Social Idiot Here

[RussH]

@Chava did you consider that she may not have accepted your friend request because she has her own issues, and it has nothing to do with whether she likes you or not?

 

[Chava]

p.s. hope that didn't come across as a slam on clerks (I've been one too)...it's more that I am extra awkward around friendly people who instigate chit chat when I'm pretty sure I feel unapproachable but am confused I'm not coming across that way. This one guy started asking me about my day, then my job. It was simply too much for me...too much weird pressure. I don't want to come across as unapproachable, and yet I do...because I still don't know how to handle what happens if I'm approachable.

I'm good with things like holding doors and being friendly, saying thank you and stuff, but I like the challenge of maybe even trying for eye contact in some anonymous place...like a coffee shop I probably won't get to again for a few months, or ever (thanks @scout86 ) . Then see if I combust if I look at someone.

I have a couple colleagues I'm good at checking in with and also supporting with their stuff, even when we have loads of work stress. I can chat and make eye contact. The relationships are established. But these kinds of relationships are much easier for me. I don't expect to have good friendships. Very old patterns that I'm only recognizing since I'm not distracting myself with self-destruction-survival cycles all the time, or over-working. In my family I was always busy with projects, staying out of trouble and also just distracting myself from how bad I felt around my family. Even as a kid friendly people felt unreal to me. If anything, I am drawn towards people I cannot have relationships with. So, just thoroughly confused right now, trying to at least not make confusing gestures in my weak attempts out of this.

 

[Dana1010]

If you challenged me to find someone within a week to elope with or, within the same week, go out and make one platonic friend, I'd accept the former. I literally don't know what friendship is. Sexual relationships are much easier to grasp because it's tit for tat--you're both getting sex from someone you're attracted to; I don't know what you're exchanging in a friendship. From my vantage point, it looks like some kind of public image boost or pooling of social capital? It seems unnatural and strained and not worth the effort.

I recognize I can't deal with new people right now. I'm just bizarre around new people and probably come across as 150% neurotic or schizoid

For me it's the questions. Everything about my past is so bizarre and embarrassing, I start to sweat perceptibly when the phrase, "get to know each other" is uttered. I have to make up a whole fake life story, and I don't have the patience for it anymore; I'm ready to snap as soon as they start with it.

 

[scout86]

I have to make up a whole fake life story,

What you exchange in a friendship is the ability to not do THAT. Your friends are the people who know who you really are and chose to like you anyway.

 

[Dana1010]

Your friends are the people who know who you really are and chose to like you anyway.

I guess that's why I don't have any. I wouldn't be acceptable to anyone without a boatload of lies to make me palatable.

 

[scout86]

@Dana1010 , have you considered that you might actually be wrong about that? Even Adolf Hitler had friends, of a sort. It's hard to imagine that you're truly the worst person in the known universe.

 

[Dana1010]

@scout86, Lots of immoral people have large adoring social circles around them. Shady Wall Street bankers and criminal attorneys, for example. Because they have power, influence, wealth; they come from prominent families and went to prestigious schools. They have social capital. It's when you don't have any social capital that people start turning their nose up at you.

 

[Chava]

For me it's the questions. Everything about my past is so bizarre and embarrassing

This will always be the case for me too. I do feel quite a bit safer with AA people (thank god I'm an alcoholic, I guess :eek:). Not much is too bizarre for most of them. It's not a big deal to tell them about your suicide attempt or stay in the psych ward. It helps so much to have a few people who can at least know this stuff about me. We just don't hang out and I never talk to any of them between meetings.

Ditto @scout86 ....about not having to make up a fake life story. I rarely feel like I have a good friend I can count on. Or a group of buddies. I'm a real loner and social idiot. It has taken me YEARS to warm up to a couple people from work. They know I have panic attacks and am a recovered alcoholic and have recovered from anorexia. They don't know many more details. But it's good enough they know I'm not perfect. It's been helpful for me to learn that it's not a black-and-white thing like they have to accept all of this right away. It's a really slow process of trusting people and deciding what to share. Like I said, AA is easy, and I'm not sure if there is a similar place for you to at least be yourself. That feels very helpful. For me, it's the part about reaching out to anyone between meetings...coffee, walking, just being "friends"...meh, super awkward. Even those who accept me as a little messed up, because they are too, probably don't need anything from me....so for me it's not so much about my history as my inability to connect easily or do the process of friendship thing. In my family I felt more alone around others because I was so busy trying to disappear or be a non-self. I'm not sure how I break out of that or change.

As for intimate relationships, I have to say the sharing stuff is extra complicated....because I warm up to people SO SLOWLY. Yes, much easier to have sex with them first. But then I manage to distance myself because it feels like I'm pushed into being close...like a guy actually wanting to know more about me. I met a guy I really liked and tried to take it my speed...lunch dates for like three years. :O_o::banghead: Of course that turned into nothing and he moved because he found a better job and I was like, "congratulations" (okay, have a nice life). Then when he was gone I realized how many feelings I had and how much I missed him. But I never really even let him know I liked him. :oops::cry::notworthy: Probably I was afraid I'd lose him as a "friend" who could meet me for lunch.

So I'm stuck somewhere between sex on the first date and lunch dates for years. I don't know how to do anything in between. The lunch dates forever was actually my improvement. But it's really just the zero boundaries or impossible boundaries thing. :shifty::cry:

 

[anonymous]

Damn, I'd take the marriage/elope challenge, too! I don't know how to make friends.....(The internet doesn't count.)

 

[scout86]

Lots of immoral people have large adoring social circles around them.

"Large adoring social circles" usually are not composed of true friends. People who hang out with people just to associate themselves with power aren't what I mean by friends either.

My ex-husband, right after I filed for divorce, said that he hoped we could stay friends. I told him I'd come to realize we never had been friends and that was the real problem. Later, I was telling this story to a REAL friend. I said I wasn't sure how my ex defined friendship. My REAL friend blurted out, "You'd take a bullet for a friend!" Exactly. Except that you'd probably have a major argument first about who got to take the bullet and then the one who didn't would feel bad afterwards. Friendship is about getting, but it's also about giving. And it's about valuing the person for who and what they are, as well as accepting the parts you maybe don't get.

It's actually when you DON'T have any social capital that you find out who your real friends are. "Friends" you can buy are, well, not really friends.

 

[Changing4Best]

I don't always accept friend requests and also, I sometimes cut friends off my friends lists when I find myself spending too much time online. It is nothing personal, I just need to do this sometimes. When I don't hear from a person for awhile, or when I am no longer active in the group we both belonged to at one point, I don't see any point in staying in touch with them. One time I found that I had over 400 FB friends, half of them at least were from the state I used to live in that I have moved away from. I cut about 200 of them off my list, only keeping those that I live near. That way, I was only reading online for about an hour. Otherwise, it was taking me 3 hours per day! That is too much for me to deal with. These are my preferences. Others will have different ones.

 

[shell]

I am socially inept, I deleted my face book account, as I found I would keep getting triggered by news feeds, from people that were from my childhood.

As for having real friends, I only have two I see on a regular basis any more, and we only catch up every couple of months, and one who lives in another state, who I talk to on the phone. While I know I should try to change that, socializing is too much like hard work. Every now and again I challenge my thinking and force myself to go to events I would normally decline, but it is such an effort, and I just don't have anything to say.

I am even cancelling Christmas this year, so I don't have to face the couple of relatives I do see, because they love to talk about my abusers.

If it wasn't for my husband, I would be a hermit, and I wouldn't be sad about it.