this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Are there resources for learning social skills? (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 month ago by Alice@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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I'm 30 and horrible at keeping friends. I don't know if it's the unschooling or the autism, but I'm told I come across as hostile when I think I'm being nice.

I know the basics. I make eye contact but not too much, I ask people about themselves and their interests to show I'm interested, I don't dominate conversations with myself and my own interests. I try to be a nice person people might want to keep around, too— I give money when someone's in a pinch, I remember birthdays, I help move, et cetera.

Eventually people either people tell me I'm being a dick in ways I never realized, or more likely, they just eventually stop messaging me back.

The one thing I'm sure I struggle with is body language. I've read a lot that you need to mirror the other person's body language, but I don't know how to do that. Especially since I normally meet people at work and we're usually pushing big carts around and moving products and I'm just not thinking about my body as something expressive, just practical.

I'm sure I have many more blind spots that I'm not even aware of.

So like... are there classes for this? Some kind of specialized therapy? I don't really want to try anymore unless I can stop being a dick

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[–] Jimbo@yiffit.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Last time, I apologized and said I should have realized (I should have), and my friend and I got into a two-day argument about whether it was a sincere apology or not. I finally asked what I did to deserve being accused of lying and he just said "well if I had said that I'd mean it manipulatively, so I assumed you did". So apologizing in that scenario is taken as manipulative, right?

I mean... I think you did the right thing here. Hard to say without any context, but your friends kinda sound like dicks, like really taking offense at small things that really don't matter that much.

Sorry, not sure what you should do with this take, just that maybe the problem is not entirely you.

[–] Alice@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I considered this, but the fact that it's been two different friends plus my sister made me think I was the one being a dick.

Maybe we're all dicks