As someone who is 48 and could stand to do a bit more of this myself; I find myself alarmed and shocked at the extent to which younger folks appear to have normalized "social fear." I remember being younger in college and me and friends were talking about dating and whatnot, and I'm just like -- look, you'll have a much better time, you just gotta get over your fear of rejection. And I was surprised then to the exten…
I worked through most of my fear of rejection in the 20s and then spent some time giving other people advice about approaching people. My phrase was, "She's already not dating you. What is she going to do, not date you with a vengeance?" The worst has already happened! Just ask.
> The qualifications, the "what have you been up to?"s -- such mind-numbingly boring conventions. Who wants to go through a "catchup" interview before talking about what's interesting If I think about someone, that's exactly what's on my mind and most interesting. What else would you talk about?
Since we're talking about people you used to be closer with — presumably the same kind of stuff you would have talked to them about "back in the day", when you were already continuously aware of what they've been up to because you were up to it alongside them / constantly making plans with them / hearing what they were doing from shared other friends / etc.
I don’t know about y'all but most of the fun of catching up with someone you haven’t seen in a while is to catch up on the stuff that’s new, not the same old things we used to talk about in high school. We’re (hopefully) all progressing in life, wouldn’t you want to hear about that?
That's the secret with kids. The "rules" don't really start, until we get older. I grew up overseas (from where I am now -for some of you, it's probably home). Most of my playmates were drastically different from me.
I've seen videos where adults try to act like children and even there where they're trying really hard they'll get it hilariously wrong. A great example is that little children have no protocol, they won't walk up to someone and say things like hi, how are you, how's the weather, etc. Instead they'll just walk up and either stay mute, or just talk directly about what's currently happening, without any introduction or…
Now I want a college study about middle aged adults going up to people and saying “we’re playing pirates now!”
I've got some sort of facial blindness. It's hard to tell exactly how it works because I've got a bunch of unconscious coping mechanisms for identifying people. One of the times I got it comically wrong was in college where I made a friend for a semester because I thought he was someone I already knew. So I can absolutely believe that attitude and approach makes a huge difference because I've been in at least one sce…
My coping mechanism for interacting with people who approach me is: 1. Act friendly and open when they start talking to me; 2. centre the questions on them, hoping that they reveal information that might clue me in on who they are. It's only in recent years that I've learned step 3: if I haven't recognised them in the first 10-20 seconds, mention that I'm face blind (usually as an apology) and ask them who they are.…
I'm deaf-blind (as in, totally blind with cochlear implants) and a lot of what you're saying reminds me of myself. Any time I encounter someone new, I usually tell them right off the bat that I have major hearing loss, because it's like 95% certain that I'm going to mishear something they say and respond with something that doesn't make sense, and I figure that's the best way to try and avoid confusion. It's much worse if there's even a bit of background noise or echo, and more often than not I can't even tell someone is talking to me unless they go out of their way to get my attention, or we're the only people present. Totally relate to the 'asking questions to figure out who people are' thing, especially now; with the implants it's even harder to distinguish voices than it was with natural hearing. This has caused me to develop crazy social anxiety over the years, and I'm reading this thread with interest. Apologies if you didn't care to read all that, but I find odd social dynamics like ours super fascinating, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of info online about coping, or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.
Commenting to say that I truly admire your attitude. You are the person I wish I was to my friends and hope to be some day again. I used to strive for this kind of approach to relationships but around COVID-19 it seems like I didn't have any gas in the tank left.
COVID emptied a lot of our tanks. Sometimes the fence isn't fear, it's just straight up exhaustion. The tank refills slowly, and you're allowed to be gentle with yourself. Sometimes it just starts with noticing when you think of someone, no pressure to act.
I'm autistic, and what you describe doing sounds impossible to me. I live in constant fear of inconveniencing others. I personally find it inconvenient when someone outside my close circle wants my time. It's expensive for me to perform socialness, so I tend to assume it's not free for others as well and avoid placing that burden on them.
Why not just start making conscious decisions? Like "Here's my path to statistical victory/social success/meeting needs. Chances are, it'll be in some small degree inconvenient for others, it'll be rude to them, it'll make them angry, and it'll put a burden on them. Will it worth my chances on victory/social success/meeting needs?"
That's how I do it, but my needs socially are mostly already met, so the incremental gain for being outgoing serves no practical need, but has some notional risk and cost.
I'm autistic, and what you describe doing sounds impossible to me. I live in constant fear of inconveniencing others. I personally find it inconvenient when someone outside my close circle wants my time. It's expensive for me to perform socialness, so I tend to assume it's not free for others as well and avoid placing that burden on them.
I learned from my therapist to stop trying to change my behavior based on how I predict other people will feel. If someone has expressed a clear boundary that is one thing, but otherwise I will not assume “I texted too much already I don’t want to bother them” or “I shouldn’t say the thing that’s on my mind they probably don’t want to hear it.” I still need to keep track of when I am genuinely talking too much around…
I learned to do this a few years ago and it is easily one of the most freeing things I’ve ever done. Funny thing is, before I had thought of myself as someone who was just really empathetic and justified my behavior as being concerned about the well-being of others. But now it’s clearer to me that I wasn’t actually paying attention to how others actually felt but was mostly making a ton of assumptions in efforts to avoid my own discomfort.
I'd be deeply annoyed if someone I haven't seen or talked to in years did that to me. Like dude... if I was important to me you'd have talked to me long ago. I am obviously not - that's totally fine. Then at least start with some minor small talk pleasantries before you get to what you actually want.
Would you say that, or would you play along? Would you hold your "deep annoyance" as a permanent grudge? If you'd play along and not hold the grudge indefinitely then from their perspective you'd appear just like the (in my opinion more reasonable) friends who appreciated it, and so it's probably better to assume that situation.
I forgive everyone once by default
but if I won't hear from him again for years and all of a sudden he texts me without any care then yea I'd hold that grudge and try to get him out of my life
I was gonna make a broader point about survivorship bias and how sometimes the fence is indeed on and trying again and again will just end up with you being charred, but it was perhaps a bit too negative sounding.
The example of reaching out to people will seldom go all that badly (though sometimes people aren’t who you think they are and you will have to block them), but there are definitely decisions in life that shouldn’t be made lightly.
This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
> The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I write to everyone as if we are best buddies who just had lunch last week. People I've known since the age of 4, to people I've known for four days. [...] If you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly. This can't be serious? My messages to my '…
I suspect not literally this, but the point is one doesn't need to treat reaching out to an old friend with overtures and formalities. Probably you need a bit more context if you haven't seen them in years, but you don't have to make a big deal out of it (e.g. the 'oh I know it's been a while...').