Socialising

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Does anyone else here not enjoy socialising because you can't relax and be yourself around people?

Everything you do is wrong and all they do is constantly complain at you...even for doing things they do all the time.

Do they act as if they have no faults and you have no good points?

Do you get fed up with it and find you prefer your own company?

Perhaps it is the result of our industrial one-size-fits-all approach to education that most people see the world in monolithic terms. It can be frustrating to be different (more focused, analytical, or sensitive) and attempt to engage with a group that is uncomfortable with differences.

This is why people tend to self-segregate into groups with whom they have more in common (artists, musicians, cops, plumbers, etc.)

Life can be much more pleasant if we do not expect others to behave to our expectations, but learn the minimal skills necessary to survive essential social situations (masking, brevity, and superficiality).

It can be more rewarding to invest your time with those others with whom you can be more open. The trick is finding them.

I really have not much trouble socializing.  It is the post-event comments that I must deal with.

"You said WHAT to the Russian ambassador?!"

"It is called 'Afghanistan', not 'Ratznestistan'."

"The polite term is 'buxom lady', not 'chick with bodacious ta-tas'."

"I do not care whose turn it was in the barrel, that joke was inappropriate!"

If I don't feel like it.
If I'm not in control or at equal terms.


If socialization feels more like a job to accommodate everyone over yourself instead the whole point of socialization as the humans describes -- connections and enjoyment.

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Yes the sense of risk spoils a lot of it for me. I often feel like I've been dumped among a bunch of natives in some far-flung part of the world where all the customs and even the language is disturbingly different to my own. So the best I can hope for is to get the mineral-mining rights off them in exchange for a few cheap, coloured beads, then go off and have a crafty snigger at them for being so gullible. And I wouldn't want to do that even if the opportunity arose. There's nothing objectively wrong or inferior about these people. They're just not mine, and I can only get it to work by pretending I'm one of them, and that's uncomfortable to say the least. What are they going to think if my mask slips? I want to go home, but there is no home. Except solitude, and that's a very lonely thing. My own people don't exist. I miss them.

That's probably an over-bleak picture of how it really is for me. We all have our basic humanity in common, there's always some points on which we can relate. There are traces of my own people in a lot of folks. Sometimes there are more than traces. There was once a whole group with which I had an awful lot in common. I still get to see a few of them now and then, and I occasionally meet new people who show strong signs of coming from the same stock. They don't seem quite as comparable to me as they once did, but there are still moments when they say or do something that makes me feel like I made it back home.

Yes, I really struggle socially.

I can just about get along if I'm talking to one or two people, I shutdown in groups of people. My mind goes blank and I just let others talk. I think I probably come across as aloof or disinterested, or just uninteresting.

I have no problem when I consider there to be a 'purpose' to the interaction. For example I can talk about work with clients and colleagues, if I am interviewing someone I can manage fine.

But if it's just me being social for the sake of it, I'm pretty much lost.

To answer the other 3 questions I overlooked in my previous post: