"Odd" Conversations... (Not sure what title to use).

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I can relate! I pick up so much good advice about how to fit in, but it seems like so much work to put into practice. I know what I want and what makes me happy. At least I know that it is not 'their' fault. The world is the way the way it is, and we just got to deal with it.

I remember once at a lecture the question was posed to the group, 'What is stopping each of us from putting these skills into practice in our lives?' The group gave really good answers, but since no gave an answer close to mine, I didn't speak up and say, 'Because living in the real world scares me.' Ah well.

IR

I think I know what you are talking about when referring to these odd conversations. I used to steer conversations towards myself A LOT, especially when I was teenager. I had a hard time paying attention to conversations and fully understanding what people are saying. I would try and use examples from my own life to determine if I was on the right track, sometimes I was perfect, other times I was way off by going into tangent about a special interest or suddenly change the topic to something way out there. The really bad times occurred when I would just keep talking about myself and examples from my life when the speaker is trying to explain something very serious or emotional.

You said something important (OP) when you mentioned that being able to just be quiet face to face, isn't considered an option. I've been around people where conversation's were like nails on a chalkboard and I couldn't wait to leave, and that need to leave came from knowing that steering a conversation in ways that other people can't follow is perceived as, if not rude, strange.

This is part of where I have mixed feelings about the Covid shut-in. On one hand I'm mostly doing what I would have done anyway (other than work a lot more) but what gets me about being around most people, the quality of who you are and whether it's to be praised and enjoyed or shunned and found annoying rests on little more than how much you're already like them or not like them with very little effort involved. That's fine for situations where people have already self-selected to that point, much more abrasive when people people are forced to be together by some broader social convention and by sheer dint of numbers 100-105 IQ interests are the only social discussion topics that aren't a social faux pa.

I know the moment I say it that way, ie. bring up IQ, it sounds elitist but I find myself fighting what's really a different battle - ie. that if I don't draw these distinctions and holding my own value as something separate I end up being a slave, my cooperation/compliance gets read as weakness (because I'm extending myself onto someone else's turf not my own), and my own empathy and projection of equal value for other people gets turned against me. That's another place I suppose that makes this worse - ie. that so much of socializing is still a zero-sum game, people are constantly sizing each other for signs of weakness, and so the bridging that one would theoretically want to do in order smooth differences is made all the more risky. Sure it's not like that in every environment and you will occasionally find people who you can have interesting side-conversations with, but generally there's a power game going on that has to be respected in it's hazards and if you undermine that you're headed for a miserable - and likely memorably miserable - time.

I think that I finally realized something in reading this thread. When someone talks about a situation that I've experienced, or experienced something similar, as someone said before, I try to "swap stories" and talk about what I did or what I think might have worked better or whatever, and I've always felt that that was the most helpful thing. It shows that I do understand what they're saying and it begins a discussion of ways to solve whatever problem. That's the way I always saw it, anyway, but now I'm thinking that maybe this is another thing where the person mostly just wants listening and acknowledgement maybe? Seems like a total brushoff to me, when I have experienced similar things or have some insight, to just be like, "Oh, yeah, that sucks" and that's it. All these years, I've tried to be a helpful sort, but seems like the vast majority prefer a no-effort brushoff. Weird. I have trouble understanding that. Seems like the issue underneath the "steering the conversation" is just trying to engage and be helpful, at least for me.