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
Is it people at work telling you you’re a dick? If so, you should ask your manager for their input. Behaving at work is far different from behaving in a casual social setting.
No, it’s mostly my friends and family telling me I’m being an asshole or insinuating things I didn’t mean to. Oddly enough, people seem to like me at work.
Can you offer a few examples of things you’ve said that have elicited this feedback?
I went into more detail in this comment. Can’t pull exact quotes as I left the group chat because I was tired of constantly causing arguments, so this is the best of my recollection.
Also once friend A was feeling guilty because he was enjoying the weather even though it was the side effect of a natural disaster. I didn’t know this at the time, I was talking with friend B who was encouraging me to vent about my family.
I wasn’t being treated for my OCD and was a paranoid pain in the ass and kept asking why it was OK, when last time I was told that venting about my family was insulting to friend A. Friend A saw this conversation and immediately posted “I know the real reason you’re mad at me—” (I wasn’t mad) “—it’s because I’m a colonizer!”
I don’t pick up on these things and spent the next several weeks trying to figure out why my question insinuated he’s a colonizer, and how to ask things without calling people colonizers.
Like some examples I could give just sound really weird if you weren’t there. And that’s just one where I eventually picked up on what actually went wrong. Mostly I just look back on old arguments and I’m really confused and I wouldn’t be surprised if they sound like word salad when I try to describe them.