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
All of these examples across your comments have this in common: People who were feeling guilty about something, and then lashing out at you in anger for allegedly calling them out on the issue. This is a very common coping strategy that people use, and it’s really not your fault at all because they didn’t tell you up front about their feelings. They just want to make it seem that it is your fault to deflect from their own unpleasant feelings.
This is a really hard one to learn to detect if you’re not tuned into people (that is, autistic). Hell, it’s a hard one to detect for everybody. You kind of have to watch for body language which indicates discomfort: Body stiffness, blank affect, disengaging from conversation, flared nostrils, clipped syllables, curt replies. If you see those indicators, change the topic.
This is good advice, thanks!
Unfortunately the worst of it always seems to take place over text, at least I know it’s common now.