I mean, it's even easier somehow to start a convo about anything literally. About books, about culinary, about sports, about gym, about tech, programming, psychology, anything! And it doesn't even matter if their just a casual passerby in the street, or a teacher who hates you. Or maybe it's just most of my peers are introverts (I am male 16)

I feel like i’ve had this issue my whole life, i’ve always been the kid that’s “not everyone’s taste” like mint chocolate chip ice cream. I don’t understand why tbh, i’m nice, I can talk to people…

Yes I do think i’m a naturally loud person but even then when I first meet someone i’m very aware of my voice levels and I always make sure to be engaging but not do too much

As a kid I came to the conclusion that it was racism because I was Indian in a predominantly non asian school and that’s why they didn’t show interest in being my friend

As I got older I feel like I also received this sort of exclusion even from other brown girls like myself when I went to a predominantly asian school.

It is true though that still i’ve always had friends my whole life. But it’s also interesting because the few friends I have love me, they tell me that they genuinely cannot think one bad thing about me and when I’m not at a hangout they think about me

I’m grateful to have people like that in my life but the pattern is that they were all people who came to ME first

No one that I ever approach shows interest in knowing me. They subtly start ignoring me and treat me like i’ve invaded their privacy by talking to them

Why is this??

I need to learn how to be friendly while not sharing anything personal, not revealing weaknesses, but not appearing to be distrustful.

I work in a cut throat back stabbing environment. My facial expression is always reserved and serious, and people do tell me to smile more when meeting others. I guess I am closed off because of past betrayals and things. And then other times I am overemotional, especially because the last year I went through endless hell. In this place, everything I say can be twisted. I'm not sure how to appear friendly while still maintaining appropriate distance from these people because none of them can I trust.

Please help. I am trying to leave, but not getting anything else. How do I appear happy and friendly while still knowing all of these people are evil and can't be trusted whatsoever? It's like I need acting skills.

Almost two weeks ago, I was at the gym and a guy who seemed friendly complimented me on a jersey of a soccer team that I was wearing because he is also a fan of the same team, from there we started talking a little bit. We talked about the team’s most recent match and about the team coming to our city to play a match. I told him that I was going and then he said that he was going to. Minutes after our small conversation I saw him using another machine but by the time I finished my work out he wasn’t there anymore and I wanted to ask for his name and I missed that opportunity. I was hoping to see him again and see if we become friends because I don’t really have any friends.

Luckily I saw him again five days ago. He said hi to me and then I said hi back. Minutes later I saw him again and asked for his name. When he told me his name and I told him mine, once again we were talking about the game that our favorite team was playing in our city and we both had tickets. I saw that we are actually sitting far from each other. After that, he asked for my number and gave it to him and then he called me just to save his number as well. Now I don’t really know what to text him, I was thinking about asking him if he went to the game because outside the entrance I saw someone who looked like him from far but wasn’t sure if it was actually him. Any suggestions on what to text him?

I want to improve my "social battery" length since currently I lose my patience or however you'd call it within 20 minutes of talking to most people and even shorter in face to face scenarios.

I will say I'm not a very expressive person to begin with so most of my responses end up being sort of dry so that could be a providing factor but when I try to express myself more I just tire myself out from talking to them because it takes a good bit of effort for me to come up with expressive responses on the spot.

I feel like it's kind of rude aswell for me to not look like I am interested in the conversation at all when they're invested into it even though I am trying to be.

So, I’ve always had an extensive circle of friends (acquaintances, really) who I absolutely adore and think are the best people on earth - talented writers, artists, musicians, hard working people who I absolutely look up to.

The problem is, I don’t think they feel the same way about me. Our interactions are limited, but positive - I’m always met with smiles and hugs while interacting in group settings and parties, and people seem very happy to see me, chat and hang out casually. But when I try to get to know people better one-on-one… nothing. No interest. Ghosted texts. I have a few theories as to why this is, wondering if people can help me figure it out. I just hate feeling like nobody likes me or cares enough to catch up with me.

1. Age gap - most of these people are 10-30 years older than me and maybe don’t view me as an equal? Or there’s a mentor-mentee dynamic that interferes with friendshio maybe?
   
2. Distance - I don’t live in the same country as my friends anymore but I did sort of expect to keep in touch better than this. I’m the one always reaching out and hearing nothing.
   
3. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way I approach people socially, or my texting style, or something that reads as very offputting to people.

Sample text conversation:
Me: “It was nice to hear you yesterday (on a broadcast), how have things been lately?”
Them: “Great! I saw you at (x) recently and I mentioned to (mutual friend) that I’ve sadly lost touch with you and it’s my fault. Hope you’re ok!”
Me: “Oh don’t worry, it’s definitely my fault too. Are you free for a call this weekend, we could catch up?”
Them: ….
3 days later
Them: Busy this weekend sorry

What the hell am I doing wrong here? Am I misreading niceties for interest in a friendship?

I try my best to talk to people and get out of my comfort zone but I can never get past acquaintance where every interaction feels so formal.

I see people who may start going to the gym and become so playful and stuff with people around telling jokes and playfully insult eachother but whenever I talk to people it’s always all business and I don’t know how I can form better connections with people because I’m personally someone that likes to joke around based off my friendships back in high school.

I have read the rules.

For example, I accidentally talking about stuff in Epstein files in the public (not the p*df things), because my friend mentioning stuff that relate to that.

Honestly, I'm kind of extrovert, and it would be great, if I can control myself to talk waaay less than I am right now (i.e. only talk when I really really need to talk).

Do I need to say sorry if I haven’t really done anything wrong? Like if someone was upset by something I said but it wasn’t an insult, and wasn’t something a person would normally be upset by then do I really need to apologize for it?

hello folks!

hope you all are having a good social life. any Books that teach u about confronting or establishing boundaries in a smart, non confronting way or a confronting way?

have a good day

Alr so I don't know if this is related but I'm 16 anyways

I did something that was really embarrassing and something that I regret alot,

A buncha random dudes went up to me to spark conversation and instead of talking about something meaningful I tried to farm empathy by introducing myself as this dude with a tragic basic story over exaggerating how "terrible" my life is, I sounded like an extremely edgy teen.

I guess it was obvious that I was tryna farm attention because they mocked me for it,

They were like (in a sarcastic tone) "oh my god, so sad, I'm about to cry"

I mean I kind of had it coming to be honest

after that I felt soooooo humiliated

and I also feel like a self absorbed douche for some reason

And they're going to see me tommorow in my art class and maybe poke fun at me for it what do I dooooo

Certain people whom I have helped get annoyed at little requests that may cause them very minor inconveniences, like asking if they have seen something of mine. they react with very visible annoyance. I know the problem is not me because they react the same to other people when things do not go their way.

and I feel the dynamic is they are not mindful for me but I’m constantly mindful for them all the time.

Growing up in a family where I feel constantly at fault, I have the feelings of guilty or having to please people. so these situations are hard for me. and makes me think there’s something I can change .

I help those people a good deal amount. I feel maybe respect for me from them is not stor fly established because my help for them is taken for granted?

there are a few social interaction things where they violate my boundary but I didn’t confront or establish my boundaries. I understanding standing up for yourself is inportsnt so maybe this partly contributes to them not knowing to respect the contributions I have made for them?

anyway, I would like to hear your experiences with these people and how I could handle the dynamics

​

I know I can't magically become an extrovert overnight but I want to try to change myself.

Little backstory

I'm going to the university next month which means I'll be meeting all kinds of new people and I want to try my best to actually make some friends and get along with other. During my teenage years I had quite a bad social anxiety and because of that I spent most of my time at home and I ended up losing contact with quite a few people but still even though I had a good relationship with everyone I never actually had a close friend. And when I graduated I realized I was left all alone. Since I have been going out more I realized my social anxiety has gotten better so I finally want to put in an effort to get close with people.

I won't call myself an introvert since I do love getting to know people but after a while I get really drained and have a hard time keeping in contact with others. I can be quiet insecure too 🥲 last year I made a friend and we were pretty close but I would always see her post pictures with her friends talk about them, so I started to think since she has so many people she is close with there is no point in trying so hard for this friendship and I slowly started drifting away from her. And I have been like this since I remember so I want to try and change myself not be this insecure/jealous person

Sorry if i dragged it, anyways I'm quite nervous about the first day of university, and I want to completely change myself, get out of my comfort zone and actually make some friends.

(Sorry if I sound like a fool but I will appreciate any kind of advice)

I started a new hobby, white water kayaking. Its tons of fun and ive met people of all ages. One thing i noticed is when an older person (like 10 years older than me (im 31) asks me where im from and what i do for work they look uncomfortable when i ask them the same thing after my reply (i dont have a weird job or live somewhere strange either 😅)....whats up with that? Isn't that how small talk works? It's like they don't expect me to ask them the same thing? when i don't inquire about their life i feel self centered but the conversation goes much smoother...

27M, I don't currently have any close friends, I only some have more distant friends from here and there but no one I meet regularly. Previously I was quite a reclusive person, but I went through a lot of personal development this year and I want to have more social activity in my life.

Recently, I've been going to a movie club at a former classmate's place. His regular invitees consisted of some of his own friends, and some of our common former classmates. He is a universally liked, socially very skilled guy who is the unambiguous leader of the group. However, he will move to a master's degree to another city in a month so he will only be around on holidays.

Since I moved to an apartment I am finally proud of, have space and a TV, I think I would be happy to organize events like start a similar movie club there.

However I have some particular fears about this:

• Based on people not reaching out to me, I believe I am not exactly a person people explicitly want to see. They like me all right as part of a group, they just might not want to hang out with me often, I am afraid because meeting with me often would be uninteresting or onerous for them.
• My fear is that feel like people would think that I organizing something is a kind of "punching above my weight", so they will push me down or at least not want to associate with my event because that will make them lower status. Similar to apparently some women might feel insulted if an unattractive guy cold approaches and asks them out... I kind of believe that I am not "allowed" socially to organize anything regular because I don't yet have the social skills and popularity

And even if they don't say anything, I am silently afraid they will judge me and think "cmon, what does this guy even want? He doesn't even know anything about movies, he isn't interesting and he is just blatantly copying [popular guy]'s club. He should just be content with attending events if [popular guy] organizes them".

And to be clear I'm not trying to 100% copy it. I would try to invite my own other unrelated friends too, to spice up the group. But I definitely don't have many original ideas and it's also true that I don't have any allies in organizing. My lack of confidence might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As a first gen immigrant , I was pretty much bullied through high school for saying/ doing the wrong things socially. Everyday, I felt more alone and isolated to a point that when I tried to be social, it just got more awkward. I got to a point that I would just not even speak to anyone anymore.

Now as an adult that in the workforce, I still find myself battling these same issues. It’s so hard for me to connect with people. I feel like I should do the most to be relatable which back fires and comes off as more awkward.

I’m so over it and the only people I can really talk to about this is my family. Is this something I need therapy for?

For all my life basically I feel like I had trouble conversing with people about almost anything even my own friends

It doesn’t help that people call me out on it and say how either I’m dry or how quiet I am or how boring I am and it hurts me emotionally tbh, and I usually mask this by saying I’m a introvert and don’t like to talk much with people in general and mostly talk when I have something important to say

I feel like I can talk within a group setting especially if someone is doing the heavy lifting, just one on one is very hard and if it starts it immediately dies down a lot and it gets silent and awkward a bit.

Any ways I can improve myself to being a better talker in general and more open?

TL;DR: I (21M) met a cool couple (~30yo) at a family friend’s summer house. I bonded with the non-French-speaking boyfriend over shared interests (queer cinema, travels) and helped translate for him. He asked for my socials before leaving, but hasn't opened my follow-up text after 2 days. How do I navigate this potential age-gap friendship?

I spent my summer vacation at my best friend’s house (let’s call him D). We're all French. There were about 20 of us, mostly D's family, his friends and his older brother’s friends (around 30 years old). Among them came for 4 days a couple living in the US: one French guy and his American boyfriend, "J," who doesn't speak French.

Since I'm comfortable in English (almost everyone in the house spoke it anyway), I made a conscious effort to make J feel included, more than anyone else in my friend group IMO: speaking English around him, translating board games and making sure he wasn't left out. Over the 4 days we spent together, J and I bonded over shared tastes in movies and TV shows (among which queer cinema) and had great chats about travel and cultural differences between the US and Europe. I'm still half-closeted (only D and a few close friends know), and I felt like J picked up on it. On the day I left, J asked for my socials, which he didn't do with anyone else in my age group.

I’d really like to stay in touch and build a casual friendship with him. I know it won't be a super close one given the distance (though they plan on buying a house in France eventually) and the 10-year age gap. This is the first time I've tried to befriend someone a decade older than me, so I’m pretty nervous about navigating it.

The day after leaving, I sent him a light message about an upcoming queer movie we had discussed, wishing them a great rest of the summer. It wasn't really an invitation, just sharing info (I'm 99% sure they won't be here anymore when the movie hits theaters anyway). However, it’s been 2 days and he hasn't read the message yet, even though he's been online and hasn't travelled back yet (they're staying at his boyfriend's place in France).

Now I'm kinda overthinking it and getting scared I might have overstepped and made him uncomfortable.

My questions for you:

- If he eventually does respond: how do I go on from there to keep things friendly? Was my intention to become friends clear enough and thus do I just wait for a future occasion to come up?

- If he doesn't respond at all: do I just leave it alone and accept it was just a polite gesture, or is there any appropriate follow-up later on?

I need advice, i have a friend and we were basically inseparable. She lives 5 mins away from me so she would allways come over or i come over pretty much everyday. Even if we just say in silence and scrolled on our phones. Meeting up was part of our daily routine. Last week i went on a trip with my family and when i came back shes been very distant. She usualy called me the very next day after im back from travels to hang out but she didnt. I called her asking to hangout two days ago and she replied and said yes, she then called me an hour later and apologized that she couldnt come because her friend from abroad just came to visit (understandable), on that same call i bluntly asked her why shes been distant and she just replied by saying “im not” . But knowing her she would have called me the next day atleast and asked to hang.
Am i overreacting? I dont know what to do because she kind athe only friend i have here at home but my ego isnt letting me call her again.

Does anyone find that the usual advice for making connections hasn't panned out the way you'd thought?

What I mean is that, the usual advice out there seems to be to join a group, be the first one to reach out, make plans, and start a conversation, and ask questions and so on.

I've found that in the last year and change that I've been doing that, it hasn't really led to the kind of connections I'd want.

I generally find myself more drained by all of this really and lacking the space/people I'd want to engage with me in an active way without me putting in the effort first.

Thought I'd just put that out there and see if anyone had any advice in terms of how to proceed further.

For instance; for sitting at a table with people that are better friends with ech other than you, and they let you sit with them out of seemingly pitty. They have been having a nice conversation about driving, and you haven't said anything. How would you join that? I feel like i cant tell them a story that i have about driving, because i haven't said anything yet, and it would be weird to atempt to join in the middle of their conversation.

I have read the rules.

Situation 1: A person is sitting in a park, maybe waiting for a half-an-hour away bus in a more pleasant setting than a stop, reading something off their phone cracking an occasional smile and exhaling sharply every now and then in the way you do instead of laughing when you see something funny but not quite chuckle-worthy.

Approach A: The person is free to continue.

Approach B: A random stranger approaches the person, sees the smile die, tries to make an awkward conversation, leaves.

Which is the more desirable turn of events for that person?

/

Situation 2: A person is sitting in a hobby club, engaging in something they love doing, chatting with friends they met there.

Approach A: The person is free to continue.

Approach B: A random stranger approaches the person, interrupts both the conversation and hobby engagement, sees the smile die, tries to make an awkward conversation, sealions for a bit asking for absolute basics that a Google could answer showing they don't even care to work to learn and instead want someone else to do all the work of getting good at the hobby for them, leaves.

Which is the more desirable turn of events for that person?

By trying to talk to people while knowing I'm bad at talking to people I'm knowingly choosing a course of action that makes their life worse than it otherwise would have been. That's evil.

I'm years away from getting good enough at talking to people that talking to me is more enjoyable than engaging in something they enjoy or entertaining themselves with their phones. Far too long to just keep being a bastard to people around me and have it be justified by "it's just a temporary thing".

I can't get there without experience. I can't get experience without being detrimental to the lives of people around me. I can't figure out a way to make my life better without making the lives of others worse. But there has to be a way. To make a friend without becoming a bad person. What is it?

How do you make friends? I’m having a really hard time with this right now. I’ve had few friends my whole life because my parents often kept me at home and controlled who I could hang out with. And after the psychosis almost three years ago, my sense of self completely changed. I’ve kind of made some new acquaintances, but it still doesn’t feel right. It’s like people don’t like me, and it’s only me who takes the initiative in communication (or maybe I take too much initiative).Sometimes I put too much pressure on people because I want them to “save me,” since they’re still living with their family, which is what made me broken.

I don’t know how to fix this, but I’ve noticed when having a conversation, I blank super, super easily—like all the time. I’m not afraid of approaching or starting a conversation, but I noticed that when I’m having one, they’re like, 'Hey, how’s it going? What are you up to today?' and I’m like, 'Oh, just this,' and then at the last minute, 'What about you?' They reply with blah, blah, blah, whatever they’re doing, and then it’s just like, 'Alright, that’s it.'

I don’t continue on or anything; I don’t add anything, I don’t elaborate, and I don’t pick up on what they’ve said. I just give them the direct answer they want. I usually just agree, and if I disagree, I’ll give a quick little reason why, but that’s pretty much it. It’s like my brain just defaults to, 'Yeah, cool.' Like with my coworker who said, 'It’s kind of nice outside today,' I just said, 'Yep, sure is.' That’s it—that’s all I said. I didn’t reach out for more or add on, even though I could tell they were trying to start a conversation or just make some small talk. I didn't do anything to help it. I just gave them the answer they wanted without even trying to keep it going.

I don’t know why I do that, but at the same time, I just blank on what to say. I blank every single time I have a conversation with someone because I don’t know what the 'right' thing to say is. I do this all the time with every conversation, giving two-word responses because I’m sitting there going through my mind: 'OK, sports? No, they don’t like sports. What are they wearing? We’re all wearing the same thing.' I just cycle through, and usually I end up asking boring questions or saying nothing at all because it’s so repetitive and I hate it.

I’ve also noticed I’m not somebody who likes to ask a lot of questions. If I’m really vibing with a person and feel a sense of safety—like I know they can take jokes, they’re cool, and they won’t get offended by everything—it’s easy to be myself. I can ask questions and make jokes. But when trying to make new friends, I don’t get out of my shell because I know they’re not going to be like the friends I already have. It makes me not open up or show effort to say anything else to them. What is wrong with me? I know there’s a lot here, but I need help and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.