There's an important distinction here between the concepts of "wanting to" and "knowing how to" and how they impact someone's decision to attempt something. For example, your car may break down and you may ultimately decide to have it towed to a garage and repaired by a mechanic even though you may very badly "want to" repair it yourself. You make that decision because you understand that you do not "know how to" fix it yourself. The outcome of that scenario can be very different based on the degree to which you want to or know how to approach it.

Similarly, someone who decides to avoid a one on one interaction with someone may very badly want to make a connection with someone else but they decide not to because they don't know how to appropriately handle such a situation. This may not be entirely anxiety driven since many people will have repeatedly attempted one on one connections and failed badly, leading them to believe perhaps rightly that they don't know how to and so they must lean on some other device such as socializing only in group settings where they can build off of others' social skills.

I'm not saying it's impossible for anyone to learn how to successfully connect one on one with others, I'm just asking that you not assume that everyone has the same learned skills and knowledge that you do.