ThePhantomN wrote:
Here's a plus. The fact that you want to have social skills means that you are halfway there. Try reading some of the articles on smalltalk and body language. And check out posts in the Guide to life section and General Social interaction section. There are plenty of people on this site who have advanced social skills despite having AS, and are willing to give help to someone who wants it.
The most important thing is to be positive. Always look at the bright side of a situation, and if you have a choice between being mopey about something or moving on, move on. Being positive is extremely important to being social. People notice the guy who always walks around with something to smile about. They'll see him as someone easy to talk to, to be friends with. And like other posters have noted, there's a friend in girlfriend.
Thank you for your advice. I do try (sometimes) to stay positive: after all I am literate, have a library card, have good books given to me as Christmas and birthday presents, have two parents who love me, two brothers who love me, live in a beautiful part of the world, enjoy my studies (first a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History and currently a Master of Divinity studying theology) and have some very good friendships. My social skills probably are not all that bad; in the course of my life I have been able to accumulate enough social skills to fare reasonably in most social circumstances, though I am not especially fond of parties (I was only relatively regularly going in year twelve with being invited along with my year-level to various girls' eighteenth birthdays). Good to hear from you all.