Vector, I don't believe you are as socially clueless as you seem to be convinced that you are. There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity, and I think that at the very worst you'd just be socially ignorant.
Doodabuddy, I've lived with a litany of being called a socially-retarded freak with no sense of humor for most of my life. Personality-less, an icy-cold bitch, whatever. I'm a lot better now, yeah, but I can still remember those times quite clearly. Somehow I expect
yet another person to turn around and say something like "why are you stealing my culture" or "so, what country are you from, anyway?" or the ever-popular "you need to generate a sense of humor."
So yeah, I'm sure as hell glad that I've managed to come off relatively clueful on the forums. I'm still worried--probably unreasonably worried--about those little things people say to make one feel like an eternal outsider. I can't tell if I've made it "inside" yet. I'm "inside" on these forums, and I know how I made it "inside"--but I don't know if the same principles will apply to real life, or if I'll end up playing the eternal foreigner
once again.
Awkwardness is a different horse entirely than Social skills. I'm reasonably eloquent, but I'm shy and awkward as heck in a lot of spoken conversations, especially with people I don't know well. I tend to listen far more than I speak, and when I do speak I like to mull over my words for a bit before saying them, so I can be sure I'm saying exactly what I want to say. At other times, when I'm in rapid-fire conversations, I tend to resort to cliche conversation bits, while organizing my thoughts in the back of my brain. I also tend to be either really serious, or really silly... the only time I end up in the conversational middle-ground is when I don't know/care about a subject, or haven't formed an opinion yet. Also, when under pressure I've been known to repeat myself, or even stammer like an idiot (happened last time I asked someone on a date, and it was an Epic Fail, I must say.)
Try either complete silence or long tirades that switch topic every few sentences, coupled with maniacal laughter and zero eye contact. Not in the cute "looking at your shoulder, glancing at your face, looking back at your shoulder" way. In the "I can't keep my eyes on your eyes so they're going everywhere." It's... how can I explain it? I don't want to argue for "I have horribad interpersonal skills." Sometimes they're pretty good, I think. I hear I'm charismatic, charming, and have a good sense of humor. I learned all these things with a lot of care. I've come a long way from being the little girl who makes friends with trees and ignores her classmates.
I still slip sometimes, though, and that's terrifying. I'll be in the middle of talking to someone, and then I realize that I can't read their facial expression. Maybe I'll notice that I've been rambling in a semi-monotonic mumble for five minutes straight... or perhaps it's three to four hours, all on one subject my conversational "partner" doesn't give a fig about. Maybe I'll find that my mind has suddenly dropped all its information on the person I'm talking to, so that suddenly I'm conversing with a stranger, rather than a friend. Or maybe it'll be one of those strange moments, when I realize that I'm no longer speaking in English. Perhaps it's a flash of insight: "I am walking down the halls wearing a bright yellow jeogori and I don't understand why this is unusual. I have files on hand that explain why it is unusual, but I do not fundamentally understand why there are not other students walking around dressed like me."
It's that sort of thing. I call it social stupidity because it makes me feel stupid.
Also, how can you not know how to be close to anyone? In my experience, it's a two-sided thing resulting from being comfortable and knowledgeable about one another; a matter of knowing someone else, and being able to trust them to speak your mind with, share experiences with, etc.
Yup. Now, to explain how I look at your statements:
It's a two-sided thing - query: initiation of two-sided relationship? How do we do this thing? how do we determine if a relationship is two-sided? how do we rebalance a one-sided relationship? when do we consider the one-sided relationship too one-sided?
resulting from being comfortable - how to detect comfort? how to create comfort? how to resolve discomfort?
and knowledgeable about one another - how to gain knowledge? how to establish knowledge? how to know if other feels knowledgeable?
a matter of knowing someone else - ... okay, how is this done? Where do we rate "knowledgeable?"
and being able to trust them to speak your mind with - similar questioning
share experiences with. - how do we maneuver situations so that shared experiences occur with a potential interesting individual? at which point does the particular mental simulation become accurate enough to consider advancing plans?
etc. - what the hell I don't even
Now, you might be saying "you're making a mountain out of a molehill, Vector!" and you'd be partially right. I know how to do a couple of the above things. I am struggling mightily with them--and if one more person says "just let things happen," I will stab that person with a fork. "Just let things happen" has led to my saying things like "Wait, we're friends? I didn't know!" Then I lose the friend in question, and everything goes bad. Sure, I don't do that anymore (learned my lesson). I do similar things. There's hundreds of questions I have to fill in, bit by bit, sometimes by questioning people and sometimes by my own careful experimentation. It's a slow process, and extremely frustrating.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9720863 times)