Boyfriend is upset over lack of physical friends

[Butter]

My boyfriend, as dear as he may be, has never been very popular or well liked around school. Beyond that, he never really saw anyone as "friend material." The people who liked the same things he did were very annoying and embarrassing, and everyone else either didn't have common interests or wasn't a very friendly person. I'm really his only friend, which he admits.

A few years back, he made friends with a bunch of Canadians who had grown up together. They're all very close, but my boyfriend is the only one who doesn't live within 15 minutes of eachother. He loves them dearly.

Despite this though, he feels like an outsider. They regularly get together to drink and screw around, and he never thought much Of it until he went up and was able to participate.

He feels like he's never been granted "true friends" and is incredible depressed at the thought of going back to a solely Internet based relationship with them.

I knew this conversation had been coming, but he caught me off guard. Is there any advice as to what I can say to him to help him cope? We plan to move to Canada for unrelated reasons but that won't happen for 6 years at least.