Real: Anon can improve himself by going outside.
Straight: Anon talked to women.
Anon doing volunteer work? Already a vastly different type from the wide sea of other Anons.
> “greentext”
> look inside
> red text
Volunteer work is an amazing way to break cycles of isolation and loneliness. You have a shared common goal with other volunteers and you are making a collective effort to improve the lives of those less fortunate than you. Even if you walk away without having met the love of your life or whatever, at least you can feel good knowing that you helped make the world a better place and got to meet some cool, likeminded people.
Volunteer work backfires for a lot of people when they work at like food pantries though. You get a huge amount of entitled rude assholes and it can make you hate the public and/or the destitute
I swear we could de-radicalize young men if this was talked about more. Just say hi to people
As long as they don’t mistake making a new friend with expectations of having a girlfriend. I’ve had plenty of guy “friendships” which I genuinely thought would last for years, but the moment they noticed I wasn’t having sex with them they pulled away to never be heard of. It breaks your heart in a different way.
Speaking from the guy perspective (and not at all to minimize your pain) sometimes pulling away is necessary for managing feelings of rejection and longing; better to pull away than to have a crash out in a year about how her boyfriend isn’t you but also still bad. It just sucks all around.
I’ve never done this to a friend or had a female friend do this to me, but so many guys seem incapable of dealing with feelings of disappointment without destroying a relationship.
staying in a relationship that disappoints you is far less healthy than just ending it entirely.
that’s true of any friendship or romantic relationship.
One of the biggest problems is that, outside of early school, there’s no real way to practice social interactions in a safe setting. The only real option is jumping straight in. If you’re already slightly socially stunted, it can be very easy to mess it up. It only takes a couple of negative reactions to put someone off for a long time.
I almost fell into the same hole when I was younger. Thankfully I realised what was likely happening and worked on it. I’m still not good at cold approach social interactions, but I can at least now do it without screwing up catastrophically.
And when you’re in early school the only “people” you have to socialize with are psychopathic children whose only joy in life is tortuting the ones they deem less normal.
My experience with young children is that they can be incredibly welcoming, and accepting. Only a few tend to be like you claim. They generally want to be friendly and be liked.
Unfortunately, they are also still developing and learning social skills. They often can’t tell different and guarded from hostile. They will often reflect back how they feel they are treated. This becomes a vicious cycle.
It’s about 8-9 that things like clicks can form. Social skills explode in complexity. This is where most aspies begin to fall behind. It can be overcome with training and/or practice, but that gets harder the further behind they fall. By the time it’s obvious, catching up is HARD.
there’s no real way to practice social interactions in a safe setting
There are small talk opportunities if you know where to look.
Dog parks are my favorite. Bring your dog, make small talk with the other owners, get to know some of them. It’s a low stakes environment that doesn’t cost any money, allows you to exit at any time, guarantees at least one shared interest or commonality with people who live near you. You don’t even have to talk to people the first few times you go, and can build up comfort/familiarity in the specific place before you take the next step of striking up a conversation with another regular you see a lot.
Another option is where unrelated parties might mingle in shared space: communal tables or bar seating at coffee shops or bars or parks or even restaurants. These fleeting interactions might help practice the skills of small talk, enough to where it’s easy to have conversations with strangers.
And sometimes you can outsource the actual cold approach to the extrovert strangers you might encounter, by giving them something to talk about. A baseball cap with your university, a T-shirt with your favorite band from a tour you saw live, a tattoo of something fun, other items of clothing or accessories that might attract positive attention. Sometimes people will say something about it, and then you can talk about a shared interest or background at that point.
Lines and waiting rooms are also sometimes good places to pass the time with conversations. It’s a little harder now than 20 years ago, with the rise of smartphones, but it’s still a place where people might be bored and appreciate a little conversation to mix things up.
