Originally Posted by
Indestructible
Maybe I'm better off breaking down my various social issues to basic levels and working at them one at a time...
As many of you know from my posts in the past, I've never been able to make and have friends, date, or really have any kind of proper social circle.
One thing that's occurred to me is that I just... don't really know how to talk to people. I don't really like "chitchat" (stuff like "The weather outside is x" or "How about that local sports team"), to begin with; just seems like meaningless crap that nobody ACTUALLY cares about, but just uses to fill dead air. Plus, I tend to not have "follow ups" for this kind of thing. For instance, if I say to someone "The weather is nice today, isn't it?", and they say "Yes, it is", I wouldn't know what to say next. Then it would have just been an awkward failed conversation starter just hanging out there.
I can do a little better if someone starts a conversation with me, but I tend to run out of things pretty quickly, so even those usually fall off pretty fast. It's hard to really describe the problem here. I know my inability to converse like a normal person makes me come off as awkward, and I can usually feel the awkwardness when I'm around someone else as I try to think (often unsuccessfully) of something to say to them. It's not that I don't WANT to talk to people, I just... never know what to say. Which is a difficult way to put this problem, because how do you fix it? It's not a matter of "Do this" or "Do that", it's just a matter of me not having anything to say to anybody roughly 75% of the time I'm around people.
Heck, twice in the last week, I've had people say "Why are you so quiet? You need to talk more", and I never really know how to respond to that. I mean, I'm not quiet on purpose, I just... don't know what to say, when to say it, etc. *sigh*