I met my very first writing buddy at my previous job about 7-8 years ago. We worked across from each other and as we started to get to know each other, we learned we had both dabbled in writing but never finish a full draft. We vowed to help push each other to get to "The End" and with the help of a bunch of fun writing challenges we both finished our very first novels within a year. He was a great writing buddy, even though neither of us had any writing knowledge or experience, but we learned a lot together. Sadly, he left the company we were at and took a position somewhere else with a lot more responsibilities and stopped writing all together. I tried to stay in contact with him, but as time went on, that contact became less and less and it's been a couple of years now since I talked to him.
I didn't have a true writing buddy for quite a while after him. I put writing on hold for a couple of years and when I jumped back in, I started going to writing conferences and became more active on this forum and on Critters. I met my current writing buddy through Critters last year after she critiqued my pages and we continued to talk and learned we lived about 15 minutes away from each other.
Never give up on finding a good writing buddy! During the years between my first buddy and my current one, I tried to connect with a lot of other authors, either at conferences or through the interwebs. While I have nothing against any of those authors, our personalities just didn't meld well together. Keep reaching out to people and connecting with other authors and someday you'll find someone that you connect with. My suggestion is to start by seeking beta readers or offering to beta for someone else. Start slow, with swapping the first chapter or so and see where it goes from there. You'll probably find a lot of authors that don't seem like the right fit, and that's perfectly okay, but eventually you'll find someone you get along with really well.