Route

"Fishing with nets," as Siv notes, is useless crap. It is quite logical that it doesn't yield any results.
I don't know how it is for most people, but in my opinion, it all starts with ordinary friendship and a desire to communicate, which is reinforced by a natural attraction to each other (I doubt the likelihood of attraction to a person whose appearance is, to put it mildly, repulsive). Otherwise, people are simply interested in communicating with each other; they should be united by some interests, and only then does it gradually turn into flirting and everything that follows.

If life is an expansion pack, then you probably can't complete your quest and are stuck in a port, where you work as prostitutes, carpenters, and alchemist assistants.