[QUOTE=tdn]
Oh dear. My intent in starting this thread was not to have it be about me. Oh well, too late now, I guess.
All good suggestions, though I’d only do about half of them. But thanks!
As to the bolded bit, that’s part of the problem. How does one look for signals without coming off as too interested? What, by the way, are the signals? See, that’s 90% of the problem. I’ve never learned the necessary social skills. I’m 45 years old, and I never learned the stuff that every 16-year-old knows.
I can go to a museum. That’s easy. I can spot a woman who is attractive. That’s easy. Walking up to her to say hello without looking like I’m walking up to her to say hello? That’s much harder. Closing with a phone number? Totally alien terrain to me. Not a fucking clue how to get there.
I really need to enroll in Social Techniques 101.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think I missed that class too. When I first came out of lurking here I posted a long thread talking abut having basically the same issues, and as a result I ended up working to shift my entire social life. At that time I was basically a homebody, I would work, go home, sleep, repeat.
My first attempt after suggestions in that thread was to join a social club of some sort, I ended up joining a local tennis club. Good people, but it ended up being a poor fit for me because no one was within a decade of the same age as me.
So after a while, I tried again, this time I joined a local church. I’ll admit that right now I’m religiously…uncertain, but I said, “Screw it, I’ll give it a shot anyway, worse thing that could happen is that the people creep me out and I stop going.” I ended up joining their group for twenty-somethings that meets regularly, and it’s been nothing but awesome since then. Probably 60% of them are engineers of some type, so there’s immediately common ground there, and the makeup of the group is such that there are always things going on, you just have to speak up if you want to join in.
I’ve tried very hard to go into this looking for new friends, not a relationship, but if/when the opportunity presents itself, I’ll take it. Most of all, it’s finding that group of people you like to be around and talk to just because.
While it isn’t true for the church I’m going to right now, many churches out there are little more than social clubs once you get past the spiritual trappings. I guess what I’m saying is that even if you aren’t religious at all, you might find something out there that at least opens the social doors for you. Hell, at the very least, the Unitarian Universalists would welcome you with open arms, even if you were a Pastafarian :p. I even know of a local group that meets on Sundays here that is the “Humanist Community” with interesting speakers and social/charitable activities that are completely non-religious.
Whatever your social routine is right now, it clearly isn’t working towards what you want, so I say just dive in the deep with some group you barely know anything about and try to swim.
Blah, I’ve completely wandered off topic now (I think), but hopefully this is helpful in some way.
