter and felt like my colleagues weren’t really ‘my people’. So I decided just to work politely with everyone without making any effort to let my true personality shine. I basically hid and blamed others for not seeing me. Shortly afterwards, a few more new arrivals joined the team and I found myself reaching out to them quite naturally. I suppose I felt more comfortable joining up with the other newbies. This allowed everyone to see the warmer, friendlier side of my nature and, predictably, I was soon the one leading the office socials.

I feel a little embarrassed looking back at this period at my awkward self. And I suspect you are behaving a little bit like I did back then. You sound as though you are not making much effort at getting to know your workmates. How often do you start conversations rather than waiting on others to include you in theirs? Ditto on evenings out: do you join in rather than passively waiting for someone to make a move in your direction? It’s possible that far from excluding you, your teammates are respecting your privacy. Or they might even be finding you a little stand-offish. They’re probably hoping you’ll join in with their chat but don’t want to force it.

You haven’t given me any reason to think your workplace is malicious or toxic. I suspect everyone is waiting patiently for you to become more relaxed around them. I know it’s easy to feel victimised in this situation, as that’s how I used to justify my own loneliness. Learning from my mistakes, I would recommend you try to start trusting your colleagues. Focus at first on one or two people instead of worrying about the entire office. Choose the ones you think you have most in common with where a casual chat will feel most natural. Your conversations don’t have to be profound – anything from celebrity gossip to your weekend plans will do the trick.

In summary, you need to decide if you’re going to regard your workmates as an unapproachable clique or, instead, bite the bullet and make more of an effort. I would be very surprised if everyone turns out to be as unfriendly as you fear. You just have to be a bit braver and start reaching out, one person at a time.

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